OCD FOR OCR

Due to schedule conflicts, this was my first and only Savage Race for 2016. I returned to Maryland for what was one of my favorite races back in 2014.

• Pre-race MC:

This was my fourth Savage Race to date, but the first time Matty T was the MC and I came away very impressed. He clearly is not in the mold of Coach Pain or Sean Corvelle when it comes to his style, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t awesome. He did a great job of firing up and motivating the two waves I ran Saturday and he gets everyone involved both vocally and physically and sends the waves out fired up and smiling.

• The Course:

Per my GPS, the course was just over 6 miles in distance (for both laps) and started out with a longer than I am used to sprint before arriving to the first obstacle. The course was about a mile a half in and at that point arrived to obstacle # 3. The initial trail run was through a nice, safe section of woods and the first obstacle on the course was Low Crawl, which was a barbed-wire crawl and then another pretty long sprint back into the woods. We eventually exited and came to Barn Doors, which was an 8-foot ladder wall climb up and then back down. The course continued on for another brief sprint and made its way to, if memory serves me correctly, a series of about 4-foot high logs to hop/climb over.

The course continued and the next obstacle was a short distance ahead, “Me So Thorny”, which for those that haven’t yet done a Savage Race can best be described as a barbed-wire crawl that forces you to crawl and not roll through a slightly zig-zagging barbed-wire crawl obstacle that has lanes. The course had another about half of mile sprint (mostly in the woods) and exited and then came to one of the newer Savage Race obstacles, “On The Fence”, which was a chain-link fence suspended over water and racers have to traverse across without falling in. I really liked this new obstacle because it’s a good challenge and also reminded me of my childhood running away from the cops when my friends and I would get in trouble (lol).

The course had another short distance sprint and made its way to another newer obstacle, “Squeeze Play”, which was a series of several giant swiveling plastic barrels to worm/squeeze under. I have done this obstacle at a few Canadian OCR’s, but it’s not something I have seen often in America. The course turned to its right and passed through a cornfield and then turned to the right again and came to a lumber log carry that went for a decent distance lap. A short sprint ahead came one of the Savage Race signature obstacles, “Davey Jones’ Locker”, which is a fun leap into nice and deep water. After another sprint, the course came to one of the hardest monkey-bar obstacles in the OCR business, Sawtooth, which is always a challenge and became harder for the later waves, because it started to rain.

The next obstacle on the course was also a newer obstacle called “Big Cheese, which I can best describe as a domed shape climb with foot and hand holes to assist climbing up. I have to say, this was a new obstacle for me and I really liked it. The next two obstacles were “Venus Guy Trap”, which started with an inverted wall climb, then a series of two muddy water trenches and finished with an angled wall climb, and then came to “Kiss My Walls”, which is an ever so slightly inverted 24-foot wall traverse with mountain climbing hand and foot notches spaced apart. This obstacle either delayed or claimed a fair amount of the pro-wave racers. The course continued on and the next few obstacles were “Great Walls”, “Slippery Incline Wall”, and another newer obstacle, “Pole Cat”. which was two sections of parallel bars at different heights over water to shimmy across without falling in the water. A short distance ahead came a second barbed-wire crawl, but this one was in much muddier water. I rolled through this obstacle on both laps while everyone around me crawled and tried to not get too muddy. On lap # 1, I was pretty confident that the “Shriveled Richard” ice water tank obstacle wasn’t that far ahead so I didn’t mind getting really muddy because I knew I would get a chance to clean most of it off, I ended up being right, as it was the next obstacle up!

At this point, the course continued on and up next was a cargo net climb up and back down. A short sprint ahead, came “Back Scratcher”, which was a series of low walls to climb/hop over followed by short barbed-wire crawls. Just up ahead came one of Savage Races most popular obstacles, “Wheel World”, which is a series of several spinning wheels suspended over water to monkey across that requires both good grip strength and body control to make it across without falling in the water. A short distance ahead was “Wedgie”, which was an angled wall with hand and foot slots on both the left and right to assist climbing up.

The course continued a short sprint and up next was the massive Savage Race Warped wall and then a short ladder wall climb followed by a fun water slide to rocket down into water. The course continued for a short distance and came to the Savage Race Platinum Rig which is a sexy Savage Race blue obstacle that can be configured multiple ways. Just ahead was the last obstacle on the course, another newer obstacle, “Tree Hugger” which is a series of suspended wooden posts and steel posts to traverse across without falling off. The finish line was only a few feet after this obstacle!

• The Bling:

The bling includes a newly designed for 2016 finisher medal and I have to say the medal is a major upgrade from the 2015 medal and is really nice. The shirt, is also nice which made me happy, because Save Race is one of the finisher shirts I always enjoy wearing.

Racers that paid for two or more timed laps at either one event or multiple Savage Race events are eligible for the Savage Syndicate loyalty program and receive and additional spinner medal that is both heavy and sexy. What’s really awesome about the Syndicate loyalty program, is racers receive a new Syndicate medal after every qualifying race (2nd, 3rd, 4th, and so on) in the same calendar year!

• Overall Feelings and Event Rating:

I have pretty much done almost all the major OCR race series in both America and Canada this year and no race series has added more new obstacle in 2016 than Savage Race. I was very happy with both the course and obstacles and my only critique would be to place a few more of the other obstacles in the Savage Race arsenal in some of the longer sprint sections next year.

The MC killed it, the volunteers and staff were awesome all day, even though it started to rain, the course very challenging and even the sprints were decent runs with some hill sections to keep racers working hard, the amount of new and unique obstacles was amazing and actually worthy of additional points so I am rating this event/course 5 out of 5 stars!

Article Written by: Walter F Hendrick (OCRSandy)