OCD FOR OCR

After over a one-year hiatus, Civilian Military Combine – CMC is back under a new team that is anchored and lead by experienced race director Garfield Griffith, so I was excited to go run the first of the new CMC events in Brooklyn NY!

• Registration and Festival:

The event venue was on Fort Hamilton, which is an active military base, so parking was at a local baseball stadium and racers were bussed on to the military base. This wasn’t the fastest bus service I have experienced, but it wasn’t bad and got me both on and off the base without much of a delay.

Registration moved fast and had zero delays. The festival area was set up well, which I expected it would be, considering CMC had a very experienced festival team working this event.

• Pre-race MC’s:

This was a unique event, because it included two of my favorite MC’s in both Coach Pain (Dewayne Montgomery) manning the PIT’s and Bishop Garland at the start of the obstacle course portion of the race/event.

Coach Pain was amazing as always and walked around the PIT for each wave firing up all the competitors and killed it all day on hot and humid afternoon.

Bishop Garland brought his best as well, and fired up each wave prior to sending them out on the course. What I always enjoy about Bishop is he doesn’t use the exact same speech or even same style for each and every wave and changes it up and I could see the racers clearly enjoyed his motivational style.

• The PIT:

The PIT was five minutes of CrossFit – cross training fitness movements utilizing an AMRAP (As Many Reps as Possible) WOD style. Open wave competitors could select from one of three PIT divisions:

Alpha: Bodyweight division

6 Burpees, 7 Box jumps, 8 Lunges

Bravo: Kettlebell division

6 Kettlebell swings (53lb male/35lb female), 7 Weighted step-ups (53lb male/35lb female), 8 Goblet lunges (53lb male /35lb female)

Charlie: Barbell division

6 Burpees over barbell, 7 Shoulder to Overheads (115lb male /75lb female), 8 Front rack lunges (115lb male/75lb female)

The heat and humidity was brutal from the early morning on so this added to the difficulty of completing the PIT divisions and you could clearly see all competitors in both the Pro and open waves were feeling the effects of both the heat and WOD style exercises and this hybrid portion of the event added to making the course section more challenging.

• The Course:

Setting up and designing a course on a Military base clearly added more challenges for Garfield and his team, but they still did a great job with the course and for the most part the course was easy to follow without making a wrong turn. According to my GPS, the course was just over 3.3 miles in distance which on such a hot and humid day and limitations of running on actual grass/dirt was a good distance for this course.

As I had expected, Garfield designed several new versions of obstacles for the course, including the Diamondback, which started with an inverted climb and then switched to a standard angled climb up a ladder pole climb and back down. This was a cool twist to an obstacle used by several US Special forces training facilities and clearly something that caught everyone’s attention because it’s already been announced it will be an obstacle on the OCR World Championships course later this year. The course also included a version of the Weaver, which is not something often seen used by traveling obstacle course companies. I was happy to see the Weaver on the course, but they only had two lanes which caused delays at least when I was at it. With that said, the Weaver is always a challenge to weave over and under each section of bars.

The course also included the Irish Table which has been popular in Canada this race season and is always challenging to get up and over.  Another new Military inspired obstacle was the Rigid Ladder, which was a high climb up, over, and back down obstacle that was more of a mental than physical challenge.

Other Military inspired obstacles were Seal Beams, which was a balance beam type crossing across a round beam that rolled a little to both the left and right, Comrades in Arms, which was a dummy carry, Angled Rock Wall, which was an angled wall climb with the assistance rock climbing attachments, a Mud Crawl under non-barbed wire that was strung so low to the ground that it was impossible to avoid the wires, Ranger Ropes, which started with a climb up on to storage box cars and then a traverse across a metal bar with the assistance of a wire above racers heads, The Box, which was CMC’s challenging version of a Rig obstacle, a high rope climb, Raised Bear, which was a series of raised logs to spider across, 12-foot rope wall, Step N Repeat, which began with a Ninja Warrior inspired obstacle to frog hop across, and ended with two monkey bars spread a decent distance apart, and last but not least was Spin Class, which was another Rig type obstacle that started with a climb up a bar, then had spinning monkey rings and then ended with a crossing hanging monkey bars.

The course had a total of about twenty obstacles and also included a Wreck Bag Carry, 8-foot Walls Climb, and Take the Plunge, which was an awesome obstacle on such a hot and humid day, it was a large trash container filled with cold water and covered on the top with ply-wood to go under and get wet and cool down!

• The Bling:

The bling included a very sexy finisher medal and for an additional $40 you could have it custom engraved on the back right on site and a stylish gray finisher’s shirt.

• Overall Feelings and Event Rating:

Garfield clearly was busy building the new CMC team and designing new obstacles and the ownership team clearly has his backing and this all showed on both the course and overall event. The obstacles were all top quality and some are new, uniquely designed obstacles, which was awesome, while many other OCR companies have not really added new obstacles this year. Overall other than a technical issue with the Pro scoring system, and a few Pro racers having problems going the right way on the course, the PIT and obstacle course were both awesome and I can only see them improving now that Garfield has an idea what to expect with this type of hybrid obstacle course race.

The PIT and course were awesome, the bling is sexy and top notch, the MC’s and DJ killed it all day, even though it was very hot and humid, the same can be said about the staff and volunteers, and the venue was set up well and on an active Military base on September 11th weekend, I was planning to deduct for the delay at the Weaver obstacle, but have decided to overlook that and give extra points due to Coach Pain, Bishop, and CMC teams hard work to put on a great event, so I am rating the event 5 out of 5 stars.

Article Written By: Walter F Hendrick (OCRSandy)