OCD FOR OCR

This was my third year in a row running this Spartan venue Super and unfortunately I was under the weather dealing with a both a cough and sinus infection. I arrived the night before and slept in my car and I could hear it pouring rain all night so I knew the course was going to be very muddy and slippery on at least Saturday.

• Pre-race MC:

The pre-race MC for both days was nothing special to write home about, he injected a little of his humor to his speech, but it was pretty much the standard Spartan pre-race speech that I have heard well over sixty times prior and at least for me, I get almost no motivation out of it. I wish Spartan would allow its MC’s more room to improvise and add something to the pre-race speeches to help motivate racers that have done previous Spartan Races.

• The Course:

The course was a tale of two race days. On Saturday, it rained most of the previous night, and off and on most of the race day, which made for a very muddy, wet, and for some, cold race day. The course included most of the well-known Spartan obstacles including the high hurdles, a series of walls to climb over, the Inverted Wall, Monkey Bars, the Multi-Rig, Stairway to Sparta, the very muddy and challenging Z-Walls Traverse, the Tyrolean Traverse, the Spartan Rope Climb, two barbed-wire crawls, the Slip Wall, which was just after the second barbed-wire crawl and a very slippery angled wall and rope to climb up, the Spearman Spear Toss, and the course finished up with the Dunk Wall and just after that the Fire Jump, which was a nice chance to clean off some of the mud just prior to finishing the race!

The course also included its share of carry obstacles, including a log carry, Farmers Carry, which is two longer logs with chains attached to carry a short loop in each arm, a sandbag carry on a nice and easy wooded trail, the Bucket Brigade up and back down a not so bad loop section, (but with the rain and mud on Saturday was more challenging), the Atlas Ball Carry, the always fun and getting heavier the more it rains Hercules Hoist, and the Plate Drag that gets more challenging the muddier it gets.

As mentioned above, this was my third straight year doing the Super at this Mountain Creek Resort and I also ran the Beast at the same venue last year and this was the best use of the venue to date. The course wasn’t just a bunch of death marches up the mountain and running back down, but rather was designed by Norm to take racers in the wooded trail sections of the course for the majority of the just over ten miles course. The course included some very technical sections that if racers weren’t careful and paying attention could end with a fall or broken ankle, but racers clearly were aware of this and most took their time to get through these sections. Racers were also very good about moving aside to let faster racers get past them.

As always with Spartan, I would like more obstacles and less trails, but that is just my opinion and the course did include just about all the current Spartan obstacles and several entries into the water and when you combined the rain on Saturday and colder brisk fall day on Sunday that added an element to the course for both days to make it even more challenging. I personally wouldn’t have minded if the course was shorter in distance as I think the course would still have been challenging and had the exact same number of obstacles, but again that is just my personal opinion and I am sure most racers enjoyed the course being longer than it had been most previous year’s.

• The Bling:

The bling is the same as it has been for all of 2016, the newly designed finisher medals and finisher shirts. I like the medals and the shirt, but am looking forward to a cool and new sexy look for 2017 Spartan bling!

• Overall Feelings and Event Rating:

The course was one of the better Spartan technical wooded course I have done in a while and as indicated above, it didn’t just spend the entire time going straight up and back down, but rather used the mountains to crisscross through the wooded sections and I couldn’t help think how skilled Norm Koch is when it comes to designing trail courses and not just obstacle courses. I actually think the mud was a plus for me, as it made the ground softer and easier to run through.

I have three Spartan races left in 2016 and then I am off to England for many new and unique obstacle course races, I am looking forward to those races because my favorite Spartan course designer/director Dan Luzzi is designing the course, but I have to admit, I really hope Spartan goes back to the drawing board prior to 2017 and adds several new and unique obstacles.

The course was very challenging, the trails were awesome and Norm and his team clearly worked hard to design it, the weather went from being from very warm to borderline cold and for some miserable, which only made for a more challenging race weekend, the bling is what it is and I am always happy to add more Spartan bling to my collection, the MC was average at best, but I am not sure I can blame the MC for that, the staff and volunteer where awesome and smiles all weekend under not so perfect conditions. I am rating this course/event a 5 out of 5 stars based on giving Norm and his team additional points for the hard work they clearly put in and the entire staff and volunteers team doing an awesome job all weekend long.

Article Written by: Walter F Hendrick (OCRSandy)