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A much smaller medal hoard than previous years. I'm still enjoying the races but I've reduced my participation with race events as I wanted to focus on other on other life events besides active ones. Yet I still had the opportunity for new experiences such as the original obstacle race Tough Guy, 6 hour Endurance Race at Gravesend, Make the Future Live eco event, a Ninja style competition, 6 hour Endurance race in Paris and finally got to roll along for the annual Skate Fresh Party. I hope to keep active in 2018 with lot more fun, exciting, active experiences however they may be.  Tough Guy 2017, Urban Ninja 2017, Survival of the Fittest London 2017 and Bear Grylls Survival Race Trent Park 2017.
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 Back for its second year but even with Time Out's entry offer of £33.00 it really failed to draw in the punters. All of the obstacle builds were of a significantly smaller build quality. Very little was going on in the event village which was one of the highlights of last year. Because of these reasons I will be very surprised if this event will run again.
Having said all that we enjoyed what the event offered, its just a shame it did not live up to its inaugural event. I had a fantastic day at the Ninja Warrior competition at the Arch Climbing Wall. This was the first ninja style competition in London. Twenty competitors duke it out in three obstacle heats where you are ranked based on your course time or the obstacles completed.
Jacob Peregrine-Wheller (Ninja Warrior UK contestant), the organiser from West Coast Parkour was incredibly welcoming regardless of ability, for both regulars as well as newcomers like myself. The session started with a fun icebreaker warm up. All through the day everyone was very supportive of one another's performances. It was a great creative use of the space with regards to the obstacles and it was just as enjoyable to have an opportunity to try out these new contraptions! The whole day was brilliant and inspiring. I would definitely recommend West Coast Parkour for ninja and parkour training. As for my performance I was a little disappointed with messing up with some of the balancing obstacles. I feel I should definitely be a lot better at this considering I'm a skater! An area not to overlook! Watching the others perform feats which sounded impossible was incredibly inspiring though!  Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of fun at today's Survival of the Fittest event at Wembley. However the course was a kilometre shy of the usual 10k and there were noticeably less obstacles. We're not talking of just missing a hay bale to climb. A lot of stand out obstacles were absent such as 'The Big One,' a multi containership to scale, monkey swinging from suspended barrels, running through the beer tent with a keg and the travelator! Although I was on an early wave it definitely felt quieter than usual. My friend on the final wave said his experience was much the same. The event has downscaled.  So this begs a question. Are we already on the decent of the craze that is obstacle course racing?  I really hope we are not seeing the shrinking of OCR as its opened up a whole area of fitness that I've come to appreciate and it would be unfortunate for others to not have the opportunity to do so too. Today I enjoyed running the race on my own to really push myself, but I still enjoy partaking as a group where you can really bond and conquer experiences together.
Well, lets see what the future holds... The overall setup for Urban Ninja remains the same since our first visit in 2015. Although the crash mats and air bags had a welcome improvement! Last time the giant cotton wheel wasn't up and running so I was excited to give this a shot. In this video it whipped me off right at the end, but it was after the blue crash pads so I guess thats a successful attempt?! We all managed to complete an obstacle we failed previously so definitely feel accomplished today! For me it was jumping off a trampette and pushing your arms and legs out to suspend yourself between a set of parallel walls, before shimmying along the corridor. AKA the spider walk!
The final timed event uses the same course as before so you can compare yourself to previous years which it is impossible to do so on other OCR events. Another thing is that you have to complete all obstacles within the three minutes in order to win the medal, which again is not done at other events. We like what Urban Ninja are doing. Although it would be great to see some new obstacles too! We had our first visit to Ultimate Ninja, a Ninja Warrior style training centre which has obstacles inspired from the TV show which originates from Japan (Sasuke). The centre itself is very close to Hythe train station but as its a smaller stop the trains are less frequent. We decided to instead get an earlier train to Colchester Station (a bigger station with more frequent stops) which allowed a bit of buffer time. If there were train delays we had an option of a taxi from Colchester, but trains were good today so we opted for a forty minute walk instead. The centre itself was good fun and it had a lot of obstacles to keep us occupied for the hour for a reasonable price of £10. (Best to book in advance). Having had a go at everything I have new found respect for successful contestants of the show who are doing these obstacles back to back. As the title suggests we will be back again as we really like what they are doing. It will be interesting to see if they update some of the obstacles occasionally to keep things fresh. The journey time and train fare (£20 return approx) from London however stops this from being a regular venue for us. We envy the locals! It took a couple of attempts but was very happy to have 'beat the wall!' Pre Race. Tough Guy is considered to be the godfather of modern obstacle racing, so I as I write this prelude to my pilgrimage from Euston to Wolverhampton I'm filled with a mix of fear and excitement as I turn up my music to help diffuse the prior. Before my first ever OCR I felt all of those things but as I complete these events the more these feelings have faded. 'Race hardened,' I like to think. So why am I feeling nervous this time?
As I journey into the Midlands I go through my OCR checklist. I have a couple of new race items including:
Next stop, Wolverhampton....  Wulfrun Accommodation. So the hotel wasn't as bad as other people were saying. Yes it a little rough on the edges with no reception and you needing to get the keys from the off-licence next door. (I only knew this from reading another review). There was a definite damps smell in the building but the heating was on. My room had its own shower and toilet but it was across the corridor. There were a few things that need fixing like the wardrobe and shower pipe but everything functioned. I think the bed looked quite old. (But trendy if you call it "shabby shique."). The guy who showed me my room was friendly enough and was happy for me to check out earlier than the usual time of 9:00. I stayed on a Saturday evening and you could here some parties happening somewhere. One thing that bugged me though was the green safety was quite bright for catching some z's. Wulfrun isn't quite the Twilight Zone as described by other reviewers and I've stayed in worse places. If you want a place to stay for an evening in Wolverhampton and are happy to accept its peculiarities then go for Wulfrun.   The event. Considering this was the 30th and last ever Tough Guy I must say I was disappointed by the overall experience. Other much newer events have taken the OCR format and surpassed the TG offerings. The event itself seemed to have out grown its facilities. Registration had such a long queue. There was no bag drop so you have to trust that your bag will still be where you left it. Showers were indoors and hot which is a massive thumbs up but it struggled to handle the vast amount of people there. I did however get a free sports massage prior to the race to help the muscles warm up! The start time was 11:00 however we were left without any indication of why there was a delay. Only a crackly speaker spouted something which intended to be music. Half an hour passed before someone started to get the crowd going with some group chants. The guy needed a decent microphone and speakers as his megaphone did little to reach us at the back. After forty minutes we finally got going. Well a little jog before the first queue. The fact that all five thousand set off together meant this should not have been a surprise. I thought Tough Mudder was bad for crowding but Tough Guy takes the crown for queues and this was also the theme of the day. The course itself had a lot of repetitive obstacles, to the point where people were getting a little fed up. You aren't really proving anything by getting in and out of a muddy trench three dozen more times!  The ugliest medal design award goes to Tough Guy. I didn't think the course was all that imaginative. Just a lot of hay bales, logs and steep muddy hills to climb. Tough Guy likes monotonous cargo nets to climb under too. I was happy that I managed to not get struck by the electric cables. Did here a few screams though. I've come to discover I really like the upper body focused obstacles which unfortunately there was only one. (Runners from the competitive wave had a few extra upper body obstacles). We had just one set of hanging tyres to monkey across. I managed three tyres. After I started going to the next obstacle but turned around to queue for a second attempt at the tyres. Got half way but one of the tyres buckled with my weight! The torture chambers had tubes to crawl through but some were dead ends. As there was so much bottlenecking I'm assuming the vast majority never went down the wrong shaft. Queues towards the end had one benefit which was the close proximity of other races offered a little extra body heat and shielding from the elements. Although if there weren't queues you'd probably warm up by moving instead! The final obstacle was a wade through more water before a ten minute wait to queue over the finish line. An incredibly undramatic finale. My post has been mostly negative and that's partly due to the hype surrounding this race, but I did enjoy parts of the race. Just the repetitive nature and multiple long queues in particular stuttered the overall experience. In terms of "toughness," it's not really anything extraordinary compared to other OCR events. This is a real shame that I have come away disappointed from Tough Guy, but I salute the event organiser Mr Mouse for bringing OCR into the world for without him and his original entrepreneurial existence there would have been a lot of other experiences I may never have discovered... PS.
After reading some Facebook event reviews it turns out that a bunch of obstacles were closed off due to time restrictions. This is disheartening to hear as due to all the queues there was little I could have done to make my race quicker in order to have made the cut off. It seems like the front wave runners all had a more fulfilling experience than myself stuck in the last wave. My obsession with OCR has led me to start this blog and so whenever I hear of a documentary on this sport I have to take a look. The Rise of the Sufferfests is one such feature.  I don’t normally re-watch movies or shows so I decided to rent this from the iTunes store. Standard definition download for me as I was watching it on the train. Note for future is to make the purchase on the device you intend to watch it on as the system for transferring the rental from one device to the other is not at all intuitive. (I also seem to have unintentionally tricked the system into giving me a second viewing of the rental).  Scott Keneally delves into the world of obstacle racing which he dubs ‘The Sufferfests.’ For me OCR has never been about “suffering.” Sure we have our moments that are out of our comfort zone, but I wouldn’t have say I was experiencing the pains of something like a famine! I suppose the marketing title grabs attention though.
After the introduction he goes to where it all started, Tough Guy. Right now I am a week away from participating in my first ever Tough Guy event so to hear race director Mr Mouse explain Tough Guy’s ethos “is to give people a taste of the worst of life, completely and utterly,” is hardly comforting. I’ve done plenty of races claiming to be the most extreme and challenging but this guy seem like the real deal. I think the current British winter chill with it’s frozen lakes is making this really hit home. I enjoyed the documentary for the most part, particularly with the origins of the sport. Interviews are throughout with prevalent people in the industry, as well as the controversies and event rivalries. They go over why people partake which I can relate a lot to. Scott Keneally talks about his own experiences but at times it felt too personalised and irrelevant to the wider audience. It’s great that he’s become a father during the production but it felt like a far stretch to fit that into this OCR documentary. Keneally loves this sport, however the film portrays that OCR and pain go hand in hand and that simply is not true. I think this angle may put people off who are on the fence of attempting an OCR. One look at my Color Obstacle Rush video and you’ll see exactly what I mean!  It did require me to dig deep and summon up motivation, especially after a night of New Year celebrations and a rather grey landscape outside, but I was glad to make it out. Was good to see other people also made the effort to venture outside during my wet 11k interval run of road, fence vaulting, hill sprints and forest trails.
Happy New Year everyone!
 2016 events that gave finishing mementos: Sport Relief: Queen Elizabeth Park; Spartan Race: Queen Elizabeth Park; Run Through: Lee Valley Velopark April; Tower of London Run; Adrenaline Rush: Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park; Color Obstacle Rush: Kempton Park; Wildfire Adventure Camp; Great Newham Run; Lee Valley Velopark July; Decathlon 5k Surrey Quays; London Inline Marathon; London Inline Marathon: 1st Place Senior Group; Toughest Oslo; Doughnut Dash; Rough Runner: Clapham Common 5k; Rough Runner: Clapham Common 10k; Bear Grylls Survival 10k |
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"Any tips, reviews and advice are my own opinions and are not to be taken as professional view points. The information on this site is what has worked for me and is here for guidance only, but I hope you gain insight into the various activities I partake in." Jonathan Chen Archives
December 2019
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