OCD FOR OCR

After running both CMC and ROC Race on Saturday in Brooklyn, NY, I jumped back in my Prius and drove over 250 miles to Boalsburg, Pennsylvania to run the Extreme version of the Hardcore Mudd Run course on Sunday.

• Registration and Festival:

HMR ran both Saturday and Sunday, so turnout on Sunday was lower and registration was fast and easy. The festival area was set up well with a bandstand for the several live bands that played both days.

• Pre-race Ceremony:

The local Fire Department came and provided a very beautiful and emotional memorial service for all those lost on September 11th.

• The Course:

The course offered three versions, the Sprint, the Ultra, and the Extreme versions. I opted to run the Extreme because it was the longest distance and offered the most obstacles. I researched the obstacles and course prior to deciding to run HMR, but I had no idea how much of the course was going to be spent going both up and down the Tussey Ski Mountain. According to my GPS watch, the Extreme version of the course was just over 7.7 miles in total distance, but as noted, it was the ascents up the mountain multiple times that made this a challenging course.

The first obstacle was just after the starting line and it started with a jump over fire and then a crawl under fire. This was not your typical fire obstacle and I could feel the heat both while jumping over and crawling under it. The obstacle is basically a giant BBQ burner for humans. Just a short distance ahead was a massive wind and water obstacle to run through. It appeared they converted a few of the snow making machines to hose water on racers, which I personally thought was cool.

The course had an early section of zig-zagging up and down a portion of the mountain and I couldn’t help thinking I guess this is good practice for next weekend’s Spartan Vermont Beast. Other obstacles on the course included a barbed-wire crawl, several high walls to climb up and jump down, a series of stacked hay bales to climb up and down, a hoist obstacle that had fireman hoses tied to ropes that had to be hoisted up and let back down without dropping.

The course included other obstacles like the Rats Nest, that was lots and lots of bungee cords going every which way you can imagine and for a long section to climb through. Also on the course was a dual Tyrolean traverse crossing, which I always enjoy and also enjoyed coaching two younger runners to cross it. The course had a fun climb obstacle, Cargo Mountain which was a challenging high cargo rope net climb up, over and back down. This was another obstacle that I enjoyed helping getting other racers complete. Also on the course was an electric crawl/roll, which wasn’t near as bad as some of the other electrical obstacles I have done over the past three years.

Later into the course on both the Ultra and Extreme versions was some other challenging obstacles like Mission Impossible, which was a climb up a rope and then up and over an angled wall to slide down. The course also had a hard crawl obstacle that I have never seen before called Hands and Knees, which was a crawl under three sections of very heavy chain-link fence. I was very happy that I arrived to this obstacle with several other racers, because it required team work to crawl under all three sections of chain-link fence. In addition to the mountain, obstacles, the course also included a section of very technical trails to climb both down and back up, this section of course had a lot of ankle bitters/breakers so I took my time working through it. The course included a sandbag carry, which went up a decent distance of the mountain and back down.

After completing what was considered both the Sprint and Ultra sections, the course turned and went straight back up the mountain to the top and then turned and came about half way down the mountain to only turn again and head back up to the very top one last time. The Extreme course continued back down the mountain and into the woods, and I was running in a section of woods and all of a sudden I heard a noise, I looked towards the noise and heard it again, but this time I was hit in the leg with a paintball. I knew the course mentioned an obstacle that included being shot at with paintball guns, but I didn’t expect it to be out of the blue and unexpected. I pretty much shouted foul language at whoever was shooting at me, and hustled out of that section of the course.

The course made its way out of the woods and up next was Beam Me Up, which was a balance beam crossing obstacle. The course then came to what first appeared to be crossing a road, but then I noticed an arrow painted on the floor pointing to turn left and head up the road. I headed up the road and then came to a second road to head up another hill section and made my way to the top of that road and the course made a U-turn and headed back in the direction I had just come.

After about a mile of either running on dirt or blacktop, I made my way back to a hard left turn and headed over to a lake where the next obstacle was Rubber Bridge, which was a bunch of black rubber car inner tubes ducked tapped together floating in the lake to run/frog across. I didn’t have great luck on this obstacle, as some of the tubes would just sink. A short distance ahead was another obstacle in the water, which was Bobbers that consisted of floating containers to swim under. The course then exited the lake area and made its way back to the festival area and the last two obstacles were Cool Off, which was a crawl in ice-cold water (the water had ice cubes in it), and then a series of fences to jump over just before the finish line!

• The Bling:

The bling included a nice black finisher’s shirt, dog-tag style finisher medals with one that says Hardcore Mudd Run, and a second dog-tag for the specific version of the course you ran.

HMR also provided two finisher beers, a boatload of really good local pizza from Pizza Mia, and several live bands that from what I heard seemed to really do a great job.

• Overall Feelings and Event Rating:

It was a long weekend for me, with a lot of racing and lot of driving and I am thankful that Sunday was way cooler and less humid than Saturday because dealing with the HMR mountain, elevation, and obstacles on so little sleep and not near enough rehydrating with water would have been really hard for me.

I have an always will be a big fan of supporting the small and local obstacle course races, because in my opinion, without them the sport/hobby won’t continue to improve, so I am happy I was able to go run and write about HMR. The obstacles were all well-built and some were very unique like the fire jump/crawl and the chain-link fence crawl. I think the only area I would like to see improvement, would be more obstacles on the Extreme loop, but that will come as they grow and make a profit.

The course/obstacles were great, the bling is nice, the staff and military volunteers did a great job all day, the live bands and free pizza and beer were awesome, I am rating the event/race a 4.8 out of 5 stars.

Article Written By: Walter F Hendrick (OCRSandy)