This season has been action packed and Rugged Maniac was one the remaining race series I was really looking forward to. I have participated in four other events at this venue. So coming to Englishtown for an OCR has become a habit for those of us racing in New Jersey.
Tough Mudder Kentucky provided a nice mix of terrain including hard packed trails, muddy trails, streams, grass, concrete and gravel. There was minimal technical terrain that allowed for fast running, which made the course ideal if you are a World’s Toughest Mudder (WTM) competitor and looking to do multiple laps.
This was my fifth trip to Canada in 2015 for an OCR race weekend and this one started out with more drama than the others. I arranged a place to stay via airbnb and arrived in Ottawa just after 8 pm on Friday night, but unfortunately the person I had to meet for the keys to the place was not available and explained via text messages he unavailable until 10 pm. After hours of waiting he was a no show and we ended up having to drive to the Spartan Ottawa venue parking lot around 1 am and all three of us slept in my Prius. An interesting beginning to the trip.
The day started out cold and raining so prior to the start of wave one most racers and spectator's where huddled up either in a building with heat or under something trying to stay dry. You could see from the racers and spectators faces people were both tired and cold. With about five minutes to go time, the MC/announcer started getting racers pumped up and motivated and it was like someone flipped a light switch and the racers and spectators all started to get fired up and motivated.
GORUCK held a challenge event in Kansas City recently, called GORUCK Light. For those of you that have heard of GORUCK, but are unfamiliar with an event like this, I will give you a brief rundown of GORUCK before continuing on to details about the actual Kansas City event.
I have had a great time at my two previous Savage Race events. The event in Pennsylvania was highly anticipated with the addition of Garfield Griffiths to the Savage Race team. I drove down the night before to Pennsylvania, I camped out on site and around 6:30 am it started to rain and didn’t let up all day.
Black Swamp Runner was a small event in northern OH last weekend with a much larger vision. The epitome of “grassroots,” the event is the brainchild of just two people. A husband and wife team of Troy and Sandy Anthony can be credited as the builders, designers, organizers, and any other hat they may need to don on that day to make the event successful.
This was my first Spartan Super of the year and would complete my first Trifecta for 2015 of the year, I was very excited. I arrived to the Spartan off-site parking for the Boston Super at about 1 am after driving home for BattleFrog and cleaning myself and clothing up and then driving from NY to the Massachusetts and it was raining cats and dogs and continued to pour almost all night. I ended up getting about four hours sleep and then made my way to the event venue.
After patiently waiting years for Spartan Race to bring their Super event to New England, we were finally rewarded. We were close last year with a pre-registration for the event but it never materialized. However, many New Englanders were thrilled when one showed up on this year’s schedule. Along with the Vermont Beast and the Fenway Park/Boston Sprints scheduled for later in the year, it was our first opportunity to add that elusive blue pizza slice to our multi-colored all New England Trifecta medals.
Going into Tough Mudder Whistler I was scared. This was the biggest event I was going to take on, and of course you always hear horror stories and those that freak out when you mention its name. I had only done a few smaller races (Spartan Sprint and the Dirty Dash), and I had no idea what to expect.
