Mud Hero was part two of a recent trip north to Canada. I figured I was already the country for Xman Race and decided to get as much Canadian racing experience possible in one trip. I researched Mud Hero and knew it would be a course that is designed for all levels of racers and happy to have a second race with such long distance travel involved in a weekend.
When deciding my 2015 schedule, I researched races in England, Canada, and America and set a goal of trying to do almost every OCR race that looked amazing. When I researched the Xman Race and watched the videos I found, I could tell it was a great race and I decided right away I wanted to do an Xman Race. I drove from New York to Canada on Friday night.
This is the third year that the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office has opened up their state of the art Law Enforcement Obstacle Training Course to the general public, and this little Local event keeps getting better. While not a traditional OCR where you run for short distances in between obstacles that are spread out, this is more like a 5k trail run around the jail with a nicely challenging obstacle course bunched up at the end.
MuckFest MS is a family event, so the festival area was loaded with lots of families, friends, and couples all having a good time. Music played throughout the event and this only helped make for fun times and smiles.
Generally, when people think about the frog in the World of OCR, their thoughts are about the flashier, highly marketed Battlefrog. I admit, I was guilty of these same thoughts. There is no doubt that it is a respectable race and I was all in on that frog, until now. The lesser known race called Bone Frog, founded by Brian Carney (33) born and raised in Western Massachusetts, 13 year Navy and 9 year Seal veteran, is an absolute power house in obstacle course racing.
This was my first Krell Adventure Games and I was very excited to be doing the event with my friend Franklyn Newby. The Krell Adventure games not an obstacle course race but something closer to orienteering event or adventure race. The course did include several obstacles as part of the twenty challenges, but the majority of the challenges were challenges, not obstacles. Franklyn and I were pleased with the course and that it wasn’t your typical obstacle course race.
The 4 mile, over 30+ obstacle course race, Conquer the Gauntlet (CTG) returned to KC at the Grain Valley Speed Way to put on another great race for their second year in a row. Instead of racing this particular event I went behind the scenes of Mainprize Industries and experienced the hard work this family puts into each and every race they promote.
Saturday and Sunday was a truly a tale of two days, Saturday was sunny and a beautiful day from start to finish, but Sunday was the exact opposite with it starting to rain around 9:20 am with the sounds of thunder off in the distance.
My experience with Spartan Canada has been awesome and I had very high expectations for this race weekend. The drive from Upstate NY to the Mont Tremblant area was a long one (over 320 miles each way), other than an hour and half delay at the Canadian/USA border entering Canada the drive was a good one.
The Samurai Sprint Mud Run takes place at Westport Rivers Vineyard on June 13th. I wanted to learn more about this #RACELOCAL event and reached out to Samurai Sprint Mud Run Event Coordinator, Stephen Ferreira and requested a quick interview, which he was gracious to provide.
