OCD FOR OCR

It is now three days after the event and I really don’t even know where to start with this race recap. I guess I’ll start with the new venue/location, Tryon Equestrian Center. What an absolute beautiful place with rolling hills and gorgeous North Carolina scenery. If we get to go back and experience it again, is still a mystery. We’ll get to that later.

• Packet pick up & festival:

For the Ultra event, which is two laps of the course with an extra special lap for those crazy enough to try and tackle it, yes, I’m one of those, you have to get to the venue the day before to get your packet.

This is not really a big deal as they have an open house during those allotted times for you to come and check out the venue and try out obstacles. I will say it went very smooth and we received our packet with no issues at all!

Due to the weather and conditions it made the festival area a complete muddy mess but was laid out very well. The Merch tent at the entrance and exit has gotten huge. They have outdone themselves on that set up.

• Race day Emcee:

Mr. Rob Lyday as the start line emcee, doesn’t get any better! The dude really knows how to talk to you and get you going. He gets it, before he started with Spartan, he put his body to the tests of these races back in the day. Now he gets joy sending off racers and getting them pumped up beforehand. If you have Rob as emcee at your next event, you will have a great experience in your start corral!

• The Course:

Because this was a Beast/Ultra course, the layout was about 13-15 miles depending if you were doing the beast or the Ultra. The Ultra usually has an extra loop, making the mileage a little bit longer. In the past, a Beast course was usually a lot of running in between obstacles. I have run some that you had to run 3-plus miles before you get to an obstacle (our editor, refers to this as referring the very few obstacles, Unicorns).To me, that just gets boring! Garfield Griffiths, the RD for this race, did a fantastic job with the layout of this course, strategically placing obstacles in the correct spots to break up all of the running, and the obstacles weren’t just walls to climb over. They had heavy, carries and some technical obstacles placed in just the right places. The A Team for Spartan =👌, great job!

Let me start by saying the weather forecast was calling for temps in the low to mid 50’s with a 100% chance of rain up to an inch. By noon, it had rained at least 2-inches and the temperature had dropped 10 degrees and it rained, The, Entire, Day! By 9am, the course had completely changed from nice, good laid out trails, to sloppy ankle to shin deep peanut butter Carolina clay muck!


I want to say this may be why the 2020 venue has not been announced as of yet. When you put about 10,000 people through conditions like we had, things are bound to get smashed pretty bad. We will #staytuned with this venue. I would love to see it there again. This was the biggest challenge of the day.

Almost every obstacle was close to barely being doable, which meant penalty burpee after penalty burpee, after penalty burpee. Death by burpee’s because they completely wreck your body. Every obstacle had a light layer of wet muck on every one. The ropes were so caked with mud you could barely even hold on to them. The overhead bars and bender had fingerprint mud streaks all across them, which made it almost impossible to do. You get the idea. I have seen through some people’s posts that the completion rate for the Ultra was only 30% but I’m not sure of that number.

• Suffering:

I would like to add a little on this recap about suffering. This day and age people don’t have to suffer at all. We all have the luxuries of being able to do or have anything we want with little to no issue. Society as a whole has become soft because of this. Our parents and grandparents had to suffer a little bit to get the finer things in life and that made them appreciate the things they suffered for. It allowed them to have meaningful lives.Spartan and some of these other organizations out there have created events like this to allow people to suffer. If we suffer for just a little bit every now and then, it wakes you up, gets you fired up, makes you motivated for life! If you are contemplating doing an event like this, it will not be easy. It will be very challenging. You will have to train for it. It will be physically demanding and also mentally exhausting. You may fail and you may succeed, but you won’t know unless you get out of your comfort zone and charge it!

• The Bling:

The Spartan Ultra belt buckle is one of those coveted things people have hanging in places that they walk by in their houses that they can see almost every day. It’s a symbol of what you’ve accomplished and gives a sense of motivation that is really hard to describe. It’s a reminder of the suffer fest you went through, to get it and lights a fire within you to go chase your dreams even more. I have one in my bedroom, one in my office, and I really don’t know where this one is going to go yet.

• Rating:

Even though it rained all day, literally, all day, the event was absolutely epic and I will remember it, for a very long time. It was one of the hardest races I’ve ever done. The weather conditions were a complete and total game changer, making everything that much more difficult. It gets 5 out of 5 stars from us.

Article Written by: Andy Sneller and Lori Danko.