OCD FOR OCR

This was my final race weekend prior to traveling to Texas for the Ultra Beast so I was looking forward to a nice and easy two laps of the Super on Saturday and very slow Sprint on Sunday.

• Festival Area:

The festival was set up on the sand near a lake beach. It was one of the odder setups I have seen at a Spartan Race this year with booths spread out all over the place. Some of that could be because they couldn’t set up on the sand and had to place the booths on higher ground.

• Pre-race MC:

Pre-race MC was John “JJ” O’Malley who did a really good job both days. He sticks to the boring Spartan canned speech, but prior to that he interjects his own personality and style and the waves clearly get into his routine.

• The Course:

Both the Super and Sprint had been on the longer distance sides with the Sprint being just under 6 miles and the Super almost 10 miles. The venue has some amazing views of the lake that surrounds it and both the Super and Sprint took racers on to a small island, that was different and kind of cool, even though there wasn’t a single obstacle on the small island.

I personally would have preferred both races being shorter distances because the extra distance didn’t add much to the races and in my opinion caused the obstacles to be spread too far apart from each other. I have said it before and will say it again, this sport is not trail running with obstacles, its obstacle course racing and I personally race for the obstacles and not the trails, so I am never a big fan of the longer distance courses.

I had expected both courses to be on the flat side, but that wasn’t the case, both versions took advantage of the small rolling hills and kept racers going up a lot of the day. Both courses also spent a lot of the time running against hills.

Another new twist that was added was several of the obstacles, the rope-climb and Z-walls come to mind, had penalty loops in place of the Burpee zones. I asked Spartan staff about this and they explained it was something they were going to experiment with and see how well it worked and gauge customer feedback. I like the idea and could see it sticking around for at least the open waves. I have a feeling it won’t be well received by the so-called elites though, but time will tell.

The Sprint started out just like the Super and had just over a mile of trail running before it made its way to the first obstacle, the Over Walls, the course continued and as mentioned above, a lot of the obstacles on both courses were spread out between each other. The Sprint included the typical Sprint obstacles: Vertical Cargo Net, various height walls, O-U-T, a challenging Barbed Wire crawl, the always fun Plate Drag, Multi Rig, Rolling Mud that was pretty challenging to climb out of a few, a very wet and slippery Slip Wall, a nice and easy Dunk Wall (racers still skipped it), a pretty easy Bucket Brigade, a nice and light Herc Hoist, the A-Frame Cargo Net, the Rope Climb (used a thinner rope), Twister, the inverted Wall, which for some reason seemed harder than normal, the always fun Spear Toss (I was 3 for 3 on the weekend), a nice and easy Sand bag carry, and once back at the festival area, the Olympus, Monkey Bars and last but not least, the Fire Jump!

The Super version of the course that was about 5 miles longer in distance included Stairway to Sparta, Hurdles, a Water crossing, a very wet and slippery Bender, the Z-Walls, and a really challenging Log Carry. Basically an additional 5 obstacles spread out over 5 miles of trails, so we spent a lot of time on the trails and very little time on obstacles.

• The Bling:

This late into the year, most of us know the finisher medals and shirts well and I have a feeling everyone is looking forward to a new medal and shirt come 2018!

• Overall Feelings and Event Rating:

I was looking forward to a nice and flat course, but that wasn’t what the Atlanta venue turned out to be. The rolling hills, terrain, and a lot of trails running against the hills made for a tough Super. I enjoyed the views and venue, but traveling to Georgia via car is not fun and not something I will probably do again. I am rating the event/course 4.8 out of 5 stars.

Article Written by: Walter F Hendrick (OCRSandy)