5K Foam Fest obstacle races, mud run, and OCR information, distance, cost, dates, calendar, discounts, obstacles, reviews, and more

This is an archive of the original 5K Foam Fest from 2010-2014. The event is now under completely new ownership: see this article for details. You can find the upcoming events for the new 5K Foam Fest series on this page

It’s time to get filthy clean with the 5k Foam Fest! Built for both the hardcore athlete and the beginner alike, this race is full of fun surprises that will foam your socks off! Picture colossal mud pits, cargo net climbs, and army crawls – then picture giant inflatable obstacles filled to the brim with white, fluffy foam! Feel like you’re a kid again as you run through the mud and bounce through the Moon Walk. Then prove you’re a grown up as you tackle the Death Drop – a 3 story tall inflatable slide! Think you’ve got what it takes? Then sign up already and get ready to feel the foam!




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Upcoming 5K Foam Fest Events


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5K Foam Fest News & Featured Reviews

5K Foam Fest Reviews from the Community

Average rating: 3.47 / 5 from 51 reviews.

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OTTAWA FOAM FEST INJURIES

Jun 24, 2013 by Julaine DeMonte
Event Name: Ottawa Foam Fest Illinois 

HORRIBLE! 5K foam Fests should take less than an hour - 1-1/4 hours and just over a mile into the race, because the conditions were so poor it was walking/sliding the whole time, my husband twisted his leg and dislocated his ankle, and broke his tibia and fibula. He had surgery and a metal plate and 9 screws put in! The management of this race were negligent!!!!! When he arrived at this hospital we were advised that on Saturday at least 6 people were brought in with broken bones. They still held the race on Sunday! My husband was the second person brought in and three more were brought in after him!!!!! Really!?!?!? The "mud" was not controlled as in the other races he participated in. Parking was horrific...they charged you to park AND to get towed out of the mud! Even tho you sign a release it does not give them the right to be negligent! Sure injuries will occur, but not in those numbers over two days and that is only what we know about!


FoamFest is very poorly organized

Jun 20, 2013 by James
Event Name: Pittsburgh 

The Pittsburgh FoamFest 2013 was done by a bunch of amateurs. The layout of the course was horrible. It created such bottlenecks that it took us 2 hours and 15 minutes to complete the 5k AND we SKIPPED 3 obstacles. It would have been a 3+ hour race. The location of the obstacles (next to a tree with posion ivy just hanging like a cyprus tree or on a path 6' wide) and half of the inflatable obstacles were not in operation made a very long day. Furthermore, NO BEER at the end...WTF?!


Long but honestly know what your going to get into!

Jun 03, 2013 by Elly

First let me say I would give the event volunteers 3 stays because of the amazing team of people that helped dig out cars after the storm (not sure if they were from the event or the ATV park). Yes it rained something fierce for about a half hour (the weather was 30% chance of rain), and the lot filled up rather quickly, and cars were getting stuck left and right!!! HOWEVER, I don't know who James ran into (or what time), but they were not charging people to tow you out not at 2pm when I got dug out and not at 5pm when my friend got dug out. They have ATVs and Tractors out there pulling people, pushing people and just trying their best to get you out of the lot!! My husband was there an hour after we were still helping push and get cars out (he took his motorcycle so he hung out to help). They did not charge a single dime to do this!! Which I thought was amazing, and they did not complain about it even though many people were quite B- itchy about it ... People were going around letting you know that they will get to you just hold tight and not spin your tires. They did their best to make things right!! But since this is not about them, but the event, lets review the event.

1 star only because the bouncy house at the end was fun, and the death drop was terrifying:

Event registration and parking was easy, yes they charged you $5, but either way it's an event who cares, we were parked about 5 ft from registration just over the fence (yes we had to walk around) a lot less than the 3/4 mile people were saying. We were registered and waiting for the rest of our group to get there. The only thing that annoyed me is they made my husband park his bike in the muck, then when we walked up, saw they let other bikes park on the gravel behind the event.

There was not much to do but stand there and twiddle your thumbs, no tables or chairs for you or spectators to hang out. There was 1 food booth with overpriced food and drinks, and that was it. We were there an hour before our race expecting long lines for registration. The gear tent to purchase stuff was crazy, unorganized, and slow, so we wound up waiting until after the race, and there were no gray XL sweaters left!! I was very aggravated at this, because I was in the Saturday 1200 race, so they had an ENTIRE DAY TO GO and they had no Gray Sweaters in an XL left. They wanted me to pay $30 for a $10 zip up blue hoodie with the words 5K foam fest in white on the pocket. SERIOUSLY?!? – GTFO!

The race waves were small, I would say maybe 50 people so it was not a horrible start, the start line had a Foam Machine above you which we wound up getting some neat pictures. END FOAM HERE… then on it was all MUD, and HORSE CRAP! Literally we saw horse crap on the trail, and it smelled like it from the get go, our first mile was NOTHING but mud, trenches of mud, which when you walked in were very uneven and your wound up slipping down chest deep into mud and horse crap.. It was DISGUSTING! There was pretty much NO RUNNING (which I’m not complaining about really), because there was so much mud, and so many trenches of mud to climb through. And there were about 5 huge hills, of which only 1 that I can think of had a rope to assist you. My hands and legs are all cut up from falling on branches, rocks and grabbing a hold of things to help myself up the hill.

After climbing through mud, more mud, horse crap and more mud after crossing the first mile (which it seemed at that point was more like 2 miles) you came to a water check which they gave you yellow water to drink. Then you climbed through more mud and stood in line for 20 minutes to climb the cargo net (6 people at a time made it a long day). Ok fine… 20 minutes later you’re off to your second mile in nothing but mud.

To fast forward, Bouncy House #1 was down, Ball House was kewl (finally foam!), Slip n slide was stupid, you could neither slip or slide, or find any hint of foam here after a 10 minute wait.. we wound up walking across to a mud infected pool of water at the end, lots more mud, tires to climb over, the lily pad was STUPID, they took a big bouncy house filled it with water, added the leap pad which made it impossible to get out of because they bungeed the leap pad to the center! .. Seriously! Again in a pool of infected mud bacteria water. The 8ft walls (no 5ft here) had another 20 minute line, which I wind up bypassing because I was hoping to see 5ft walls and conquer those only to find the 5ft walls absent from the course. Still waited out for my friends who gave the 8ft wall an attempt, but they were so muddy it was impossible to get over, many people gave up by the third wall anyway. There was no rope, and if your shoes had any real sole on them, you could not get your feet in the slots.

Finally a bouncy house with FOAM!!! I was so excited about this part but it was short lived, and finally you got a decent stretch of non horse filled mud trail that you could actually run to, up the slides. Now when we got there was an hour wait for the slides, luckily by the time we finished the course and it was our turn there was no wait, now this could have been because the wind was kicking up and people were not keen in going up, but we went up anyways and slid into another pool full of infested bacterial water. Finish line was another slip n slide without the slip or slid, OR FOAM, and the pool at the end barely had any water in it at all (thank goodness you didn’t slip into it, or you would have a head concussion!)

All in all I would save my $50 and do Warrior Dash, or a fun Color Run, because this is NOT what they advertise, FoamLess Horse Crap Run is more like it. I will be doing Warrior Dash for the second year in a row and I probably will have less mud on me, and hurt less the days after.

Luckily the girls I was with made this fun, otherwise I would have been just an annoyed, horse crapped filled quitter, cuz I think I would of short cutted out of there.


More Like a Mud Walk

Jun 03, 2013 by James

If I could rate this less than 1 star I would. This is supposed to be a foam run. There was 99% mud and 1% foam with guys holding bubble wands that literally just dribbled bubbles out at a few ocstacles. The course was 99% walk and 1% run due to the mud and the fact that there were huge waits at obstacles. Terrible. Worse, they charge $5 to park you in a muddy field where almost all vehicles got stuck, and then they charge $95 to tow you out. This was a shameful event and terrible event management.


Lots of fun in this Mud (foam) Run

Jun 02, 2013 by HK

I am not a runner although I did train a bit to be ready to run for this one. I can't say I was disappointed to find out there was really no running in this one though. (Remember, I'm not a runner so I wasn't disappointed). Our course was VERY muddy. There were 3 types of mud slippery mud covering the ground, wet cement consistency mud, and all out muddy pools of mud. All were fun, but watch out for those sudden drops when you think you're walking into a puddle and find yourself boob-high in mud. Either way you really can't run through any of these, and some obstacles had some lengthy lines. Though I think our lines were much shorter than what others experienced during the earlier sold-out waves.
The course was slightly different than the course laid out online, but I assume that was to compensate for the terrain and actual lay-out of our location. Some inflatables were down and we never did see the 5-foot climbing walls either. No biggie, the remaining ones were great fun. However, there was very little foam on most of the obstacles. The slipNslides weren't very slippery, in fact you really just crawled through them.
Overall, I thought it was a lot of fun. We got messy, we did some fun obstacles and I even made down some scary ones. I'd probably do it again. I only knocked one star off for missing some obstacles and for the lack of foam for the "Foam Fest".


Orlando/Kissimme 5K FoamFest

Apr 01, 2013 by Dre

Worst obstacle event I have ever taken part of. The obstacles were a joke. It was over a mile to the first one. There was no mud. It was a 45 minute wait at the slide. Even the packet pickup was extremely slow. They would not sell beer to spectators and you received 1 free one at the end of the race. You had no option to purchase a second. Also the race is not close to Orlando or even Kissimmee. It is in St.Cloud in the middle of nowhere. I cannot recommend the race to anyone for the price.


Potential to be great

Mar 18, 2013 by Jeff

This foam fest was my first ever obstacle mud run and I had a blast with my group of friends that came along! However, the obstacles left a lot to be desired. Especially the foam ones! Most of them had very little interaction or challenge. The giant slide was fun, but lost many points due to the 30 minute line before hand. The long slip and slide was also fun, but the short one didn't have enough water on it. Imagine sliding on a dry piece of plastic for 30 feet. My favorite two obstacles were the electric mud crawl and the aqua lily pads(which should have been twice as far). Those were what I was looking for! The 5 and 8 foot walls were a complete joke as they were gaps between each board for one to easily easily walk up it. It felt like there was a lot more running than obstacles, especially at the beginning. For $75, the obstacles need A LOT of work. All of the staff at the event was very friendly and the showers were incredible at the end of the race. I was surprised they were using bottles of beer instead of a keg when handing out thousands of freebies after the race was over. Seems a bit wasteful, but didn't detract from my opinion of the race overall. If you are looking to dress up in a costume, walk 3 miles and get a little muddy, this may be the event for you. Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to love this race, I'm going to have to look elsewhere.


Mar 17, 2013 by Matthew

Great ! Fun Time for the family.


Mar 17, 2013 by Cindy

Awesome !!!! So much fun!! Lots of mud, great obstacles. My family had a blast! There was a huge line up of showers in the dressing room.


Feb 17, 2013 by Joe

I was not impressed with the 5k Foam Fest in Orlando, FL 5k Foam Fest event yesterday.
1) not enough obstacles
2) NO MUD
3) 1 1/2 miles before the first obstacle
4) not enough suds on the few obstacles that were there
5) long lines at the few obstacles
6) NO SHOWERS!!!! The shower sign was infront of a square of PVC pipes that were spraying water 12" into the air. I guess if you wanted to shower your toes off it would work..... I can't believe that you guys wasted the gas filling up the water pump every 45 minutes.

Can I please get my money back?


The Ultimate Mud Run, Obstacle Race and Adventure Race Guide , USA 3.5 5.0 51 51 Such a great experience and it’s so fun to push yourself over the creative and challenging obstacles !!!