OCD FOR OCR

This race was practically in my backyard and I have a history with West Point so I didn’t want to skip this race.

• Registration and Festival:

I arrived later in the afternoon and registration moved fast. Spartan has finally adopted a similar bar code registration system that Spartan Canada has used for years and it clearly has helped speed up the process. The festival area wasn’t massive in size, but that was okay because it was easy to locate just about everything.

• Pre-race MC:

The pre-race MC was Spartan’s old school MC, Dustin Dorough, who stopped working for Spartan a while back. His MC speech wasn’t really any different from it used to be which is to be humorous and talk really fast. I have heard his pre-race routine many times and I have never enjoyed it or been inspired by it. I do really like Dustin and think he is a great guy, but Spartan MC just isn’t what in my opinion he is good at. He did tell the racers how he came back for a short stint with Spartan and this was the last of the events he would be working at, which I thought was nice to know and added at least a personal story to his routine this time.

• The Course:

The course, according to my GPS was about 4.58 miles long and utilized the terrain and rolling hills as well. It included all the typical Spartan Sprint obstacles for 2017 like the inverted wall, the Spear Toss, the rope climb, several walls of various heights to climb up and back down, the Atlas Balls obstacle has smaller concrete balls for at least the men.

In addition to the obstacles noted above the course also had the Spartan Hurdles to climb/hop up and over and the new for 2017 obstacles Olympus, which are slightly slanted walls with rock climbing hand holds only mounted on the top and racers had to scale across the slanted wall using upper body and grip strength. I enjoyed this obstacle, but I made this mistake of starting prior to the person in front of me crossing the entire obstacle and I ended up being stuck about in the middle of the crossing because that racer stopped and just was holding/hanging on for what seemed like a while (lesson learned).

The course included the always fun cargo net climb and in addition to the Atlas Balls, had to other carry obstacles in the Sand Bag Carry and Bucket Brigade Carry. The trail for the Sand Bag’s wasn’t that challenging at all and the loop for the Bucket Brigade was short and on very flat ground, I was able to do both carries really fast. Also on course, was the standard Spartan Monkey Bars and Inverted Walls. One point worth also mentioning is that the course had several really sketchy downhill sections that could easily break an ankle if racers weren’t careful. Another new for 2017 obstacle was the Spartan Twister, which is an upper body and grip-draining obstacle that has rotating/twisting sections for racers to monkey across and ring the bell.

I was happy to see one of my favorite obstacles on the course, the Herc Hoist, this is always an obstacle I can dominate and boost my ego at (lol). The course also included the mud mounds that ended with a dip wall to go under muddy dirty water, a second cargo net climb obstacle, the courses barbed wire obstacle was a nice and easy obstacle on a decent surface and not that long of a distance. The last two obstacles were the slanted wall with ropes for assistance to climb up and back down the ladder wall exit and the fire jump.

• The Off-Site/Event Parking Debacle:

Understandably, Spartan could not utilize on-site parking on property used by an active military base, so they had to use an off-site parking location. The problem was that whomever selected the parking location clearly was not familiar with the Bear Mountain/West Point area and they placed the parking at one of the worst locations possible. Between the parking and venue was a roadway that historically has traffic and delays (even on a good day) and the area’s largest and most popular shopping Outlets (Woodbury Common Premium Outlets) which was a recipe for problems and disaster.

From what I was told by some of the Military staff, several of the hired bus drivers ended their shifts early, leaving less busses to transport probably well over eight thousand people off site and back to the parking area. In addition, one of the roadways that happens to be one lane had an accident (according to Spartan staff) which caused greater delays.

I personally stood on-line for over four hours and didn’t end up leaving the venue until after 11PM at night. The majority of the Spartan staff appeared to leave the venue and very few stayed behind to coordinate the thousands waiting to get home.

I have done a great deal of Spartan races and this was by far the worst situation I have seen to date. With that said, I do want to give praise to Spartan staff member, Kelly who was left to handle the situation and she did a great job keeping the few buses moving and people on-line waiting, happy and content.

• The Bling:

The bling is pretty much the same as it was in 2016, a Military series finisher medal and the standard Sprint finisher shirt. This was actually the first the Military series finisher medal I have earned so I am very happy with it!

• Overall Feelings and Event Rating:

The course was fun, I personally would have liked it to be shorter, I don’t understand why Spartan likes to add way more miles than the minimum distances advertised. I come to do the obstacles and not run the trails so less distance with the obstacles less spread out would at least for me be a good thing.

The volunteers and staff (during the day) did a great job. The MC wasn’t anything special, which for an epic event like West Point was a little disappointing.

The off-site parking was such a nightmare that it warranted its own section in this re-cap and has to play a major role in my overall race/event rating. Due to the parking and lack of a great MC, I am rating this event a 4.5 out of 5 stars.

I do want to point out, the venue was awesome and this race should become an every year event, but Spartan needs to just do a better job of finding somewhere to park that is closer and not between area’s that will have potential delays and this could easily become a 5 out of 5 star event/race.

Article Written by: Walter F Hendrick (OCRSandy)