obstacle course – Mo's Marketplace

2018 Race Recap #31: Palmerton Spartan Super

No automatic alt text available. — Some foreshadowing here in this picture: I finished and didn’t die. So if you’re still interested in reading more, please continue.

This completes my third Spartan Trifecta in the last three years. Something I considered almost impossible when I started my fitness journey in 2016 has become somewhat routine. Perhaps routine is a little too blasé, but it’s something I’ve come to expect of myself and use to push myself toward more. Of course, it’s also something Spartan uses to push for more sales…but no reason to go down that road. It’s about delivering whats advertised.

Last year, I missed the opportunity for a few Sprints – I’d registered for the Boston Sprint, but couldn’t do it due to injury and finished the trifecta with the Fenway Spartan Sprint. A little weak, frankly. So, it was kind of important to get a little redemption this year. As it turns out, redemption has its own hazards that are outside the scope of this recap.

A Spartan Trifecta is the completion of a Sprint (3-5 miles), a Super (8-10 miles) and a Beast (13+) in the same calendar year. Now, there are specific rules around completing these – can’t do multiple, same day laps and what not – but otherwise reasonably straight forward. So, it turns out a Stadium Sprint (the Fenway Sprint I did in November, while it counted as a Sprint for the Trifecta, was a little more than 2 miles…not really heavy lifting) counts. Not all races classified as Sprint, Super, Beast are equivalent.

My first trifecta in 2016, I ran the Killington Vermont Beast – widely regarded as one of the hardest of the Beasts. (At least according to this list, I’ve done top three of the 5 hardest courses…irrespective of length). Last year and this, I bagged off Killington because I’d done it once and went to Vernon, NJ instead. I’ve done the Super in Barre, MA twice – it’s a cow farm. It’s relatively flat, and frankly almost the distance of the Sprint that’s also held on the farm. An obstacle race of any distance is a challenge, but matched up against the Palmerton Super I did today, it just pales.

The FIT Challenge matches up very well in terms of difficulty — elevation gain, number of obstacles, challenge of obstacles — in fact I’d say it exceeds almost anything Spartan offers, particularly in terms of price. The Multilap FIT Challenge stacks up well against today’s Palmerton Super, but I will say today’s race was the only one I’ve done that I would compare FIT unfavorably against Spartan.

Image may contain: 2 people, people smiling, people standing, outdoor, nature and text — I don’t look as beaten down here as I know I felt. Still shiny and clean, I think it was about here that I took my shirt off because it was disgusting.

There are a couple of reasons for the difficulty of today’s race not attributable to the race itself – I slept terribly, I hydrated terribly this week, the shoes (that I’ve worn for 65 previous miles) were ridiculously narrow (perhaps the heat?) and blistered both my feet, the promised hotel “breakfast” was an urn of coffee and a pre-packaged muffin (“That’s it?” “Yeah – that’s it”). All of those are controllable variables and ones with any sort of attention to detail can be overcome. There are reasons fully attributable to the race that made it more difficult – it’s July vs. April, it took me just a little longer to do 11+ miles at FIT than it did for me to do 9 miles today, FIT was 4100′ of gain, today was 3500′, and burpees. Perhaps it’s just the recency effect, but this felt subjectively more difficult.

I accomplished obstacles I’ve failed previously; I failed obstacles I shouldn’t have. Same story as usual, really. The one I’m most proud of? The goddamned Spear Throw. Seriously. I wrenched my gimpy shoulder earlier and the fact that I could even lift my arm was victory enough. That wrenching came back to bite me elsewhere, but at that point, hitting Spearman was victory enough.

This was definitely a Spartan Race I’m happy to have completed, and to have used to complete a Trifecta. I’ll be happy to not do this race again, however. In fact, after having wrenched my shoulder again – I’ve had difficulty with my rotator cuff for no less than the last 6-years – this may well be my last go at obstacle course racing. I’ll do the Super in Massachusetts again in a month to complete my “unofficial” 2x trifecta (for reasons explained about my second Beast attempt and because of that I set up my second Sprint on the same day as my first — remember, same day multi-laps don’t count — in a remarkable twist of pretzel logic to avoid deep regret), but other than that I may well have raced my last OCR. Which saddens me, I mean it’s OCR that I latched onto as the reason I wanted to get in shape, but I’m really worried that my shoulder may well have to be surgically repaired and if so, it would mark the first time I’ve run into the “at my age” syndrome where “at my age” I can’t really afford the time to rehabilitate. On that note, I guess we’ll see, but as of today I’ve completed a Spartan Trifecta on one of the hardest courses offered, not by literally sliding into home at the friendly confines of Fenway Park.

Results:

Time to finish: 4:21:23

OVERALL 1704/ 5078

M45-49 103/ 314

2018 Race Recap #24: The Great Inflatable Race

Image may contain: 2 people, people smiling, cloud, sky and outdoor — The battle weary warriors set about yet another challenge side-by-side.

I’m just going to say it: it’s a stretch to call this a race at all. It’s the least competitive “race” you’ll see recapped here. Arguably it’s not truly a race at all: “a competition between runners, horses, vehicles, boats, etc., to see which is the fastest in covering a set course.” Early on when I started keeping track of such things I decided I would define a race as more than one person was running and that it met at least two of the following criteria: 1) the event has a given course; 2) the effort was timed; 3) there was a bib or that there was some formal means by which runners are kept track of. THIS “race” barely qualifies this criteria. Basically, it had a course (Kinda. It was loosely cordoned off by cones on one side – Stay to the right of the cones!) and we got finishers medals. They do check you in, but that was more to account for the event T-shirts (of which they were out of my size) and to distribute wave bracelets.

So, the obvious question is: if you’re going to goof on the thing, why did you sign up for it? A solid question indeed. A high-school classmate mentioned he had signed up with his daughters and it looked like a fun time. I recruited my boy, found a Groupon, bought in. Look, worst case scenario was that we’d have a fun time. I’m here to say that mission was accomplished. It was fun.

Image may contain: one or more people, people standing and outdoor — Exhibit 1 in support of the idea that this wasn’t the most competitive race out there.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This was low rent. $27 on Groupon, $27 at the official registration page, but that excluded the registration “fee” tacked on as a percentage of the cost of a ticket – buying a Groupon essentially tells the registration site to “comp” the registration so there’s no fee. It took place on an auto race track site; they hold flea markets and other such things on the grounds. The race itself used the track’s overflow parking area. The inflatables were basically elements from shopping mall parking lot carnivals: not quite fully inflated, perhaps a little suspect. The biggest threat of injury was friction burn from the vinyl inflatables.

Image may contain: one or more people and outdoor

It was a super casual time, but generally organized. They did a pretty good job of keeping the starting wave organized – what could have been a crushing disaster was kept organized and safe. The inflatable obstacles were placed at reasonable distances – there weren’t an over-abundance of them but there were enough. Lines weren’t bunched up and things moved quickly.

It wasn’t quite 2-miles – again, the competitive thing – which was probably a good thing: the temperature was in the mid-to high-70’s with humidity around 85%. The air was pretty thick and saturated with pollen. They could have done a lot more with the festival area – they had an Italian Ice truck.

So, I haven’t described the most appealing event, have I? Here’s the thing: I had a good time with my boy with the added benefit of seeing my old friend. I went in expecting a low-rent, casual, mostly-fun event. It met those expectations.

Image may contain: 3 people, including Christopher Picanso, people smiling, people standing, beard, sky, cloud and outdoor — And there it is – finishers of some of the most bad-ass 2-miles of inflatable fury going.

I don’t have results information, because…well, because. That whole time thing. My watch had it done in about 34 minutes.

2018 Race Recap #22: Boston Spartan Sprint (Open)

Image may contain: 3 people, people smiling, text — Team Mo, rocking the bling at the finish.

Early this week, my daughter texted me and told me that her plans for today had changed and was wondering if there was a race we could do. As it turns out, there was. Of course, I was already registered for the Sprint and was kind of hoping to rip it up, but I would run with her. And then it occurred to me that I didn’t have to make a choice. Since my debacle with the second Beast a couple of weeks back, I really can’t see my way through to getting another one on the calendar (who knows), so my hope of earning a double trifecta this year has been pretty much shot. So since I had a code for a Sprint I decided to just run a second lap: two laps in the same day only count toward the Trifecta once. Groupon had an afternoon entry AND a discount code, so we were able to pick up a couple of late entries for about $60 each – so I got to run with both.

Also of note, since Spartan considers a second lap of the course a separate race – different bib numbers, second full registration fee, second insurance fee, second shirt, medal – I consider it a second race too. A race like FIT Challenge considers multi-laps an add-on so I consider that the same race. That’s the difference between an entity overly focused on profit margin (and not wholly well run either as illustrated below) and a labor of love that’s actually profitable and well regarded (and well run).

As soon as the first race of the day was finished – it began to rain. And hard too. So I took up shelter at the facility’s shooting range and waited for the kids to get there. Which is another story, and since this is my blog, I’ll happily digress and tell you that story.

On Thursday of this week, Spartan announced it was changing up the usual practice of $10 parking and instead would make parking free and charge $5 per person to ride the shuttle. After the backlash on social media about this – that it was contradictory to the idea of carpooling, and/or that folks would simply drop off at the facility and then park – it became clear that it wasn’t going to work out quite the way the race anticipated and on Friday they announced a clarification that what they really meant was that it would be $5 per person to ride the shuttle, with a max of $10 per car. Now all well and good for me – because the kids were showing up later and were riding in together, it was $15 instead of $20.

These guys CRUSHED it, and I’m happy they let me tag along.

However, by the time they arrived for our 12:15 heat, the lot was full and they were now redirected to a secondary lot at a college in the next town over – 15 or 20 minutes away. Now, there was no mention of this lot on the web site and I’m quite sure I received no email about it. So the kids find the new place, and wait. And wait. And wait. Because apparently no one told the shuttle drivers to go there…or how to get there. 5 arrived at once, then another that they got on. Where they would have been 45 minutes early, they now arrived late. Inexcusable logistics problems by a company that runs races all year across the country AND, let’s not forget this was not the first time they’d run this specific race in this venue.

Remember, it’s now been about 2.5 hours since my first race ended. I’ve been steadily rained on for two hours, muscles cooling off, and pretty sure my body had gone into full recovery mode – even if I’d only run 5-odd miles, it was longer than it had taken me to run the first race.

The rain made the already muddy course ridiculously sloppy – more than a few of the obstacles were almost impassable, Olympus was exponentially more difficult than it was in the morning; the slip wall was true to its name. The Sandbag Carry and the Herc Hoist were made more difficult with the water having penetrated the bags. I used the very same station at the Herc Hoist that I had used in the morning and while it’s safe to say fatigue played a part, I’m quite sure it was also much heavier after sitting in the rain. The bucket carry was more difficult due to the course itself – thicker, sloppier mud made slipping quite the hazard.

All of which said, it was awesome to run with these guys. “Team Mo” was an experience I wouldn’t give back at all. Watching them help each other and support each other. Not a thing better than that. On this time around the course, I came up with 5.63 miles and 1375′ of elevation gain.

Results (Open)

1:59:51

OVERALL: 1363/ 4655

MALE: 1028/ 2692

M 45-49: 107/ 272

2018 Race Recap #21: Boston Spartan Sprint

Image may contain: 1 person, smiling, outdoor and closeup — Please like me; I finished and didn’t die.

In all honesty, I’m not thrilled with my first race today. I ran about as well as I could – I’m on the other side of my piriformis issues I think (it flared up not at all today, perhaps a dull ache), but over the last week or so I seem to have developed a compensatory injury in my ankle or perhaps the end of my hammy. I crushed some of the obstacles I had missed at the Beast a couple of weeks ago (Olympus you’re mine now), I failed one I expected to (the Twister, damnit) but actually did better than expected, and I came THIS close to getting across the rig which I actually hadn’t expected to complete. Damn Spearman: always a crapshoot for me with that one.

I finished the Spartan Trifecta last year, but the skin of my teeth – I was injured most of the early summer so I missed the Boston Sprint and completed the set with the Fenway Stadium Sprint – since it’s technically a Sprint, it counts, but it didn’t feel like it – so this was the first mud Sprint I’d done since 2016. It was a good, challenging course. My GPS pulled down a little more than 5-miles so it was on the long end of the Sprint spectrum, but I suspect that’s to make up for the relative lack of elevation gain.

I found the bucket carry to be more challenging than the same obstacle at the Tri State NJ Beast a couple of weeks ago – that one was basically ring around the rosey in a relatively flat spot; this one was up and down through mud, water, and downed trees. Otherwise, the obstacles and the course really wasn’t all that difficult, but then again I’m measuring it against my recent races at the Beast and the FIT Challenge so perhaps I’m not being fair to the course. There was a grouping of upper body obstacles right in a row that was devious and clearly designed to make the course harder than it might appear otherwise – well played.

There was a non-insignificant amount of mud along the trails and it has been a while since I experienced that aspect of the race, so that was a welcome challenge.

Overall I think I acquitted myself well – certainly didn’t crush it as I had hoped I would, but I’m willing to cut myself some slack for injury and some conditioning loss from not being able to run as much. I pushed as hard as I could and I think I gave it my all. I was certainly more careful counting my burpee penalties.

Overall, I was pleased with the Sprint course – it was a challenge but not over the top. My watch clocked in at 5.34 miles and 1100′ of elevation gain. Clearly not my best result, but perhaps that’s just because there were a lot more badass 40-49 year old guys out there today than usual. I’m going to chalk it up to the idea that I’m really just not as competitive as I’d like to believe.

Results Age Group Competitive:

1:40:13

OVERALL: 304/ 409

MALE: 237/ 297

M 40-49: 84/ 104

2018 Race Recap #19: Tri-State NJ Beast

Yup. Day #2. Second one in two days. For a middle aged, marginally fit guy pushing to find his limits, this was an expression of that journey. Guess what? I found the limits. I have to say that of some 130 races over the last 2 and a half years or so, this is the most humbling…no humiliating I have felt.

First the course specifics and details. Sunday clocked in at 14.1 miles – just about a mile shorter than Saturday’s course. I haven’t looked at the maps of both to know if there was actually a mile less or if my watch was inaccurate or what – actually it would be more than a mile less because on Sunday, I missed the spear throw that I made Saturday and had to take a penalty loop. More on penalties later, because they play a substantial role in my story of Sunday. Elevation gain Sunday was up over 5200′ compared with 5000′ Saturday which would definitely be reflected in that spear penalty as it was just straight up…forever…or so it seemed.

I missed obstacles I got on Saturday, I got one Sunday that I had missed Saturday which felt good. The lesson of the day, though, is that Spartan races are more than physical challenges – they’re mental challenges. I pushed through this race, and was physically compromised to be sure, but I did it. My mental acuity though, my mental acuity failed. I failed 3 obstacles with a burpee penalty – 30 burpees and a time penalty. When I crossed the finish line – I actually took some time to pull myself together before jumping over the fire at the finish – I felt like I had crushed the race.

I later found that I had been disqualified. It seems I had failed to complete the requisite 30 burpees on ALL 3 failures. ALL of completing progressively fewer – including the penultimate obstacle on the course – which is the one I apparently didn’t put in the minimum. I KNOW I counted 30, but knowing you counted 30 clearly doesn’t mean you completed 30. So, I failed. And while I finished, and not technically a DNF, I was disqualified. Rules violation and rules are rules. I’m beside myself upset, all that time and effort to blow it on the last one.

At first I was frustrated because I thought it was glitch or misunderstanding at one station. I was firmly convinced of it. Then I was angry. But while I could argue one station, I can’t argue with three. I blew it. Perhaps at some point I’ll be able to look at a bright side, but I don’t see a bright side right now. I’m hurt. I’m angry. I’m humiliated. You’ve got to play by the rules and if you don’t you have to pay the consequences.

Mental exhaustion. Physical exhaustion. Whatever. Fact of the matter is that I pushed my limits and found that I’m not where I thought I am. Perhaps that’s the bright side – knowing how exertion affects my mental acuity will help me down the road. Perhaps. Right now, I just feel defeated. “Disqualified.” Basically says “cheat.”

When I decided to start recapping each race this year, it was an accountability instrument. I wanted to see my progress through the year, and I wanted to see my opportunities to improve. I honestly never thought I would fail or at least fail for these reasons. I thought I was better than that, but now that I know I’m not, I never ever want to be here again. Failing is one thing – its human – but “disqualification,” damn. I never want to feel this way again. In failing I know I’m pushing, growing, becoming better. I’m trying hard to see this in that way. I desperately want to see it that way. That’s all just framing – what matters is what I do with it. The story you tell yourself is irrelevant if you don’t do something to improve from it.

2018 Race Recap #18: Tri-State NJ Beast

Last summer, I had planned to do the Savage Race in Massachusetts, but has to bail due to injury. I traded my deferral code for Savage to a guy for a Spartan code which became this race.

The Beast is the longest and most difficult of Spartan’s three standard race distances: Sprint, Super, and Beast. Once past Beast, you get into the Ultra or Ultra Beast which is generally speaking some variation of the Beast course, and several Hurricane Heats which are a variation of the race. Touted at 13+ miles, 30+ obstacles. My watch totaled 15 some odd miles and, honestly I didn’t count the obstacles. This was my third Beast – my second time here at Vernon – and (I think) my tenth Spartan race and I’ve found over time that it’s a fool’s errand to focus too much on distance traveled or on obstacles completed.

What started out as a raw, overcast day turned into a bright, sunny 70-degree slice of perfection. Not too hot, not too cold. The site is the Mountain Creek Resort, a New York City metro area ski resort. Unrelated to the race itself, while out on the course, there are definitely signs the resort has its troubles. In all honesty, I wasn’t entire sure the complex was actually still operational and the Wikipedia entry kind of explains its current state. Another proximate ski area, Tuxedo Ridge in Tuxedo, NY has also had its financial difficulties and has hosted its share of Spartan Races as well. Its hard to know if the financial difficulties are related to the willingness to host an obstacle course race or if its mere coincidence.

This years Beast seemed less difficult overall. The thing with Spartan is they’re not terribly innovative and they trot out generally the same obstacles year over year. This race seemed much more of a trail race through the hiking trails of the resort and less the mountain slog that I’ve seen at Killington (oh dear God, the quads!!) and to a lesser degree here last year. There was some mountain climbing but it wasn’t the gratuitous “we’re making you climb this because we can” sort of climb.

I was running with a first time Beast participant and it was a challenging race for her, so I don’t want to discount the level of difficulty involved, its just that it seemed like an easier course over last year. I’ll be taking another stab at it in a few hours so we’ll see how my experience Saturday affects my performance Sunday.

Image may contain: 3 people, including Alex Alexandrowicz, people smiling, people standing and outdoor — My usual Beast race buddy and my first time runner.

I had been really nervous about how my butt injury would hold up, but it held up pretty well – no major discomfort at all, perhaps a few twings here and there but overall nothing that would hold me up. I was able to hit several obstacles I didn’t think I would which was a bit of a minor victory – any time you can avoid burpees is a good time – and for the most part even the ones I failed limited the burpees with an additional course trail instead. (Innovation!!!)

Spartan did a little something new with the Ultra Beast course this year, by adding a 3 mile addition to the first loop of the course. This really seemed to mess up a lot of the folks we encountered along the way and it would appear a good number of them missed the course cut off to continue. More than a couple were complaining about the hellish trail in that 3-miles. I have no way of knowing, but perhaps that was some of the more difficult trail the Beast course was lacking.

The obstacles seemed to be more standard than they have been in the past: the buckets at the bucket carry were prefilled, the farmer’s log “logs” were concrete atlas stones with handles built into them instead of actual, you know, logs. The sandbag carry was far more difficult than I remember it being in the past – large wreck bags instead of the sand filled pancakes that had been the obstacle – and the Herc Hoist seemed far more heavy than I remember it being, although several days of rain previous to race day may have helped both of those items become more heavy than anticipated.

I clocked 15.1 miles and just over 5000′ of elevation gain.

Overall, not my best time ever – I ran the Men’s elite heat (well, kinda – since my friend isn’t a male, she couldn’t run in the men’s elite heat so I delayed my start) and finished last in my age group and something like 3 slots off last for the heat. Overall though, according to Athlinks, I finished solidly in the middle as I usually do. I finished about 7 minutes slower than last year – we’ll see how I do Day 2 after having experienced the course.

Spartan Beast

Tri-State NJ 2018 6:09:12
Tri-State NJ 2017 6:02:24
Vermont Beast 2016 8:37:50

2018 Race Recap #16: F.I.T. Challenge

What can I say about this race? What I’ve come to find about small and/or local obstacle course races is that they’re generally low-rent, or just poorly executed. There are some that are well considered and crafted with love, but just aren’t challenging.

The Wason Pond Pounder (Chester, NH) for instance, is lovingly crafted, and well done. The non-profit that runs the race, gives as much back to the community as they can without compromising the quality of the race. It’s a family oriented race, and a lot of people spend a lot of time planning it. But, it’s just not all that challenging – it’s not designed to be.

Similarly, The Samurai Sprint (Westport, MA) is a fun course and is well executed, but it’s “fun.” There were some elements to it last year that I found challenging, but overall it wasn’t designed to be anything more than fun.

The FIT Challenge, though. This is a challenge. It’s tough. The course is approximately 5k distance (plus or minus…well, plus), its 30-odd obstacles will test your meddle, oh and there’s the small matter of about 1400′ in elevation gain. That doesn’t do it for you? Ok, well, you can do multiple laps for $10 more. Its probably the only smaller, local race that should be considered in the same conversation with Bone Frog or Spartan – to this point: who was at the starting line today? Norm Koch. The designer behind the early Spartan Races.

F.I.T. is a acronym. Fortitude. Integrity. Toughness. The race doesn’t demand you complete an obstacle under penalty of burpee, only that you give it a good faith effort. No mud for mud’s sake. Fortitude to take on a very difficult challenge. And of course, the Toughness to keep going when you’d rather not.

It plays out thusly. 30 obstacles. In 3.5 or-so miles. Let that sink in. Essentially, if you’re not climbing s trail (remember – 1400′ of elevation gain), you’re climbing a wall…or a rope…or a peg board… you get the picture. Suffice to say, I’m a fan on FIT Challenge.

This year I was determined to get- in 5 laps. It wasn’t long into my first lap that I realized that 5 wasn’t going to happen today. Robb, the race director, was very clear in his communications out that multi-lappers could assert a limited right of way, but I felt like such a dink asking to go ahead that I didn’t ask. That’s on me. Now, the one criticism I have is that there are some difficult obstacles that require a reasonable time commitment…and on a short course, with multiple waves (no matter how hard you try to space them out) you’re going to get a log jam. So, if you’re really going for time, you can get frustrated.

It was about 3/4 of the way through my second lap that I knew 4 would be a stretch. I was really fatiguing from climbing and was really starting to fail obstacles as a result. By the time I finished lap 2 I held out some hope I could get 4 in, but about a mile into lap 3 I knew that it would be my last one. I was failing obstacles I had done easily on my first go around, and struggled through on my second.

These things are placed rather deliberately to be challenging. Upper body, followed by a log carry, over to a rope climb, to a peg board…

There was a 5-hour cut off for multi-laps. Meaning that you had to start your last lap before 5 hours expired. In this case, I finished my 3rd lap with about 30-minutes left – I COULD have gone for 4…could have except I’d have wound up pissing everyone off because I’d fail everything and would probably be a menace to myself on those pretty technical trails.

No automatic alt text available. One of the frills of the FIT Challenge is the swag. A shirt, a head buff, finishers’ medal with pins for each lap complete, and if you do three or more laps you earn a block that Robb makes by hand. The rarer ones are, of course, nicer. Those “5” Lap blocks are pretty spectacular. My “3” block…less so. But – going back to the beginning here, where I talk about being crafted with love – they’re each unique, put together by hand by a guy that really cares about the product.

There were some obstacles that broke mid course (sand bag hoist) and I’m pretty sure that can happen at any event. Frankly with the abundance of other obstacles, it was nice to take a pass on that one. Last year one of the floating walls was out of commission for a bit, which caused a significant back up on the lone remaining one. The thing is with a short course, and a relatively small race (there were about 900 participants today, as compared with the several thousand that go through a Spartan Sprint), there are only a couple of stations for each obstacle (I think there may have been 3 sand bag hoists) and when one or two get 86’d the entire obstacle goes down and given the ethos of the race, obstacles are tough. So it takes a while to complete them…which causes lines…

I hate to suggest taking obstacles out – FIT has some ridiculously innovative ones and I love that he reinvests into the product – but some could be reconsidered. Lines at the inverted cargo net get pretty long. This is so clearly a labor of love, that I think I’d rather suggest making the course even longer and perhaps placing those time consuming obstacles at the top of a hefty climb to keep the group thin, but consistent. Or spread the waves out even more. Hard to say; I’m pretty sure it’s a work in progress and there are worse things to be vexed by.

So, results? Pretty much par for the course. 50 percentile.

Results

Multi-Lap:
2018: 63/126, 4:30:07
2017: 128/161, 5:06:38

Single Lap:
2016: 619/983 1:58:20

An improvement over last year on a more challenging incarnation of the course, and I feel better than I did last year afterward.

2018 Race Recap #5: Blizzard Blast

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.

Image may contain: 2 people, people smiling, child, outdoor and closeup — No Offseason!

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.

28 Days of Inspiration – Day 15

Rucksgiving and the New England Spahtens

Over the past year, I made a commitment to myself that I was going to run 50 Obstacle Races by age 50…which then morphed into 46 Races in 2016 for my 46 years…which has again morphed into getting as many done this year as I can. As part of this evolution, I’ve connected with some wonderful people along the way, see here Joel Chavez the man representing Day 3 of the 28 Days.

One group which which I’ve connected is the New England Spahtens, a local obstacle course racing (OCR) enthusiasts team that has over time morphed (not unlike my race list, nor would that be coincidental to my own list) into other races, fitness activities, and social events. After all, it’s a team, right?

OCR is an interesting community. It’s designed as an individual challenge, but we’re social animals and want to engage these pursuits with other similarly minded folk. I’ve noticed several “teams” of this kind in various places: joining is optional, there are no membership fees, no one gets cut, be as active or passive as you want. If you want to register for a race, but the team hasn’t been formed, form it. You can confidentially register for a race, join/create the team and you’ll have the support of others even if you don’t know them. They’re there to support you, perhaps help you over an obstacle with the sole purpose of sharing the sport and making it accessible to as many as who want to join.

For the past two years, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the Spahtens marshal as many volunteers as they can, loaded with donations and carry ruck sacks stuffed with the gear around a route through Boston to carry donations to the less fortunate. This isn’t an administratively heavy endeavor (read the blog post, linked to here – this is a general call to arms, some pre-planning, and general strategy on the fly). There are no news crews covering the story, no administrative costs. Just teams of people caring for others, while living the purpose of the group – health and fitness. It’s a marriage of the mission and vision of healthy activity, and supporting others. And it’s ridiculously inspirational.