Spartan Race obstacle races, mud run, and OCR information, distance, cost, dates, calendar, discounts, obstacles, reviews, and more

Having never done Wintergreen before, I thought I was prepared mentally for what awaited me. I was totally wrong. I was slipping, sliding, tested, beaten down but I can say it was my strongest spartan to date in 2 years. I smiled the whole way. So much so that people stopped and asked me why I was smiling. My answer- do today what others won't so tomorrow I can do what they can't. I have bilateral plantar fasciitis that cause me to limp my entire tuxedo my race. I ran bits of PA but still in excruciating pain. Doing VA was vindication for me. I felt strong and NEVER stopped. Sure I walked, a lot and slid down the hills on my ass A lot but I never stopped. Not on the death March. I put down the bucket a few times but not as much as in pa even though the hill was longer and steeper. I felt spartan strong for the first time in over a year and smiled because I felt like a warrior.

I learned a lot about myself and a lot about sticking with those who stuck by you when you didn't have the best race- most of all I think I leaned the true meaning of being a spartan.

As I've come to recognize, the Super Spartan at the Wintergreen resort is a special, lushly green and muddy brown level of hell. I first did the 2013 Wintergreen as my very first OCR. What a shock to the system. But this year, Wintergreen is my 3rd of 6 Spartan Races on the road to a double Trifecta. Is Wintergreen for the faint of heart and the "average" obstacle course racer? No. Should you attempt Wintergreen if you think a Warrior Dash is challenging? Probably not. Are Spartan racers a special brand of masochist and Norm Koch (the course designer) our sadist-in-chief? Yes.

The long and short, Wintergreen sucks. But it's a special, unique kind of suck that makes you warm and fuzzy for having completed it. Because it makes everything else seem that much easier. Except for Vermont. Wintergreen is Vermont's rose garden.

Virginia Super was awesome

I have been reading a lot of reviews about this race being to brutal and not in keeping with the OCR mentality of it being for everyone. let me tell you, I am a 40 year old Marine Corp veteran, and I love OCR. I spend a couple days a week training and run on the weekend to prepare for races. I look forward to my Spartan races because they are the ones that let me know where I really stand as far as fitness and OCR. I can do a Warrior Dash or Tough Mudder for fun and take my time, joke with friends and enjoy a beer after. If I want to test my training and see if I am really preparing than I do a Spartan. Virginia was the toughest race I have done to date, and I have done longer distances. I wouldn't trade it for the world, and I will definitely be back next year. If you aren't in it to test yourself and your training, stick to the other runs, you don't need to do a Spartan.

Best Spartan Race To Date

PARKING = A
Parking was on-site (right in front of the stadium) and free (despite it saying online that there was going to be a charge).

FESTIVAL = B
Festival had the atmosphere of a stadium with Spartan flare added. Due to the limited space, it was very watered down from their regular festival. Food vendors were the stadium’s and you have Spartan set up locations for bag check, merchandise, race sign up, etc.

BAG CHECK = C
Bag check was secure but with a $5 charge.

STARTING LINE = A
They had a clock, DJ, and an obstacle (a wall you had to climb over). Waves were sent off in spurts (5 spurts for a 10:15 wave). They had you stand on the Spartan logo to line up for starting which was cool.

COURSE LAYOUT = A
Keeping in mind that this is not a mud race and it’s in a stadium so the terrain consisted of ramps, stairs, stadium seating, locker rooms, and the field. The obstacle spacing was very good. The terrain and location is a dream come true for a baseball fan.

OBSTACLES = A
Spartan still has some great obstacles and they were represented here. The barbed wire mud crawl was turned into a rope bear crawl up and down ramps. Traditional Spartan obstacles were represented with new work out “zones” like doing push ups in the locker room and box jumps in the outfield.

Best Obstacle = Rope Climb
Worst Obstacle = Jump Rope

WATER STATIONS = C
For a 3 mile course, there seemed to be about 2-3 water stations (water only). Knowing that most non-Spartan racers do this race and the no-so-good placement of these water stations, Spartan should have added more stations.

FINISH LINE = B
2 obstacles at the end (on the field) and to finish, you ran into home base. A baseball fan’s dream come true.

SHOWERING/CHANGING = B
There was no showering area because there was no mud. Most people didn’t need to change so I don’t even know if there was a changing area but the stadium bathrooms were good enough for this race.

SWAG = A
A t-shirt and 2 Spartan medals were given (a special stadium medal and the standard Sprint medal).

CONCLUSION:
The funnest Spartan race I have ever done. It was very different and if you are a baseball fan, you will be in heaven. It felt good to finish a race without being wet or muddy. You still enjoy the Spartan obstacles and the challenge (lots of stairs and exercises). Definitely worth doing due to the venue, swag, and challenge. Plus it counts towards your trifecta. I recommend waiting to sign up because they usually release a deal (via Living Social or Groupon) that’s cheaper than the early sign up.

This was a pretty fun layout. The terrain was naturally varied w/ hills, valleys, creeks, etc. Parking was easy to find and close. I see this getting better each year. I wish there was more stuff for non racing people to do while waiting for me to finish. Overall I was very pleased.

Logistics, and how I cheated Death!

I haven't done a Spartan Super before, much less at Wintergreen, so my basis for comparison is limited. That being said, I thought the course was extremely challenging (that is good) and at times treacherous (potentially bad if you are not careful). I think the hills are what really make this course. Going up them wears you down, and going down them has the potential to maim/kill you. If you don't live in an area where you can train for hills, say Southern Maryland, then you were faced with an extreme butt kicker. The fog and rainy conditions just added to the misery and sense of accomplishment.

As the two reviews below mentioned, the logistics for getting to and from the course were absolutely painful! Seriously, I CANNOT adequately express how mind-numbingly painful this portion of the experience was. Traffic came to a complete standstill when I got within 1.4 miles of the designated parking location. From there it took at least 30 minutes before we were parking our car. It took another 20+ minutes of waiting in line before we boarded a bus to take us to the course.

On the bus ride, the driver missed the turn for Wintergreen. He stopped at the bottom of a turn in the road and initially attempted to do a U-turn! This was not a good decision as anyone driving down the mountain would have rounded the turn only to find a freaking bus in the middle of the road. Fortunately, we did not experience that potential tragedy. Instead the driver decided to back up, but he went off the road and got stuck in the mud. At this point, the bus was leaning significantly towards the ditch and the driver was not showing any new indications of sound judgement. One lady on the bus with her two boys decided she had reached her limit and demanded to be let off the bus. All the passengers, wisely, followed her lead and we disembarked and proceeded to walk down to the turn and then up the mountain. The driver of the bus did eventually get himself unstuck and somehow managed to turn himself around and caught up with most of us on the correct road, loaded us up and took us to the course.

The logistics for the return trip to parking was just as painful as A. Dugue describes it. I entered the line for the return shuttle at approximately 8 PM and did not get to my car until approximately 9:30 PM. That's ridiculous.

I did find all the volunteers to be very helpful and refused to take my discontent with the logistics out on them.

Difficult course, terrible parking/shuttle

The parking and shuttle service ruined my desire to return to this course again next year. Three major obstacles prohibited me from watching my son run his race: the traffic heading into the parking area was ridiculous, the shuttle buses took entirely too long to get to the race, and the line for the shuttle bus was crazy long. My intention was to watch my son run in the Jr. Spartan race at 10:30am and then run in the Spartan at 11:30; however, it took so long getting to the registration tables that we missed my son's start time. He had to run in the 12:30 race and I started my 11:30 race at 12. This was terribly disappointing.

As for the Virginia Super Spartan, itself, everything I read about last year's course reviews were quite helpful. The race was, as another Spartan stated, brutal. I don't even remember all the names of the obstacles, but there were MANY of them. The rain and fog made the course even more difficult. I trained for this race by completing Insanity, Focus T25 and running stairs... a lot of stairs! I did quite well up the double black diamond ski slope, but the obstacles slowed me down. I did not have enough upper body strength to climb the 8 foot walls without assistance from my team. For anyone attempting a Spartan race on a ski resort, I recommend training both the upper and lower body. I ran the DC Sprint on July 26, 2014 and did not have time to train properly for the Virginia Super.

After completing the race, it began raining hard while showering off. The shuttle service back to the parking lot was more irritating than getting to the race. The extremely long line to the shuttle move slower than you could imagine. It wasn't until I was 3/4 of the way to the bus when they started using more buses to get people back to their cars.

Challenging course, challenging parking, challenging shuttle ride

For the second consecutive year, the Virginia Super Spartan was held at Wintergreen Resort in the mountains of central Virginia. To describe this course in word: brutal. The terrain makes you glad to see an obstacle coming up. And there's a stretch of around a mile where you are hiking up a double black diamond ski slope. This is not an easy course by any means.

I'm not sure what the problem was but there were several logistics issues yesterday. It took me nearly an hour to go the last mile to the parking area. There didn't seem to be as many cops as usual directing traffic, so that might have been part of the problem. Then the line for shuttles up to the race area was nearly a quarter mile long - usually shuttles are running like clock work, but there seemed to only be a couple in service when I arrived. Waiting for shuttle was another 40 minutes. Then, to top it all off, there was a car on fire on the road up to the mountain (!) and a shuttle ahead of us got stuck. This wasn't the event organizer's fault, obviously, but it was just one thing after another. Long story short - I was poised to get there an hour and half before my scheduled 11:00 AM start time. Instead, I got to the top of the mountain at 11:35, and ran in the 11:45 heat.

The course was a mess since it had been raining all morning, and it was very foggy toward the top of the mountain. Between the lack of visibility and the state of the terrain, there was very little running - most of the time it was all you could do to stay upright.

Overall, this was a fun race, but the logistical issues surrounding the parking area and the shuttles were a real downer. Usually Spartan races feel very professionally executed, that this just stood out like a sore thumb.

As Usual...

To finish the sentence, this event was outstanding. Spartan organizers threw a few curve balls along the way. What was expected to be a relatively easy, flat course was just that (as far as the eye could see). Once you ventured into the woods, it was a constant up/down some fairly wet and slippery hills. Great job mixing things up for everyone. Obstacles were the typical ones--all good. Only thing I would have liked to see is the cargo net monkey bars. If there is one thing I absolutely hate it is riding the bus from parking. Spartan had this wired. Buses were plentiful (they must have paid extra for the drivers because they were pleasant also!!!) and ran like clockwork. Overall--very well organized, outstanding course design, great job on getting the mud under the wires to just the right consistency. Spartan has never failed to put on a great event. See you at Wintergreen...

Oh yeah--as for the "Elite" heats, I think they should go last instead of first. Would like to see them pull up the sandbag when it is wet and covered with mud. Same goes for traverse wall, rope climb, and well worn wet hills. By the way--all obstacles--zero burpees (first time I actually made the spear stick!!!)

DC Spartan Sprint

After finally deciding to bite the bullet and sign up for my first Spartan Race, I approached the race with a mixture of excitement and pure dread. I had read plenty of reviews about previous Spartan Races and thought I had a good idea of what I was getting myself into. It was all of that and much more. I was somewhat familiar with the course, as I had run a race at Wicomico before. But, the previous race was a 5K. I was not prepared for the 4.5 mile course that the Spartan threw at us. The course map that was provided had your typical mix of obstacles (barbed wire, fire & mud....lots of mud). The obstacles that were listed as classified were ones that I knew meant those would suck, so we tackled each obstacle with vigor. I ended up having to burpee out for 4 obstacles, which wasn't too bad IMO for my first Spartan. There were some heavy lifting obstacles that really tested my upper body strength and plenty of hills that made me appreciate all of the running I had done to train for the race. It took a little while longer than I had anticipated to run the course, but I did complete the race.
The overall layout of the race, the spectator course, the vendors, the festival area, and the overall camaraderie of the race made me wish every race was ran this way. Spartan really knows what they are doing when it comes to managing a race. That race kicked my butt, and I loved every minute of it. I'd like to say I'll do another Spartan in the future, but I'm still pretty sore so we'll see. I will say that this race only solidified my love for the sport even more and look forward to seeing where it goes from here.