OCD FOR OCR

Each WarX race is unique, in its own way, but all are military inspired themed with gunfire, explosions, smoke and chaos to assist in getting your legs and adrenaline pumping! Racers that completed all 3 races in a single year received the coveted War-X Campaign Medal! They also hold a survival weekend! Held in the beautiful hills of southern Ohio, where the roads meet the treetops.

WarX Campaigns:

• Frozen Chosin – 02/23/2019
• Trenchfoot – 05/04/2019
• Time Crisis – 06/28/2019
  
  
• Registration and Festival:

Quick and painless registration in a military tent style festival. Obviously, a hard-core military presence always feeds good energy in the area and this place was buzzing. Free parking at the venue was close to the village or at worst a short walk up hill (nice warm up). The wash up area is nicely placed right at the finish line, which means not grabbing your gear with mud everywhere. After the race, plenty of good food and beverages were available to replenish what was spent.

The merchandise tent was awesome, offering a variety of swag and survival items. Changing tents were also provided. Activities in the village were fun corn-hole, albeit challenging pull-up competition, hatchet throwing. Then there was the handgun shooting course in which the Range/Course Marshall was very informative and safety conscious. The shooting course required participants to move stealthily through a bush setting, with a handgun, shooting multiple spinning metal targets as well as profiles all while changing magazines on the fly for time! For a smaller local race, this festival has got it going and will only get better as this race grows.

• Pre-race MC:

Race director Jake Moore passionately delivers an honest, light-hearted briefing, you can see that he truly enjoys what he does. Information is given in a clear, concise manner so that everyone was on the same page.

Operation Enduring Warrior (OEW) pre-race introduction was respectful and personal and always gives me chills, these folks are all in and care about their purpose. Vets and first responders helping their own! Honored to be on the same course as the candidates trying to join OEW, one of which was a trooper whom was shot in the line of duty. Amazing to see him out in this environment!

• The Course:

With just over 7.5-miles of very technical trails and course, this battlefield event started in tall grass with the first stealth movement being a 30-foot barbed wire crawl (lead by John Moore) under heavy assault rifle fire, before being sent off on our own. I lost a shoe in the mud in the first 1/2 mile, but the next viable obstacle was a cargo climb over the driveway into the venue. This obstacle set the tone for the race because it was the closest to the base, racers would be until they finished. Most of the obstacles on the course, stay here and have become part of nature. There are many intentional and unintentional balance obstacles at WarX such as trees over creeks, bars to slide across, rock formations to navigate, cables to pass, as well as, a balance beam and a wire labyrinth while you log carry.

The elevation on this course is deceptive (approx. 2300-feet) due to the manner, in which the trail inclines snake up and down the hills through the thick growth of summer, which provided welcoming shade to runners and insects alike. I think most would rather deal with horse flies, gnats, tics, than deal with the extreme sun that warmed the day. Thousands of colorful dragonfly’s zooming around in the forest hills also made it worthwhile.

The first ascent had a rope climb (in the middle of it) which really got the heart rate up. Believe me, when I tell you there was no shortages of ropes to climb and repel at WarX! Natural ladder climbs, 8-foot, 10-foot walls and plenty of creative fences that kept racers pushing as they all seemed to be placed on steep inclines in the woods. Even the culvert jumps, and culvert crawls were placed strategically on energy sapping inclines. A great portion of the race was also spent running along the side of majestic hills, running on uneven 45-degree angle does interesting things to the ankles and feet, sometimes skirting 20 to 30-feet drop-offs to the valley below!

WarX terrain puts forth everything you can imagine underfoot, infinite pine needles, tiny gravel, cement like mud, sawgrass swamp (sure to give you later reminders of your efforts), the silkiest sand, smooth washed over rock formations, refreshing ravines and the finest black dirt you’ll find anywhere! The southern hills in Jackson, Ohio, provide some of the coolest descents in OCR! Granted I’m slow, but some of the descents were 8-10 minutes long with sure footing. The forest was very dense and the trails going down were often narrow (single line to the point of turning sideways at points), zigzagging down for very long stretches at a time. Add in the fact that this race has a way of spacing runners out, you may spend miles alone listening to 50-caliber bullets belting out and explosions off in the distance that seem to always catch you not in the now.

That being said, the course was marked very well (for a war style event) basically in a forest/jungle environment. Some parts of this race have you in waist to shoulder high vegetation and yet flags are placed 5-8 feet apart, making it difficult to get lost. If you didn’t see a flag for a minute, just backtrack and you’ll be back on course. The course included one of the best, if not the best verticals cargo climbs in OCR, straight up a cliff rock face!

I would be remiss, if I didn’t mention how interactive the crew and race are, the water carries had racers bring water to a water station and the ammo can carry brought ammo to friendlies! Racers were also randomly called upon to fire an assault rifle at a target and do push-ups if they missed the target. OEW members were randomly all over the course, motivating racers after completing obstacles and motivating racers on to the next obstacle.

This course also included the benefit of a river which had multiple, more than fun challenging water crossings! A treadmill tread stretched high across the river (be steadfast), 2 zip-lines, 3 varieties of horizontal rope traverses, a plank jump, and believe it or not, a rig with cargo hanging suspended over  the river. After the river play, a fire hose labyrinth party awaited.

Up next, the course went into the swamps for Sawgrass (dry sawgrass that wrapped around racers skin and literally slowed us down). The course also added two new technical obstacles: “Misery”, an inverted wall with a rolling log at the top that made it much harder to traverse up and over and “Grinch” before one last decent.

At this point, all the upper body and grip strength obstacles had racers completely exhausted making the last technical obstacle even more insane! Racers had to climb a platform and then get to a giant rolling cylinder and rotate it over to the end (this is always tougher than I expected). Last but, not least, was another barbed wire crawl and then came one last trail sprint up the last hill to the finish! This course tested racers physically, mentally, and emotionally!

Hits and Misses: Certainly, the terrain here is a hit resembling a jungle with the dense vegetation. Awesome descents and epic water crossings. Miss: Any technical obstacles are a benefit, adding maybe one more rig to make the Grinch even meaner will elevate this course to legendary status!

• The Bling:

Every shirt at WarX is unique, I am a relic hunter, to me medals, headbands, and other cool trinkets represent all the hard work I put in. The dog tags at WarX are just that! The WarX campaign medal is like booty to a pirate. In my eyes, its priceless and the work I put in to complete all 3 of these campaign events are equivalent to any trifecta minus the burpees. Yep I said it!

• Overall Feelings and Event Rating:

The obstacles were placed perfectly and the “no man or woman left behind” theme fits well here as not everyone will finish this course (yep I said that too). This course can be unforgiving, but with the help of other participants and race crew, racers were better coming out the other side.

Jake Moore was at the finish line giving out dog tags is how it should be done! He was clearly invested until the last runners came through. The whole WarX crew was/is phenomenal and the race photos go above and beyond here, as it was normal to find them in precarious places taking shots!

I cannot go without mentioning and giving my props to the Operation Enduring Warrior members who ran the course and then continued training for another 12 hours after! 

WarX is a life changing experience! Nothing but upside as they consider 15 minutes down the road to a more spectacular friendly venue! I rate this race/event 4.9 out of 5 stars!

Article Written by: Troy Hall