Obstacle Course Racing; Caveat Emptor
By:
The sport of obstacle course racing has blown up over the past few years and continues to grow in popularity. Well established race companies such as Spartan Race, Tough Mudder, and Warrior Dash all play a huge role in this popularity surge. But like with any good idea, there will be copy cats who fail to produce the same quality of product, and sometimes fail to produce a product at all. Due to a recent string of obstacle course races being cancelled, some without refunds, I have decided to address the issue of how to pick out an obstacle course race to sign up for.
Do some research on the race before handing them your hard earned money. Here is an article that offers some pretty solid advice and I suggest that all read it; http://obstacleracingmedia.com/editorial/which-new-races-should-i-avoid/
Do not let this scare you from some of the smaller races though. This year, my girlfriend and I have attended two seperate \"small-time\" obstacle races/mud runs. The first was the Mud Ninja in Ohio. This event turned out to be awesome and well worth the registration fee! We cannot wait to go back next year. The obstacles were solid, varied in difficulty, and you could tell that a lot of work went in to it.
The second race was the Saving Sunny Dog Waller in Indiana. The course and terrain was absolutely beautiful and well versed... however the obstacles were a bit questionable. This still didn\'t ruin the race experience though, we went into knowing that this was a first time OCR being hosted by an Animal Shelter.
Have realistic expectations for the race, a well organized \"professional\" OCR can cost from $100-415K to host. This doesn\'t mean to get suckered into handing over $80+ just to have the event cancelled.
Corey Clark
Tri-State OCR League, Founder
Huntington Road Runners, Secretary