This weekend marked the return of Tough Mudder to Glen Helen Raceway in San Bernardino, and the debut of the Tough Mudder Half on Sunday. Saturday dawned cool and very windy, requiring several of the venue tents to be reinforced. This wind would keep gusting as the day warmed up, often creating minor sandstorms across the dry hills.
The SISU Forge will always have a special place in my heart. It was my first endurance event back in 2014, and my first real introduction to the crazy and wonderful people of Team SISU. I've been fortunate enough to be able to attend the Forge every year since, making me one of only two athletes (along with Patrick Scully) to participate in all three of them.
Terrain Racing’s angry monkey medals invaded Southern California for the first time this weekend with 5k and 10k race distances outside the Storm Baseball Stadium in Lake Elsinore, CA. I’m a fan of this race series, and have run their Flagstaff race for the last two years, so I was eager to have them come to a venue closer to me.
In 2012, my wife Anne and a couple of her friends did a Warrior Dash as one of her first obstacle course races. At the time, I was sidelined with an injury, and although I've done dozens of different OCRs in the intervening years, I had never done a Warrior Dash before last weekend. As a result, I was excited to give this one a try, as I've heard for years about Warrior Dash being one of "the big three" and the "gateway drug to OCR".
Sean Corvelle asks “When was the last time you did something for the first time?” as he fires people up at the starting line of a Tough Mudder. I want to go a little deeper with this: “When was the last time you tackled something so big that it changed your life?”
What could be more fun than running an obstacle race on a beautiful Saturday morning in Southern California, with snow on the nearby mountains, and warm Santa Ana winds blowing? How about bypassing the finish line, and going around and around on the course to see how many laps you can put on in a day?
Spartan Race is all about ripping people out of their comfort zones, testing their boundaries, and focusing a spotlight on any holes in an athlete’s training. Nowhere is this more obvious that in their 12h hurricane heat.
Spartan Race kicked off its 2016 season in Southern California last weekend with back to back races at Vail Lake in Temecula. Immediately obvious on arriving at the venue was the distressing lack of water in the lake; with a drop of at least 10-15’ of depth since our last visit back in September, it was clear that the long California drought is far from over. This also left exposed a vast mud plain that was once the lake bottom and would play a role in the race.
Recently, I was peripherally involved in an article that helped open my eyes in a number of ways. It was an article that raised questions about safety at BattleFrog Series, a relative newcomer to the world of OCR with grand ambitions, who wants to position itself as one of the big players in the market space.
New Year’s Resolutions are deeply ingrained in our culture, and each year millions around the world proudly declare how this year will be different. Unfortunately, the statistics on these resolutions are anything but encouraging: 45% of Americans regularly make New Year’s Resolutions; of these, nearly 2/3 involve fitness oriented goals as part of their resolutions.
