It's one week before the first obstacle race of the season, I check the weather and UGH, it's gonna be cold and damp! Welcome to racing in Canada. We are the only country it seems where we can go from frost bite to sunburn in one day. We load the car and head off to the Hamilton/Niagara region, about a 4 hour drive.
The Dirty Dash racing series recently brought their 5k fun run to the New England area for the first time. Leading up to the event, a few other national races of similar ilk had fallen on tough times. The female only Dirty Girl race series, which held 50 events last year, cut that number in half for this year and recently cancelled a few upcoming races. The 5k Foam Fest that was affiliated with the same company as Dirty Dash also announced that they were closing its doors. This led to speculation on social media that the Dirty Dash race was in jeopardy. However, about a week before the scheduled event, we received an email with race logistics which quelled some of the fears.
Off to Tweed, Ontario we go. The location for the Doomsday Race was at the Trudeau's Park Resort about 20 minutes north of Napanee on Stoco Lake. This is a beautiful setting with a breeze coming off the water to keep racers cool. I had spoken with the Race Director a few weeks prior and he had some concerns with the amount of rain that they had been having, but he felt that they could accommodate the racers but may need to change some of the parking areas.
CTG is put on by Mainprize Industries LLC, a family company. David Mainprize and his brother Stephen, with his wife Courtney are incredible people. Their goal is to create an energetic, community atmosphere while still providing an extreme, intense, and competitive race. You get what you pay for and more.
The Samurai Sprint Mud Run recently held their inaugural event in New England. The local race boasts a combination of outdoor elements and challenging obstacles spread over a 5k course. In an attempt to appeal to runners of all abilities, they also offered a relay race option in which teams compete together in the running aspect of the race, while a few select team members tackle the more demanding obstacles. With the ever growing popularity of the sport, it is becoming more and more difficult for new races to establish a presence.
Mud Ninja is a small, local race that offers just about everything that the “Big Boys” of OCRs have to offer without the exorbitant prices and huge crowds that can make running in national races a bit of a headache at times.
The course was 3.2 miles long and only had 12 obstacles. All in all that's a decent obstacle to distance ratio. However, the layout made it worse because of the way the obstacles were bunched together. Half of the obstacles were bunched on top of each other over the last 300 yards of the course and these were the best obstacles. More on that in a minute.
The Spartan Sprint was held at the Mohegan Sun Casino. There was plenty of parking, picturesque views and a challenging course. The obstacles were well spaced out of the course, with an exciting pile up of six obstacles right at the end. Due to the venue, the course itself was a combination of trail, grass and road. There was definitely more road than many were used to seeing at an obstacle course race, which usually tend towards trail.
Despite my limitations, I had a great time. The course was not as challenging as the Spartan Sprint, for example, but the obstacles were fun and interesting. There were several low crawls, two under barbed wire and one under a fence. The barbed wire crawl was a pit of muddy water, so the wire was high enough from the ground that you weren't forced to put your face into the water.
The Men's Fitness Ultimate Athlete Games held their inaugural race (contest? challenge?) outside of Chicago on July 19, and featured some truly unique obstacles which meshed perfectly with their different and exciting race concept - (3) different courses for athletes to complete that consisted of a 1-mile Strength course, a .5 mile Agility course, and the Speed course measunring in at .25 miles.
