With the 2016 OCR World Championships (OCRWC) complete athletes are already reflecting on their performances and planning on how to improve for 2017. Several comments have appeared on Facebook reflecting on which races to do to prepare for OCRWC next year. This raises the question, which race series should you fill your calendar with for 2017? That depends on your performance and areas of weakness in 2016.
It has been about a year since Warrior Dash held their 2nd (and last) Warrior Dash World Championship (WDWC). The event was a standard Warrior Dash (WD) course but on harder terrain and for insane cash prizes. In 2014 it was held in Southern California and in 2015 it was held in Tennessee. Each year they gave away $100,000 (split between the top five men and top five women). A 5k with a purse that big is pretty much unheard of. But after only two years the event was put out to pasture by WD, focusing instead on their normal array of weekend races.
For those who love Obstacle Course Racing and participate year round, chances are your performance has been effected more than once by the cold. Whether it be an all-night sufferfest at World’s Toughest Mudder (WTM), being stuck at an obstacle at the OCR World Championships or just racing on an exceptionally cold day. Seeing the freezing updates from the 2016 Spartan World Championship and Ultra Beast, it seems like a perfect time to talk about a new product that is about to hit the market.
The weekend of September 10th and 11th I got to attend an OCR called the Hardcore Mudd Run (HMR). Since the event is put on by firefighters and was occurring the weekend of September 11th, it seemed like a cool event to attend. As with most small OCRs that put on few events throughout the year, it had a mix of good and bad.
Wearing a dryrobe is like being hugged by a Care Bear, it is like walking around in your sleeping bag…and it’s awesome. The dryrobe, which you may have seen as a sponsor on BattleFrog College Championships, at OCR World Championships or at the uphill swim based OCR Neptune Steps, has made a big splash in the OCR world and for a good reason.
I typically stay away from non-major brands of supplements. However, one of my teammates, Christina “Honey Badger” Armstrong (Death Race Finisher and 2xBFX winner) had been telling me I needed to try Bodyhacker pre-workout for several months. I finally relented….
For BattleFrog Xtreme and other multi-lap events, nutrition can make or break your performance. Unlike a short 5k or 5-mile race where nutritional mistakes can easily be overcome, the effects of nutrition on race day are crucial. Furthermore, a mistake early on can have a compounding effect as your body depletes muscle glycogen and desperately tries to refill your fuel tank faster than you are emptying it.
Besides the elites, which I covered in last article, there are always stories of open wave competitors getting injured. The two “high profile” examples are the viral stories of that person that got some rare eye disease from one of the mud pits and the women that is suing the sponsors of Spartan for her falling off a volunteers shoulders, it naturally raises the question of how safe this sport is?
Amelia Boone, Claude Godbout, Corinna Coffin, Sarah Watson, Brenna Calvert and Nikki Call. No, I did not just name the top six elite females from a recent race. Besides being members of Pro Teams representing race companies (Spartan Race, BattleFrog Series, and Conquer The Gauntlet), these athletes have something else in common, they have had serious injuries requiring medical appointments (surgery and/or casts in some cases) and weeks of recovery. With so many injuries from so many high-level athletes, the question of safety comes to mind and if we are asking too much of our top level athletes.
161 miles, 1000+ obstacles and 31,000+ feet of elevation gain. Spanning venues from Vermont to Oklahoma, multi-lapping for seven days in a row is how I spent the last week of my life. The event was Obstacle Course Race (OCR) America and was designed with three goals in mind. The first was to raise money for the charity Folds of Honor, which provides scholarship money to children whose parents were wounded or killed in US military action.
