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| - The race was fantastic - the organization sucked.
This was my first obstacle race, it was so fun and now I'm hooked!
Parking was congested and was a ways away from the race, but that's usually the case at these sort of events. When we arrived at the check in area it was all kinds of chaotic craziness! There were swarms of people all clumped together trying to check in to the event. After standing in a so called line for several minutes, people around us informed us that apparently there were different lines - you were to check in alphabetically by last name. What was annoying was that none of the lines were clearly lines, they all sort of blended together and you couldn't tell which line was which until you were almost to the front. People were jumping from line to line at the front because everyone seemed to be in the wrong line. It took over an hour to check in, get your t-shirt, race bib and timing chip, and just about everyone ended up being late for their starting heat. I heard that last year's event was a lot more organized, and this would have been avoidable had they had staff directing people on where to go. It was a frustrating, but what can you do?
The bag check was much of the same disaster as the check in lines, but we were able to sneak up to the front and avoid the wait there. Once we got checked in they informed us we could start with the next heat, even if it wasn't ours so that was a plus, no more waiting.
The obstacles were a blast and varied in difficulty, the first was a steep hill you had to climb with the assistance of a rope, the next was a giant slip and slide, and so on. Everything from running through tires, to wading through waist high water, to climbing rope walls, to scaling walls, to crawling through mud under barbed wire. With lots of off road trails in between. The race was timed but most didn't take it too seriously so it was fun to just run when you wanted and walk when you didn't. At the finish line you ran through two rings of fire and received a finishing medal and beer ticket.
They had photographers around the race and they got plenty of pictures of us, unfortunately they charge $9 each to download or to order a 4x6 print. Ridiculous!
I can't wait to to do it again next year!
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