Blizzard Blast is a winter themed 5k(ish) obstacle course race, “No Offseason.” Winter themed and also happily, winter run. Obstacles include the Christmas Tree carry and Christmas light crawl. There’s a heavy emphasis on beer kegs – monkey bars, carries – and the named sponsor is Shock Top beer, so it’s hard to know which came first although I did note that “Anheuser Busch” was stamped on most (if not all) of the barrels.
Some obstacles are expected – what would an obstacle course race be without wall climbs, for example – but some were novel: there was a paintball target, and a saucer-sled element. The course also made use of elements within the park where it was held. Overall, I’m glad I finally did this race, but I’m pretty sure I won’t do it again; it was great to get out and do an OCR this early in the year, but it was a little more low-rent than I would have hoped and not quite as challenging as it could be. If I do it again, I’d have to do the multi-lap option to increase the challenge.
There were plenty of shuttles from the parking to registration and to the course, and I know I’m going to sound like a curmudgeon here, but I just really hated the logistics of parking at the Cawley Stadium, taking a bus a few miles down the road to register/bib-pickup and then get on another bus to head back off in the other direction to the event…and to repeat that at the end. Fine, I get that there’s no parking at the park and I’m used to shuttles, but four rides is just a bit much.
Now, about the experience of running the race. Running with my son, we didn’t really push too hard with running but he did challenge himself on the obstacles. This was more about the time together and much less about the overall competition, but it was really good to see him exert himself. He grabbed a pretty heavy tree for the tree carry, attempted every obstacle and finished most of them. The only one that I truly had an issue with was the keg kingdom, aka monkey bars with hanging beer kegs. I got two swings into it and for whatever reason decided that it wasn’t going to happen today; I’m not entirely sure what was in my head there.
Overall we did have fun, and we came across the finish line together. A very nice bonding time. We finished 1:22:18 – right about middle of the pack.
1:22:18 A little overcast, about 45-degrees.
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