It’s rather hard to believe that BattleFrog’s first race ever was staged in Atlanta less than six months ago. This was only their sixth Event, yet they already have a level of professionalism that rivals other race series that have been doing this for years.
The course had your typical Sprint obstacles: monkey bars, Herculean hoist, rope climb, water jug carry, cargo net climb, sandbag carry, spear throw, a new version of the traverse wall, and the atlas stone carry. It also included some obstacles I think are unique to the stadium Sprints, such as a heavy rope jump rope, slam balls, pushups (in the visitors' locker room), box jumps, and a hanging punching bags obstacle.
The course offered two options, a 3.5 mile course and a 1.5 mile course. I decided to run the 3.5 mile version. I was impressed to see how many of the families opted to take the 3.5 mile version with younger children and it was funny to watch the parents trying to keep up with the little kids that were running full speed and not slowing down.
Thank you Sir, may I have another? This statement referring to the downed trees crossing the course, and I mean LOTS of downed trees. Swampfoot 4 mile is an event held on a full-time farm, with most of the obstacles remaining on the grounds throughout the year.
The course started out with trail running for what seemed to be about a mile and I then came to the first obstacle of the course, Shriveled Richard. This was my second Savage Race and I recalled the Pennsylvania race also started with this same obstacle, but that was in June on a very nice sunny day and this time it was cold!
The course was both amazing and brutal and beat me up but I was glad I went. It’s not often that I have completed a course and felt like I did after Shale Hill, if you can dominate the Shale Hill course, then you can probably conquer almost any other OCR course in America! The course is the best I have run to date.
Charity Fick shares her and her husbands experience this past summer at the Dirty Dash in British Columbia, Canada. Find out if their superman and superwoman costumes game them superhuman skills on the obstacles.
Rugged Maniac returned to the Georgia International Horse Park to bring their 5k to one of the most OCR-friendly venues near Atlanta, willing and ready to change the minds of some people who thought their course from the previous year left low expectations compared to other major companies in the industry. I can honestly admit I was one of those people after racing last year, with my best description as “It was alright” this year that changed.
This was my second Tough Mudder so I was very excited to know I would be able to take the Legionnaires loop this time and do the "Fire In Your Hole” obstacle. As I dressed in the parking lot, I was pretty impressed to see the large turnout for a Sunday, the second day of the event.
This being my first Merrell Down & Dirty Race, I was not sure what to expect when it came to turn out so I was pretty impressed right from the start. It was sunny, but a little cold with a brisk wind, yet the turnout was well in the thousands. I made my way over to the event area and checked in with registration within minutes. I surveyed the event and saw participants of all ages and gender, Merrell Down & Dirty clearly has built a fan base that covers just about everyone.
