BattleFrog Series returned to ESPN at the end of this month for the second season of the BattleFrog College Championships. The series builds off of last season with 64 athletes from 16 colleges battling it out to claim the top prize. The show is set to air on June 30, July 1, and July 2 on ESPN at 8pm ET, June 30 - July 2 on ESPN U at 10pm ET, and July 6 on ESPN 2 at 7-9pm ET.
While the OCR calendar kept it light for the Memorial Day weekend, knowing many of you would be favoring family time on this Memorial Day Weekend, a couple of our favorites did not want to leave you all in withdrawals and came to save the day, with mud and fun before they let everyone go about their business. Many of you did indulge in other ways, however, be it at home doing a Memorial Day Murph WOD, or hitting the trails doing a ruck in remembrance of those we have lost. It was inspiring to see so many posts from so many people, getting in hard work, while giving tribute to our fallen military family.
I recently attended BattleFrog Kansas City and much to my surprise I saw a familiar face on the starting line. Team Cellucor Athlete Eric Jenkins the 100x+ Tough Mudder Century veteran was there standing next to me getting ready for his first BattleFrog. “Are you lost?” I said, “Shouldn’t you have a Tough Mudder this weekend?” He responded with a “No, I actually only have one Tough Mudder on my schedule this year....but I have seven BFX events.”
Obstacle Course Racing in North America was born just seven years ago. Exploding onto the sports and fitness scene in an unprecedented way. Becoming even more popular than marathons by 2014. This in itself was a huge change from the previous sports norms, and people are still writing epic volumes trying to explain why. So it really shouldn't come as any great surprise that Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) has been evolving continuously ever since.
Race companies cannot control everything but they can control some things like parking, site layout, obstacles, lines at registration, timing of the event, and festival. The one major one they cannot control is the weather. The weather wreaks havoc on the course which may have taken weeks to assemble but can be destroyed overnight. This was the case with BattleFrog Kansas City. A wicked storm crushed the course, raising streams and making some obstacles almost impossible.
If there was ever any doubt that the obstacle racing season was in full swing this weekend with over 50 races around the world happening at the same time put all doubts to rest. Both Spartan Race and Tough Mudder were in three different locations over the weekend as well as all the other major American series racing around the country. Internationally, XMan Race Series was in Toronto, Toughest in Sweden, Rat Race Dirty Weekend in the United Kingdom and more. Mother's Day Weekend did not stop many of the top athletes around the world from toeing the line. We bring you some of the highlights from the weekend in this week's Last Week in OCR.
This is a case of BattleFrog putting their money where their brand is. No, I don't mean that muscular frog with stubble and an attitude, I mean the whole “bands over burpees” thing. The “O” in “OCR” does not stand for “optional”, as most purists would point out. I could not agree more (especially since I just came up with that catchy saying), and I imagine that most elite and seriously competitive racers would agree.
BattleFrog continued their action packed 2016 with a regional qualifying event in Charlotte, North Carolina on April 23rd. On par with BattleFrog standard, they came through with a memorable experience for competitors of all levels.
This weekend was my first obstacle race of the 2016 season and I decided to start it with a bang at Battle Frog Greater Kansas City which was actually held in Topeka, KS… Don’t get me started on this practice by obstacle racing companies of naming a race location by its closest major metropolitan area and not the city/ state in which it’s actually located, but I digress. I have been training long and hard on obstacles since my last Battle Frog event and was looking forward to testing my metal after all this training.
I am just an average guy born and raised from a small town in Wisconsin. I have always loved to play sports and be part of a team. The most important things to me are my faith, family, and friends. I am somewhat new to this OCR community but have enjoyed it thus far and looking forward to continuing to meet new people! Oh yeah and one more thing I have lost over 200 pounds in the last two years!
