OCD FOR OCR

Although I am physically not in the same shape I was the last two race years, I still planned to do the Vermont Beast on both Saturday and Sunday.

• Registration and Festival:

Registration went well in the early AM both Saturday and Sunday and was fast and easy. The festival area was set up at the foot of the mountain next to the venues, facilities and as always was set up well with everything easy to find.

• Pre-race MC:

The pre-race MC was okay both days, but nothing special and just seemed to be more scripted than I enjoy.

• The Course:

The course was designed well this year as far as spending a lot of time on terrains that were easier on the ankles and less likely to result with injuries due to what I like to call ankle biting/breaking technical terrain. I was slow on the climbs most of both days, but found I was able to run down most of the descent sections, both on dirt roads and in the wooded trail section, which I wasn’t expecting.

As most have come to expect, the hardest challenge of the course for most of us, was the climbs up or otherwise known as “Death Marches” and this year course saved the longest and most challenging climb for the last one! The course went up the Killington mountain an equivalent of four times, but not all “Death Marches” are created equal and at least one of the climbs up wasn’t that bad.

2016 also saw the return of the water swim to the walking bridge and a climb from the water up a hanging ladder and then crossing the Tarzan ropes obstacle. I am a massive fan of water obstacles and was happy to see it back, but unfortunately I had a very bad experience on Saturday which I am going to explain later in the recap.

The course had a total of around thirty obstacles that included two barbed-wire crawls and I personally was shocked how easy both crawls were compared to other Spartan event crawls, but I have to admit to prevent long delays, the shorter crawls made more sense. The course included signature Spartan obstacles like: Multi-Rig, Slip Wall, Spear Toss, Inverted Wall, Stairway to Sparta, Monkey Bars, Herc Hoist, Tyrolean traverse (not over water version), Rope Climb, Vertical Cargo-net, Z-Walls, A-Frame Cargo-net, Over-Under-Thru and Rolling Mud & Dunk Walls, which both days more bypassed then completed and from talking to racers they made the decision they didn’t want to get wet due to fear of getting hypothermia, I personally love obstacles that get me wet, but I am by far the minority and I see at the least the dunk wall skipped so often.

The course also included a large amount of carry/strength obstacles: Bucket Brigade, Sandbag Carry, Log Carry, Farmers Carry (two wooden logs with chains attached to carry in each arm), Atlas Balls, Plate Drag, and the Spartan Sled (similar to Plate Drag).

Other obstacles on the course were several wall climbs, Hay-bails, Hurdles, a Cliff Climb with the assistance of either a rope or rope-net and last but not least on the course was the Fire Jump.

• Swim to the Bridge:

On Saturday, I arrived to the swim obstacle and due to the fact I don’t use a PFD (life-vest) I was able to enter the water fast and in front of a lot of racers waiting to get the PFD on. I was over halfway to the bridge and feeling great, but to conserve energy I decided to swim on my back. While swimming on my back I noticed a racer in his early twenties who was wearing the PFD, but way to lose struggling with the swim and began to panic which with the combination of his PFD not being on correctly caused him to drown and in risk of his face going under the water. At this point I started screaming that he was drowning, but unfortunately the third-party staff was not paying attention, the kid in the kayak was looking down at his cell phone and no one was reacting to both my screaming and the young man’s struggles. At this point, I turned and breast-stroked back to the kid as fast as I could and rescue swam him all the way back to the shore before any of the staff finally realized something was wrong and came approached us.

I made the mistake of not resting and just turned and swam back to the bridge and climbed up the rope ladder, but didn’t make it across the Tarzan ropes, but I didn’t care much about the ropes, because all I could think about was all the years I grew up watching my dad train the most elite dive teams in the world and all the bodies we have recovered over the years and I was just so upset. I am the biggest fan and promoter of water obstacles being part of the sport of obstacle course racing, but it has to be done right and safe and I am sorry, but the third-party staff didn’t do a great job.

I spent the rest of that race upset and thinking about and my main agenda was to find the race director after I finished and make sure he knew what happened. Once finished, I was approached by a group of racers who didn’t even know the young man, I helped, but they wanted to thank me which was the best part of that race for me. The young man also thanked me later in the course when he caught up to me, which was awesome as well.

My conversation with Jason Barnes the Race Director was amazing, he was not having a fun night, a generator blew and he and his team had to tea with that, and he was having to tell both Ultra and non-Ultra racers they didn’t make the cut offs and deal with a lot of upset racers, yet he gave me his undivided attention for about thirty minutes.  Due to not having enough volunteers on Sunday to return the PFD’s he and his team made a tough decision to shut the water obstacle down which is and always will be the right decision.

• The Bling:

I was disappointed we didn’t get a unique/special finisher medal this time, but it wasn’t a founder’s race or the Spartan World Championships, so I guess I just am spoiled from the previous two years.

• Overall Feelings and Event Rating:

The third-party company that was hired to oversee the swimming section did a horrible job and came with less staff than they should for a swim that long with as many swimmers in the water at a single time, but I am not going to deduct from the rating because that wasn’t Spartan’s mistakes.

I am typically  not a fan of courses with Death Marches and long distances between some of the obstacles and always deduct from my ratings, but I came away very impressed with Jason Barnes and pretty much the entire Spartan staff this year as they clearly came with a goal to build a course and put on an event that would make those of us who still remember last year’s Vermont Beast weekend proud and happy, so I am rating the event/course a 5 out of 5 stars.

Article Written By: Walter F Hendrick (OCRSandy)