OCD FOR OCR

A somewhat wet mid-May weekend found me enjoying a race doubleheader. While I would culminate my weekend meeting up with Sandy and Ray to take on the Mud Gauntlet at Newbsanity, I first trekked to Western Massachusetts to take on Bonefrog at their home venue of Berkshire East for my second time. Bonefrog has expanded to more events and venues since my initial experience in 2015, including a race outside Buffalo, NY which is significantly closer to home for me, but I felt like Berkshire would always be the definitive Bonefrog and I was overdue for another visit.

• Registration and Festival:

I stayed at an Air B&B less than a mile from the venue, so I was able to take advantage of early packet pick up the night before as well as a pasta dinner. This is a great option for local runners or those staying nearby, and most series do not offer it. When I arrived on site race morning the lines looked long to get packets and it did not seem like they were moving all that fast. Bag check, on the other hand, was a practical walk up.

Bonefrog doesn’t really do much with their festival area compared to many other major races. There might be a sponsor or two around, but don’t expect a whole village of people trying to sell you stuff or give you samples of things. It was starting to rain heavily as I finished my race and I was more focused on getting my post-race food and drink to worry about the merchandise tent, which from past experience is not as extensive as it is at a Spartan or Tough Mudder anyhow. Some people will miss this, but I for one can take or leave the extra commercialization. There was no post-race band, but a competent DJ was on site playing a good mix of songs that fit the mood of a race, but due to the weather, I honestly didn’t pay all that much attention to it. The venue’s lodge was open for indoor seating to eat, towel off, mingle and come in out of the rain and it appeared to be the only tables and chairs available anyhow, so I think it wasn’t so much a concession to the rain as it just was the way things were set up here.

Speaking of food and drink, Bonefrog doesn’t forget about the post-race adult beverage (commonly provided at most major OCR’s) and you weren’t just stuck with the alcoholic drink of a corporate sponsor either. There was at least one type of each of the major types of beer such as a lager, an IPA, a shandy and even a hard cider, which is what I chose to imbibe. The lone food vendor provided basic grill items such as burgers, chicken sandwiches and the like which hit the spot at least after about 3 hours of on-course effort.

• Pre-race MC:

Keeping with the no-frills vibe of the festival area, the pre-race MC duties are pretty much limited to making sure athletes understand the course markings and what laps they are expected to run for the division they have registered for, then it’s “Any questions?  You guys all good?  Great!  3.. 2.. 1.. Go!”  Moreover, Bonefrog does not hire an outside actor, comedian or motivational speaker to hype up the crowd.  You are simply sent off by one of the lead build crew members, who has genuine enthusiasm, but is not there to make a big spiel either.

• The Course:

Like all Bonefrog events, the course itself is about 6 miles long, but several race distances are offered out of this moderate-length loop. Runners can choose to run the “Challenge” which is one full lap of the course, a “Sprint” which is an abbreviated version of the course where participants take a fork in the course to shortcut past about half the obstacles for a 3 Mile race. There is also the Tier I division, which is what I opted for and entails running the whole course, once immediately followed by a Sprint lap, giving you a 9 Mile race. And new as of last year, and in keeping with a newer trend in OCR the “Endurance” division is now offered, giving athletes the challenge of doing the long course followed by as many laps of the Sprint as they can rack up in a fixed period of time.

My experience with this particular Bonefrog and with the other races I’ve run of theirs is that the obstacles provided most of the challenge.  The terrain is sufficiently mountainous that you can’t just blaze through at your road running pace yes, but there weren’t really any highly technical elements of terrain. They like to make sure there is always one steep ascent aptly labeled “Stairway to Valhalla” and their selection this time around was divided into three parts, so that you thought you were at the top twice before having to cut across a hedge row and find there was another ski trail to climb. This was on a part of the course that was also in the Sprint so those of us in the Tier I or Endurance divisions got to hit it twice. The second time it was just more annoying than anything else.

But enough about the terrain.  As much as I enjoy trail running It’s the obstacles that draw me to Bonefrog. When I last came to this venue in 2015 I encountered obstacles unlike anything I had ever experienced and while I was somewhat disappointed that the unique permanent obstacles on the back side of the mountain (that I experienced previously) were not used this year, the standard Bonefrog obstacles that were in play did not let me down. You had the standard fare such as the Dirty Name aka Sternum Checker which is an exercise in courage, especially for a vertically challenged person like me. You also had Get a Grip and its suspended handles, which many of us think look like empty toilet paper rolls. These handles also made their way into the current rendition of Bonefrog’s signature obstacle, the Chopper upping the difficulty level of this obstacle just as I have started to get the “hang” of how to get through it (see what I did?) All in all, your grip strength will be particularly tested at a Bonefrog event, but not to the exclusion of your running/hiking ability or your ability to get through carries, such as the ammo carry, or the tire pull.

My only real beef with the course were bottlenecks. The Tier I went off early enough that this was not an issue. I even felt like I had the whole course to myself in places the first time around, but once I crossed the timing mat for the second go around, I was jockeying for space with big groups of open Sprint participants taking on the course as a team, creating delays at some of the more difficult obstacles as people took several attempts and the general bump and grind.

• The Bling:

Last year, I ran a Tier I for the first time and after I finished, several people around the festival area noticed that it was a Tier I medal and congratulated me and/or told me I was insane for running two laps. This was because the medals were noticeably different in size back then. Now the medals all seem to have the same general shape and size, a hexagonal pattern, and they only differ in the writing indicating what event the wearer had completed.  While the current medal is truly elegant and well made, I am partial to the older design with the frog logo depicted prominently and the size differences between events. If it were me, I’d even have made the medals noticeably different colors, if not different sizes. The finisher shirt (I am wearing right now as I type this) is oh so comfortable with a design that is easy on the eyes too. As an interesting side note, it says “Mission Accomplished” on it which is the same phrase my finisher shirt from the other unrelated race I did the same weekend has.  How is that for a coincidence?

• Overall Feelings and Event Rating:

I have enjoyed Bonefrog from the get go and their races never cease to challenge me. And I never tire of seeing the final obstacle of the monkey bars up against a larger than life American flag backdrop, making for probably one of the coolest finisher photo ops in the industry.  The staff I have interacted with are great people down to a man or woman as well. Now that they are expanding to more venues and more regions, I can see where the races, including their flagship Berkshire East location, are becoming more standard in terms of distances and obstacles in the lineup. Still one of my favorite series but going forward I am probably not going to put as much of a premium on traveling to Berkshire East, specifically if the distances are the obstacles are going to be more or less what I find elsewhere.

I give it 4.5 stars.

Article Written by: Brian Kellogg, OCR Aficionado