OCD FOR OCR

As long-time obstacle course racer, I was looking forward to running this new Stadium Blitz OCR that was local and included Rob “Gronk” Gronkowski, the retired perennial all-pro tight end for the New England Patriots of the National Football League involvement and scheduled to be at the race.

• Registration and Festival:

Not much to say here. Pretty standard except that registration did open late. Gates was scheduled to open at 3:30 pm, but at 3:30, the Stadium Blitz staff was just coming out to setup registration with volunteers. We had to wait for them to get their tablets up and running, RFID tags out, and free socks.   There was a little confusion with volunteers on how to sign people in for the race, but I assume that smoothed out as more people came through. 

The festival area, or the Blitz Zone as they call it, just consisted of some local vendors in the concourse of New Era Field. There was a small merch table with some t-shirts, hats, mugs, shaker cups for sale.   One of the concession stands was open for beer, soda pop, nachos, pretzels etc. They also brought in a local food truck that was set up outside of the stadium.

• Pre-race MC:

As we were standing around in the concourse area hanging out and talking to fellow racers, out of the blue came a familiar face to many OCR racers. Dustin Dorough, who many of you know from Spartan Race. He was the pre-race MC and did announcements after the last wave went off. Unfortunately, there wasn’t the same level of energy from Dustin as many of us had become accustom to. Dan Gronkowski said a few words to get us hyped up, but other than that, racers lined up 10 at a time and every two minutes we went off, without much fanfare, which doesn’t bother me much. Just let me run, but I know many would have liked to have a little more to get them amped up. Maybe as the waves kept going off, it got a little more amped up. 

• The Course:

The course was a very beginner friendly course which is also gamified. What that means, is every obstacle you completed, you received points for. How do they know if you complete an obstacle? Racers wore an RFID chip on their wrist. At obstacles, there was a little sign where racers scanned their chip as they ran by it. If racers didn’t complete an obstacle or choose not to do one, they wouldn’t scan their chip and not get any points. Racers also were awarded points for every second they completed the course in under 40 minutes.

The obstacles were a cross between OCR and CrossFit: Toe the line, a balance beam. Pop & Drop, was an over under obstacle. Hang Time, a pipe traverse upwards that transitioned to a cargo net, then transitioned back to a pipe traverse downwards and finished up with ringing a bell. Ladder Drill, was just a scaffolding structure you climbed up and over and back down. I do think they should add some safety nets or mats under this one. Blitz Bags, bags provided by Gronk Fitness, a sandbag carry up and down some stadium stairs. KB Swing, a kettle bell swing (15x), QB1, a football throw, threw targets (racers had three attempts). Push limit, pull a sled to yourself, and then racers had to push the sled back to the starting line. The men’s sled weighed 180 lbs, and women’s 90 lbs.Peak Performance, Stadium Blitzes version of an A-frame, racers climbed half way up using rungs, then transition to a cargo net. Spin Class, a rig with rings, two of the rings were on spinners, with four rings on each spinner. Think of something similar to BoneFrog’s, Get to the Choppa. They also had some other obstacles, like a low crawl, speed jump ropes, High class, which was basically high knees (like a football drill), and a set of 3 walls to jump over.

Being this was in a stadium; we climbed many stairs. They made good use of the entire inside of the stadium, zig zagging up and down sections and running in between the seats and the outside concourse areas. The spacing of the obstacles was perfect and allowed for plenty of fast running through the concourse areas. 

All their major obstacles, 7 in fact, were right on the football field, so spectators had an excellent view to watch all the racers complete or attempt to complete each one. You could even get down on the field for a closer look. One of the coolest things, was coming out of the same tunnel that the Buffalo Bills do as we ran towards the last 3 obstacles. 

• The Bling:

Something different then your normal finisher shirt. They gave racers a pair of Stadium Blitz socks. Many people seemed to like that, rather than getting another shirt they just put away in the drawer. The finisher medal was nothing fancy, but it is eye catching and pretty heavy. Also, it’s not your regular circle finishers medal.  It’s rectangular. 

Stadium Blitz also hosted a post-race party off site at a downtown bar. The awards ceremony started at 9 pm and they gave awards to biggest team, 1st place team as well as overall winners. The overall winners received the Shaker Cups which were engraved. The biggest team received a plaque and a signed autograph by all the Gronkowski brothers, and 1st place team received a plaque as well. 

• Overall Feelings and Event Rating:

This is a great OCR to get new people into the sport. It had many first timers and they absolutely enjoyed it and said they would be interested in trying other OCR’s. For seasoned OCR veterans, don’t expect to be too challenged. This is a great race to go out with some friends and family and have a good time. The fact that kids as young as 7 can compete in this event is also nice, so you can get your kids hooked on OCR. In fact, I was surprised at the amount of kids on the course, which was really something to see. One father and daughter ran together, and they kept going back and forth and he kept encouraging her to run. That’s what it’s all about. It brought a smile to my face to see them bonding during this OCR and having fun while challenging each other.

Now there are some things they need to fix. The points, I think, is a cool concept, but it needs refinement. For one, asking OCR racers to slow down or even come to a complete stop to scan their RFID tag after completing an obstacle is not ideal. There were a number of racers that had to back track to an obstacle to just scan their chip.  Also, if volunteers aren’t paying attention or just don’t care, there is nothing from stopping a racer from scanning their chip even if they failed or skip an obstacle. They must come up with a better plan to register points for racers.

Also, if they really want to push the 5 on 5 team competition at their college races, they should limit how many people can sign up on a team, or just take the top 5 highest scores. Our team #OneBuffaloOCR had 69 team members, so we easily won 1st place because all 69 team members points counted toward the total.

Another thing, is the course markings. Now this wasn’t totally their fault because it was very windy, but one of the markers fell down and this caused about 10-15 of the leaders to veer off course and miss about 1/4th of the race. Stadium Blitz did allow those racers to go back out on course in another wave and re-run. This was nice to see instead of being DQ’d.

One of the cool things about Stadium Blitz is that they have an app (Android / Apple) you can download to your phone. It has the ability to live track racers, along with continuously updating time and point standings as racers cross the finish line. All race pictures are also uploaded directly to the app and they do have a facial recognition feature as well. 

Lastly, as noted above, Stadium Blitz hosted a post-race party, off site for the awards ceremony. I’m not sure if this will be the case for all events or if this was just due to the fact it was their first race and the Gronk’s are from Buffalo. But the fact it was downtown actually turned quite a few people off by that. For those of you not familiar with Buffalo, the stadium is in Orchard Park, a suburb of Buffalo. The event was held downtown, which is about a 20-25-minute drive away in our night club district. There was still a good turnout, but having the post-race party near the actual event would have probably brought in more people to the awards ceremony. 

This being their first official event, they did an adequate job. They have some things to work on and I’m sure that will all get smoothed out as they get more events under their belt. There was nothing that happened race day that would prevent me from signing up again. Overall though, I would still recommend this race. There’s something about stadium races that are just cool and being on the field at the 50-yard line looking around while under the lights was just amazing. If you look at this race as a beginner race to have some fun with friends and family and maybe get someone new introduced into OCR you won’t regret it. The smiles and laughter I saw on course through the entire race, whether they were 7 years old or 70 years old proved that everyone was really enjoying themselves out there whether if was their first OCR or 135th. 

Because of the point system, distance to the after party, opening registration late, a somewhat lackluster MC performance, and the need for safety mats/nets, at least at Ladder Drill (the scaffold type obstacle) that actually was designed and built by well-know obstacle course owner/race director/obstacle designer Garfield Griffiths, for the no longer in business CMC reboot, where Garfield made sure to have safety nets, I am going to rate this event/course 3.5 out of 5 stars. As I noted above, this is a new race series and everything I deducted points for, are very correctable, so Stadium Blitz can easily raise the bar at its future events.

Article Written by: Eric Wisniewski (Hair)