Danny Cheung penned this review below of the 5K Terrain Race outside of Dallas from this last weekend. He and his fiance Lynnae Kettler went to check out the event. Here is what he had to say.
Terrain Race Dallas was an excellent race to kick off our OCR racing season after taking the first two months of 2016 off. The race was held at Village Creek Motorcross in Fort Worth, TX and they offer both a 5K and 10K distance with competitive waves in both distances. We chose the 5K race. I was a bit apprehensive about the race being held on a motocross site because I envisioned endless loops on a dirt course up impossibly steep climbs and barreling down the ensuing declines. Fortunately, that was not the case, and the sections on the motocross course were extremely limited, and there was a decent dose of trail running.
Lynnae and I arrived at 7:00 AM and temperatures were still quite brisk at roughly 50 degrees with the occasional wind that would make you question shedding any layers. On top of that, while shivering and trying to warm up, we learned that the start of the race was to begin in two large pools filled with water. We were dreading a “Shriveled Richard” situation, but there were no ice cubes and the water was only mildly cool to the touch. Thankfully, by race start time it had warmed up significantly and standing in the water with all the other male competitive racers wasn’t so bad.
We get out of the creek for a short dose of running before being met with the tire flip obstacle. Standard two flips forward two flips back, and we were on our way. After a short run, we entered another section of the creek for another quarter mile trudge/run in the ice-cold water and emerged to run into the first somewhat challenging obstacle, the monkey bars. The volunteer staffing the monkey bars was also tasked with guiding the sandbag carry obstacle, and could not effectively monitor successful completion at what I would deem the first obstacle with the potential to claim “competitive wristbands.” I did manage to get across it with only a minor slip. The wreck bag carry was next, which was both graciously light at 25 lbs and short. The only minor challenge was taking your wreckbag through a tube set on an incline in water.
Directly after the split, it was a short balance beam up to a cargo net obstacle where you had to get across a floppy cargo net and then slide down a pole. This was where I encountered a bunch of dejected 5K racers staring and cursing at the obstacle that stood before us. This was Terrain Race’s version of the rig, which was a rock climbing grip traverse transitioning into “cannonball alley” (think Skull Valley in OCR Warrior with climbing grips and small and medium balls instead of skulls), set over a large pool of water. Failure means you get wet and cold, making subsequent attempts a little harder. There were one conical grip and six ball grips in the 3-ball section, set apart at a distance where you could potentially skip one if you got a good enough swing. I failed the obstacle and stuck around to try additional times. As I stood there, I watched this obstacle claim many competitive wave wristbands. For the girls, only the first place finishers, Jackie Rust in the 10K heat and Lynnae Kettler in the 5K heat were able to successfully complete this obstacle. Fortunately, as the morning wore on, the race director called a run-off for the remaining 10K competitive girls. They only had to complete the rock climbing grip section, drop in the water, climb out and race the rest of the course. At this point, with my hands sore, and arms tired, I gave the obstacle my 6th and final attempt before giving up and running the rest of the course.
There was two things I wished for, which was a few more obstacles and less or shorter creek crossings. Selecting the 5K race, I was expecting faster running but the creek was about a quarter of the race at that distance. We had a fun day and Terrain Racing’s finisher medals were awesome (the angry monkey spins)!
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