OCD FOR OCR

Let me first start by saying this was my first Spartan Race since Palmerton in July of 2017 as I decided to step away from this series as I thought it had become too mundane, redundant and predictable. The only real reason I even signed up for this race was because of the free registration for being a former past Warrior Dash participant. 

• Registration and Festival:

Registration was a breeze like it always is with Spartan. Show your QR code, they scan it, hand you your race envelope and in you go. As this was a stadium event, they did look through your bags and make you walk through a metal detector. Pretty standard nowadays.The festival area was kind of boring. As soon as you walked in, on your right was the Merch tent, to the left was a table where you could register for future events at the cheapest price you’ll see (or so they say). A little walk up further, was the bag check, where you just ended up leaving your bags in the right field seats. 

There was a little Spartan warm up area with some equipment you could mess around with. There was a Harley Davidson tent with a few bikes on show. And that was pretty much it for the festival area. There was no real area where you could get out there and view the racers, unless you were in the beer area, so spectating at least at this stadium was the worst ever, in the 8 stadium event’s I have run. 

• Pre-race MC:

Nothing real special here. The MC tried to get everyone riled up with the typical Aroo Aroo Aroo yell.  I’m not sure if that really works for a stadium, because you only have 15-20 ppl at a time going off, but hey, that’s what they do. There was a fog machine, maybe 15-feet off the start line, that went off with every wave of racers I believe, so that was kind of cool. Little theatrics to send off racers is always something I liked seeing over my years of racing, whether it was the early days when Spartan would have smoke bombs or Warrior Dash and their fire blasting from the starting arch. 

• The Course:

This was without a doubt, the most stairs, I’ve ever encountered at a stadium race. They made very excellent use of the inside seats and constantly zig-zagging you up and around nonstop, so you never went more than 20-feet without some stairs to climb or descend. I felt the obstacles were placed well, which broke up the running portions of the race nicely. The obstacles again were a mix between CrossFit and typical spartan obstacles. Including: A-Frame cargo net, assault bikes, monkey rings, monkey bars, low crawl, 7-foot walls, 4-foot walls, jump rope, ball slams, spear throw, rope climb, box jumps, Jerry can carry (which is now branded with an awkward round design and Spartan logos all over it. I also noticed quite a few of them broke, causing water to pour out all over), sandbag carry, Z- Walls, Herc hoist, pipe lair, ram burpees, 15 hand release push-ups and the gauntlet.

The only real problem I had was with the Assault Bikes. I ran around 10:30 am, and when I got to that obstacle, they were all taken and had to stand around for 30 seconds or so. Not ideal, when you are still trying to run for time and do your best. I think the issue with that, is that the bikes were so early in the race, there was no real time for the waves to break apart and have more separation. Maybe placing those in the second half of the course would have been better.

I really enjoyed the sandbag carry because you could really run and pick up some speed and time by running down the spiraling walkway to the bottom, before you took the stairs back up.

• The Bling:

The medal was your typical Spartan medal, just with the yellow highlights for the Stadion Series. The tech shirts were meh. They ran extremely small.  An XL fits like a large. And the biggest size they had was a 2XL. If shirts are running small, I would think they would at least go up to a 3xl to accommodate most racers. 

• Overall Feelings and Event Rating:

After being away from Spartan for 2+ years, I actually really enjoyed this event. I always enjoy the challenge of a stadium race and throwing in some obstacles at the right point of the course adds to that. That’s one thing Spartan will always do right, is the placement of their obstacles. Whether you hate where they are or not, they are at that specific spot for a reason. The course was also marked to near perfection.Stadium races are always hard for spectators to watch, but this one seemed near impossible with the way they utilized all the seating. Still, it would be nice if a section was fully opened so that you can sit and see some of the obstacles, outside of the beer area in the outfield seats or finish line. I’d also like to see some of the bigger obstacles people like watching, like rings and/or monkey bars be more visible to everyone. I really don’t want to watch someone jump up and down on a box 15 times or watch someone do 15 ram burpees. That’s just not fun to watch. 

I also think utilizing football stadiums more often, would be really cool. With baseball stadiums, races are mostly limited to the outside warning track and can’t utilize the entire field, whereas football fields, they could setup all kinds of obstacles on the field and really make it into something special. Don’t get me wrong, I really do love baseball stadiums, but football stadiums, on the field at the 50-yard line, doing an obstacle really ups the stadium race experience. Unless it’s a climbing a rope right next to the Green Monster at/in Fenway, regardless if you’re a Red Sox fan or not!I’m not sure if I really just enjoyed being back at Spartan or if it was a combo of that and that I was finally able to push the mental and physical blocks I had aside from my ruptured bicep in august of 2018 aside to finally complete every obstacle without worry. 

Either way, Stadium Races are a good way to get new people into OCR’s without the mud and mountains and 8-hours of agony climbing up and down mountains and I did overhear some conversations about this being their first OCR. 

The turnout was quite disappointing. I heard just under 3000 runners, and by the time we did our second lap around noon, the course was like a ghost town. In addition, volunteers need to be more into it and active and show their voice. I know volunteers are always a problem and seem to be getting more of a problem with every event, but I was shocked at how few volunteers were on course, and how many Spartan employees were stationed at obstacles. 

Lastly, and I probably shouldn’t share this detail, but hanging around until the end of a Spartan Stadion, has its perks. Like tons of free stuff at the end. Many of us walked out with free cases of FITAID®, protein bars, Body Armor drinks and water. That alone was worth the price of admission!

Would I recommend someone to do a Spartan Stadion? Without a doubt. Much like Stadium Blitz the week before, a Spartan Stadion race is a fun time, but yet still challenging enough to know you put in some work.

There are always things to improve upon and Spartan is no different. Better viewing for spectators, placement of the obstacles, people want to watch, and shirts that actually fit are all things that need improving. Still, I rate this event/course 4 out of 5 stars. 

Article Written by: Eric Wisniewski (Hair)