"Why the #$%* would anyone pay money and sign a 'death waiver' only to be scared, uncomfortable, frozen, shocked, bumped & bruised, battered and broken?" In other words, WTF is wrong with all these people?
Running became a passion of mine "later" in life, I didn't run my first mile until I was in my early 30's, my first 5k in 2002 or so. Over the years I've fallen in love with running dozens of different times in various forms; trails, roads, obstacle course races, ultras, stage races, cross-country relays, etc. I've even fallen prey to the running demons that often plague us all; overuse, injury, self-doubt, DNF's, failures in all shapes and sizes. I've cared way too much about certain runs that didn't matter and dismissed some very valuable ones as unimportant; A races that I'd spent months training for became B or C races on a whim, while I turned simple training sessions into do-or-die battles with running partners.
I recently attended BattleFrog Kansas City and much to my surprise I saw a familiar face on the starting line. Team Cellucor Athlete Eric Jenkins the 100x+ Tough Mudder Century veteran was there standing next to me getting ready for his first BattleFrog. “Are you lost?” I said, “Shouldn’t you have a Tough Mudder this weekend?” He responded with a “No, I actually only have one Tough Mudder on my schedule this year....but I have seven BFX events.”
We live in a world that focuses on being “the best of the best.” We regularly applaud the person who gets first, while looking at the second place finisher with disgrace. We think that they must have done something wrong that kept them from being on top. In fact, they did something amazing to be second! I think that the mindset of “second is the first loser” and the associated culture is destructive and counter-productive, even for people who regularly appear on the top of the podium. Here’s the start of why I think so.
As a parent, we have so many hurdles to face in order to keep our kids healthy and active. They are torn between what the media pushes and what we try to instill in them as being the best path for their futures. And then we send them off to school for the better part of the day where outside influences are everywhere – telling our children what they need to do or be or wear in order to be cool, and we have to trust that the teachers are guiding them in the right direction when we are not there to protect them.
Obstacle Course Racing in North America was born just seven years ago. Exploding onto the sports and fitness scene in an unprecedented way. Becoming even more popular than marathons by 2014. This in itself was a huge change from the previous sports norms, and people are still writing epic volumes trying to explain why. So it really shouldn't come as any great surprise that Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) has been evolving continuously ever since.
The American psychologist Abraham Maslow famously wrote about what he called the Hierarchy of Human Needs in 1943, which explained the path that human motivation travels. The most basic needs are of course physiological – think “water,” “food,” “air” – but you know what else makes an appearance in the hierarchy? Esteem, which includes self-esteem. Translation: we need this sort of affirmation in our lives.
If you have ever been at the finish line of an obstacle race or mud, run you have probably heard someone utter those words after crossing the finish line caked in mud, bruised, and often bleeding from a scrape earned while on the course. We have all felt it at one time in our racing career, that rush of excitement after a, particularly challenging obstacle. We have all seen that face that a fellow racer makes when they finally get over that 8-foot wall or climb that rope. It's that intangible sense of excitement that can hardly be described and truly only felt by the participant.
Why in the name of Odin would you want to do something that would even have the possibility of reducing attendance? Did this not occur to anyone? The feedback from the average racer, looking to move up a notch in challenge has been overwhelmingly bad! And remember, people "vote with their feet!". For every comment, there are dozens who feel the same and just won't be considering your race.
This is a case of BattleFrog putting their money where their brand is. No, I don't mean that muscular frog with stubble and an attitude, I mean the whole “bands over burpees” thing. The “O” in “OCR” does not stand for “optional”, as most purists would point out. I could not agree more (especially since I just came up with that catchy saying), and I imagine that most elite and seriously competitive racers would agree.
