Let’s face it; our sport as it currently exists does not fit the Olympic mold. The courses, the obstacles, and the events have too much variation. There are distances from 1 mile to 24 hours and courses that have obstacles which are essentially glorified speed bumps to those with a 98% fail rate. The sport as it currently exists will never be in the Olympics, although a variation could be with standardized distances
If you missed the first article The Olympics: Let’s Set Some Expectations, click on the link and read that one now. While the last article focused on tampering expectations, I do think the Olympics will bring in some negative aspects that people have not considered. Here is what I think will be the negative aspects of the Olympics.
The Olympics are talked about every year on Facebook posts, blogs, podcasts and websites like Mud Run Guide. This year things have been taken up a notch with articles about Pentathlon, laser run, USAOCR and more. OCR enthusiasts talk of legitimacy, sponsors, money pouring into the sport and how great it will be. However, like a good buzzkill...
Obstacle Course Racing is a sport built upon extremes. Athletes are always looking to make things harder running up mountains with more challenging obstacles for longer distances. From this, the niche market of Ultra-OCR has risen focusing on multi-lapping events that typically are available in two formats, the 8-hour events, and the 24-hour events.
I made my annual trip to Warrior Dash, this year in Pulaski, Tennessee (TN). Despite personally enjoying more difficult obstacles, I always like to go back to check on the series that brought me into OCR. Warrior Dash still has one of the largest attendance numbers in the sport and for a good reason.
While most people think it is unusual to jump over fire, crawl under barbed wire and climb over walls on the weekend, that is just the tip of the iceberg. Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) is weird…like really weird. Before you know it, OCR has infiltrated all aspects of your life and is affecting how you dress, how you act and what you think is normal.
After years of racing other series, I finally worked a (long overdue) Savage Race into my schedule. For the last couple of years, people have been telling me “You need to get to Savage.” Well, I made it to their Georgia Spring event and here is a quick rundown of my thoughts.
Since I’ve been on a roll talking about location in my last couple of Op-Eds, one about Do World Championships Need to Move and My Solution to World Championships overseas, I figured I would round it out with one more on location. This one is not about the World Championship but rather the Mecca of OCR.
Last month I posted an article about, “Do Championships Need to Move?” Check it out if you haven’t read it yet. I assume at some point one or all three of the big championship events (OCR World Championships, World’s Toughest Mudder or Spartan Race World Championship) will move overseas.
If you have been around Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) for more than a year, you probably have seen the advertisements for Hylete. Hylete makes fitness apparel for functional athletes, including most popularly the Crossfit athlete to the OCR athlete.
