If you are into Obstacle Course Racing you probably think a lot about the big aspects: training, nutrition, technique, gear etc. But there are also smaller easy to implement daily habits that you can easily incorporate into your day to day life and that will make you better at OCR in no time.
As the length of a race gets longer, the amount of advice that people want to give you increases exponentially. Part of that is because the amount of information you need to know to run an event increases exponentially with the distance and time duration of the event. As a mathematician, I really do mean exponentially. One of the athletes I coach traveled to the US for 24 days as part of a trip for a 24-hour race, World’s Toughest Mudder.
Congratulations, you've registered for an Obstacle Course Race! Now it's time to put in the work and start training! For best results, give yourself a solid 6-8 week of training before your race date. I have developed 5 step OCR specific process to take you from where you are to where you want to be; the finish line.
Every year I race World’s Toughest Mudder (WTM) and every year I seem to get instant amnesia. Fast forward a couple of weeks after the event and I forget about the debilitating pain of walking the day after the race, the cold and all the suffering on course. All I remember is the awesome sense of community, how much fun it was and how proud I am of my black WTM headband.
When heading into World’s Toughest Mudder (WTM), I recommend setting tiered goals. Tiered goals provide a target to shoot for or safety nets to keep you going as the race drags on for 24 hours.
This fifth point, Inflated Expectations, ended up being so long I broke it apart into a second article because I didn’t want to gloss over it. With that, enjoy the conclusion of the article and hold on tight, some people may get some feelings hurt but you’ll thank me in the end.
Wetsuits are normally reserved for activities like swimming, scuba diving, surfing, triathlon or other amphibious activities. Most people use them as an extra layer of warmth while getting outdoors and getting some exercise in lakes and the ocean. However, in the obstacle racing world, we have found a unique and alternative use for a wetsuit and it plays a vital roll in some races such as Tough Mudder'sWorlds Toughest Mudder.
World's Toughest Mudder, the 24-hour Tough Mudder race is right around the corner. This week for Training Tuesday we turn to the team at Tough Mudder HQ for this thirty-minute workout from 2016 Female WTM Champion, Stef Bishop.
Today's Training Tuesday comes from our friends at Mudstacle this week. Dragon's Back is a signature obstacle of the Scandinavian obstacle race brand Toughest. The obstacle has also become a signature obstacle at the OCR World Championships taking place this week.
If you have ever run a race, you are familiar with this problem. “If I run in the 8 am wave and it takes me two hours to finish, that gives me 30 minutes to get changed, 30 minutes for socializing and 45 minutes to get back to my hotel. Then I have 10 minutes to shower and 5 minutes to check out.”
