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.
OCR Sandy continues his 2014 OCR journey with another double race weekend. I could tell right away, the day was going to be much sunnier and hotter than the previous day in Ohio at OCR World Championships and I knew hydration would be a key for this race. I opted to wear my CamelBak hydration backpack and carried extra GU gels with me. I started the last wave of the day.
The MIAMI Mudders started as a lunch time running group to stay in shape for the Navy’s Physical Fitness Test. All of the members were part of the crew of the USS MIAMI and after a while, the group decided to test ourselves by signing up for a Tough Mudder. The nine guys that competed that challenge were the “original” MIAMI Mudders and a couple of us “caught the OCR bug”. Read about how Bone Frog Challenge really brought the team together.
The final stop on the Spartan Race Triple Crown took place outside of Dallas Texas. This year's race came earlier than last year’s “Winter Wonderland” which was considered by many to be the coldest Spartan of 2013. Spartan split the races up by staging the 13.2 mile Beast on Saturday and the 4.8 mile Sprint on Sunday. Many came out to try to claim a piece of the Triple Crown prizes.
Shortly after my 21st birthday, I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus. This blow was hard to handle as I had been very sick for some time and being diagnosed with both at such a young age was a hard pill to swallow. For the next eight years of my life I became very ill and spent a lot of time at the hospital. Lupus and RA were controlling my life. I had numerous surgeries, blood clots, and a detached retina.
Spartan started with the obstacles right from the get go on this race. After the initial climb, you had a ridiculously long barbed wire crawl through mud and water. It felt like a quarter mile, but the water felt great with the heat. My arms and knees were torn up after this one. The next obstacle was the monkey bars. I gave them a shot, but I couldn't hold on, since the “bars” were more like pipes, and I have tiny hands. So on to the burpees for me.
I ran a Spartan, you jumped over a few things, and you were done. The BattleFrog was way more challenging and exciting. It was more like the grown up course. It copied off of it, except there were smaller obstacles for the kids. The medals we got at the end were really cool. They had a frog with the American flag, and there were a lot of people cheering us when we got to the finish. The volunteers were really nice, and they helped a lot with anybody who needed it.
As I was reflecting and perusing photos from this weekend's Reebok Spartan Race World Championships, I couldn't help but visibly notice the lack of standardization in a race where so much was on the line. Spartan Race, I do sincerely love your events and believe you guys put on some of the most difficult and awesome physical sporting events in the entire world... this is a constructive piece of criticism that I've been distilling with my observations over the past few years with the growth of this company and sport.
Ever since signing up for Wintergreen back around May of this year I have heard little jabs about how tough the course was last year. “Only wish it on your worst enemy,” and things of that nature. No amount of witty banter or raised eyebrows or widened eyes with dropped jaws could have ever prepared or accurately described just how intense this race is. There are those whispers within this community about Spartans being a different breed of OCR and this race turns those whispers into screams.
The use of Trekking Poles has been increasing in the hiking world over the past few years, and is recently becoming more prevalent in Extreme Fitness Racing (Death Races, Catamount Games, etc,), Rucking, and now Obstacle Course Racing. Of course, a “normal” OCR doesn't give much opportunity for Trekking Poles to be of much assistance when you’re mostly running. But in this past weekend’s Virginia Spartan Super held at the Wintergreen Ski Resort, it was recommended that I use a pair to assist in my stability and exertion that would be required with the incredibly steep uphill and downhill grades I’d be facing, and I could expect very little running to actually be possible. Other Obstacle Course Races with hellacious grades to negotiate (like Vermont) might be good opportunities to have Trekking Poles provide assistance.
