Obstacle Race Training Adventures
The crew here at Mocean365 is in full swing, training for fun and adventure at some upcoming Vermont and New England-based obstacle races. We are getting ready for the Spartan Beast and the Tough Mudder which are leading the charge in this rapidly growing sport.
Obstacle races are spawned from adventure races and are usually anywhere from 3 to 12 miles in length and feature heaps of obstacles and challenges along the way. They generally promote a festive and noncompetitive vibe and stand in stark contrast to triathlons (see the Vermont Sports story on the Tough Mudder here).
So we’ve been out training in the woods, fields and roadsides of Vermont. Coming up with workouts that read like an Amazing Race episode.
“Split into teams of two. You need to be attached via this rope the whole time and must have a 25-pound sandbag in your possession as you move. You have two 5-gallon buckets at your disposal and there is one saw between all the teams. You are required to do the following. Bring back one log no shorter than 8 feet and no longer than 10 feet with a diameter no smaller than 4 inches. You need to gather 10 stones from a river per person no smaller than 4 inches in diameter a piece. You must touch two trail signs of different colors. You need to do (per person) 100 jumping jacks, four sandhill climbs (attached by rope, carrying sandbag), 20 surf pop ups, 20 plyo jumps, 20 under the table pull ups, two sprints from bottom to top of hill. You also will be given the names need of the 10 poorest countries in the world and need to be able to recite them at the end or face the wrath of the burpee. Also name the first person to summit Mount Everest, first person to South Pole and highest mountain on East Coast. Ready … GO!”
And so it goes. Sessions like these make you work together, use your noggins and think on your feet. The challenges are fun and split up the other training days which can be anything from general outdoor conditioning to brutal suffer fests to anything in between. And of course healthy doses of the real fun stuff like biking, hiking, surfing and be active outside as much as humanly possible.
So maybe you’ve been thinking about doing a race and didn’t know how to train or if you could do it. Well, you can. Set a base, set some goals, grab a partner, get outside and MOVE!
Here are some pics of the people in action Getting OUT! (All pics property of Mocean365.)
