OCD FOR OCR

This was obstacle course race # 2 on Saturday after first running the Pennsylvania Warrior Dash in the early morning and then driving for almost six hours and just making it to the Maryland venue in time to run the Sprint. I was looking forward to running at a new venue, for me, on both Saturday and Sunday.

• Registration and Festival:

I registered late in the day on Saturday and early in the morning on Sunday and both days registration was fast and smooth. The festival area was set up in a nice small area and everything was easy to locate and reach with no problems.

• Pre-race MC:

The pre-race MC for this race weekend was Jean-Edward Demery and he was awesome both days. It was a very hot and humid weekend, but that didn’t stop him from first doing a great job sending out the waves, but then switching over to the DJ booth at the finish line and giving words of encouragement to the finishers. He was still going strong on Saturday late in the day when the last few racers finished the course and he not only encouraged them as they finished, but he got the staff, volunteers, and remaining racers/spectators to come over and do the same.

• The Course:

As mentioned above, it was a hot and humid weekend and really bad on Saturday, so I remember thinking as I was driving from Pennsylvania that I hoped the course was designed with a lot of time spent in the woods and not in the direct sunlight. As it turned out, that is exactly was the course designer did and the majority of the course was spent in the cover of trees and out of the direct sunlight.

The course immediately entered the wooded trails and exited the festival area, I was impressed with the trails and terrain and how often it either went up or down a hill. This wasn’t a flat course for the most part and even though most of the ups and down were short, they did add up as they were often and even with being out of the sun it was still so hot and humid that I started seeing racers literally laying on the ground trying to recover about a mile and half into the 4.8 miles course.

The first sprint wasn’t that long and after a steep hill climb, exited the woods and came to the first obstacles on the course which was Overwalls to hop/jump over. The course stayed in the direct sunlight for a short sprint and then turned and entered back into the woods. After a very short sprint in the woods, we came back out into the open area and up next was the over-under-thru obstacle, but with a twist, the under portion was a short barbed-wire crawl. The course now entered back into the woods and didn’t take long to arrive to the next challenge, which was the memorization challenge, I have to be honest, the last five Spartan races with this challenge didn’t actually ask the racers for the answer, so I assumed it was a bluff again and skipped it on Saturday. Well I was wrong and they did actually ask for the answers late in the course!

The was a challenging Sprint when you combined the heat, humidity, up and down trails and obstacles selected. The course included several carry obstacles: Farmers Carry, Bucket Brigade, and the Sand Bag carry which all happened to be in that order back-to-back-to-back and I felt like I was going to die on Saturday doing the bucket brigade, my lower back was killing me and I was severely dehydrated and had to stop and take at least six breaks to complete it. On Sunday, I stopped once and that was because my headphone fell out of my ear. The course also included the Atlas Carry later on after the above mentioned three.

Just a short distance after the three carries was a very long Barbed-wire crawl which again was much harder for me on Saturday than Sunday. Just after the crawl came the Z-Walls obstacle which was a nice change of pace at this point of the course. The course also included a third short Barbed-wire crawl and a not that high off the ground series of two Hurdles obstacles. Other obstacles on the course where the A-Frame Cargo Net Climb, Rolling Mud Mounds and Dunk Wall, a natural terrain climb with the assistance of ropes, the Spear Throw (I nailed it both days!), Inverted Walls. which was so hot on the back side of the obstacle on Saturday I thought I was going to burn the skin off my body, and the rope climb.

The course finished with one last brief trail sprint and then exited the woods and came back to the festival area and finished up with the Multi-Rig, then Stairway to Sparta and last but not least, the Fire Jump.

• The Bling:

The bling was the standard Spartan Sprint finisher medal and shirt, I had kind of hoped that they would do a special finisher medal for the Washington DC race, but that wasn’t the case.

• Overall Feelings and Event Rating:

The course and terrain was not what I was expecting for the area and the race director did a great job of designing a course that used both to its fullest potential. The obstacles were what I have come to expect for a Spartan Sprint and the decision to place the three carries back-to-back-to-back was evil, but did make it more of a challenge.

The course and obstacles were a challenge, the volunteers and staff did a great job both days in hot and humid conditions, the bling is always top notch with Spartan, the MC was awesome both days both at the starting line and DJ booth, so I am going to rate this Sprint a 4.8 out of 5 stars. I only deducted for the second short Barbed-wire Crawl and Hurdles obstacle or this would have been a perfect score.

Article Written By: Walter F Hendrick (OCRSandy)