It's one week before the first obstacle race of the season, I check the weather and UGH, it's gonna be cold and damp! Welcome to racing in Canada. We are the only country it seems where we can go from frost bite to sunburn in one day. We load the car and head off to the Hamilton/Niagara region, about a 4 hour drive.
The Dirty Dash racing series recently brought their 5k fun run to the New England area for the first time. Leading up to the event, a few other national races of similar ilk had fallen on tough times. The female only Dirty Girl race series, which held 50 events last year, cut that number in half for this year and recently cancelled a few upcoming races. The 5k Foam Fest that was affiliated with the same company as Dirty Dash also announced that they were closing its doors. This led to speculation on social media that the Dirty Dash race was in jeopardy. However, about a week before the scheduled event, we received an email with race logistics which quelled some of the fears.
In order to be eligible, racers must kick off their Triple Crown challenge by competing in the Killington, VT, Reebok Spartan World Championship, September 20, 2014, and finish with the first-ever Team Championship in Dallas, Texas, November 1, 2014. Competitors must round out their Triple Crown by competing in either the South Carolina Reebok Spartan Race Beast, or the Sacramento Reebok Spartan Race Super, both on October 25, 2014.
“Tough Mudder participants have been sharing their photos in record numbers on social media,” said Gameface Media CEO David Lavallee. “For brands like MET-Rx, this engagement allows participants to promote their involvement with the brand in a very authentic and legitimate way. They sample terrific MET-Rx products at the event and then extend their engagement with the brand on social media once they get home.”
Off to Tweed, Ontario we go. The location for the Doomsday Race was at the Trudeau's Park Resort about 20 minutes north of Napanee on Stoco Lake. This is a beautiful setting with a breeze coming off the water to keep racers cool. I had spoken with the Race Director a few weeks prior and he had some concerns with the amount of rain that they had been having, but he felt that they could accommodate the racers but may need to change some of the parking areas.
CTG is put on by Mainprize Industries LLC, a family company. David Mainprize and his brother Stephen, with his wife Courtney are incredible people. Their goal is to create an energetic, community atmosphere while still providing an extreme, intense, and competitive race. You get what you pay for and more.
The Samurai Sprint Mud Run recently held their inaugural event in New England. The local race boasts a combination of outdoor elements and challenging obstacles spread over a 5k course. In an attempt to appeal to runners of all abilities, they also offered a relay race option in which teams compete together in the running aspect of the race, while a few select team members tackle the more demanding obstacles. With the ever growing popularity of the sport, it is becoming more and more difficult for new races to establish a presence.
“What the Hell am I doing here?” I thought to myself as I stood in a pack of about 40 men and women in the Elite heat of the BattleFrog Race in WV. My only previous OCR experience had been almost a year earlier at the Super Spartan in VA. Despite running in the Open heat, I’d put up a pretty competitive time which gave me some confidence heading into the BattleFrog race; however, my confidence began to fade once I arrived.
Mud Ninja is a small, local race that offers just about everything that the “Big Boys” of OCRs have to offer without the exorbitant prices and huge crowds that can make running in national races a bit of a headache at times.
The course was 3.2 miles long and only had 12 obstacles. All in all that's a decent obstacle to distance ratio. However, the layout made it worse because of the way the obstacles were bunched together. Half of the obstacles were bunched on top of each other over the last 300 yards of the course and these were the best obstacles. More on that in a minute.
