OCD FOR OCR

This was my second time racing at this South Carolina venue as I did the Spartan Super two years ago. I drove from NY state to SC on Thursday night, which was almost eight hundred miles each way.

• Registration and Festival:

This race weekend has been sold-out for a long time and it was packed with people, but registration appeared to move fast both days. I really liked the way they laid out the festival area as it was nice and personal and had one the best food stands I have seen at Spartan events to date. I also enjoyed some of the other vendors that sold other products and ended up buying some nice OCR inspired jewelry.

• Pre-race MC:

I should just remove this section for most Spartan race weekends because the Spartan MC’s are very generic and use pretty much the same canned speech each week and at least for me I get almost no motivation from the MC’s.

• The Course:

The course started out with a short sprint away from the festival area and the first obstacle up was a short Over wall to jump/hurdle over and then after a trail sprint the course made its way to two hurdles to over. After a short trail sprint, up next was the Over – Under – Thru obstacle that was set up with a little more than the typical distance between them. At this point the course went on a long trail run and that included a muddy and challenging crossing, the only problem is both days and all three races (2 Beasts and the Sprint) at least when I was at this muddy section pretty much every racer went outside the tapped sections and skipped going through the hard and deep mud. It was pretty funny to be covered head to toe in mud while everyone else was almost mud free, but such is life.

The course continued on and eventually made its way back over by the festival area and up next was the monkey bars. One of the next obstacles up was sandbag carry # 1 which wasn’t a bad carry at all compared to other Spartan races. The course continued on and some of the next obstacles up were a low crawl and the Atlas Carry. At this point, it was clear this would be a course that included many long trail sprints between some of the obstacles as the venue is not one that allows Spartan to place/build obstacles out in the trails. The course continued on and up next was sandbag carry # 2, the sandbags where not the normal Spartan bags, but rather burlap bags with sand duck taped closed, which reminded of large burritos.

The course had another very long trail section and eventually made its way to a barbed crawl and cargo net cliff climb! The course was now on the Beast only section and the trail runs were long and obstacles at the minimum for many miles. When we finally arrived to the next obstacle, Stairway to Sparta, it had seemed like such a long time between obstacles that I felt like I had just seen a Unicorn! Up next was a second series of high hurdles to get up and over a Tyrolean Traverse, and then the course made its way to the A-Frame Cargo net climb and now that the course was back in an area they could place obstacles up next was the 8-foot wall and then a short distance ahead came the plate drag.

The Bucket Brigade was next and it was by far the easiest Bucket Brigade I have done at any Spartan so far. The course continued on back towards the festival area and up next was the Multi-Rig and then the Z-Walls and not that far ahead came the Hercules Hoist, which was heavier than normal. The course now made its way to a gauntlet section of obstacles that started with rolling mud mounds to climb in and out of, then a barbed-wire crawl, then the dunk wall and then the inverted wall all back to back to back to back. The dunk wall was so muddy and dirt silt water that it coated racers with a lot of silt and dirt, which made the final inverted wall way more challenging than typical.  The course looped around the trails again for a short distance and up next was the rope climb.

After the climb, it was back in the woods for a short trail and up next was the spear toss. At this point, racers could see the finish line ahead and all we had left was the Slip Wall and fire jump just prior to the finish line!

The Sprint was a lot more fun version of the course, because it included most of the obstacles and far less trails than the Beast.

• The Bling:

The bling is the same as it has been for all of 2016, the newly designed finisher medals and finisher shirts. I like the medals and the shirt, but am looking forward to a cool and new sexy look for 2017 Spartan bling!

• Overall Feelings and Event Rating:

This is a hard race to rate for me, I am not a fan of long trail runs without obstacles, but to be fair to Spartan, that is exactly what a Spartan Beast is the majority of the time due to the total miles and total obstacles parameters so I am taking that into consideration with my final rating.

I can’t find a flaw other than the long trail runs, I arrived early Friday on the site and spent most of the day walking around the venue watching the Spartan staff work hard all day. I did the same both Saturday and Sunday and again all I saw was an amazing Spartan team working hard all weekend to put on a great event, so when I combine that into overall experience I am giving extra points to the staff and volunteers while a lower rating of the course only because it had a lot of long trail runs. I am rating this event/course a 4.9 out of 5 stars, because the trail sections were set up to be challenging and used the venues deep wood sections to its best potential. I am not sure I would return to South Carolina for a Beast unless I was short one to complete a Trifecta and had no other options.

Article Written by: Walter F Hendrick (OCRSandy)