A Man Without A Race (sort of)

I feel as if I was the last person on the planet to know it. I have been working on setting a pretty good foundation on the workout front & was set to start slowly building things up to prepare for killing it at the Men’s Health Urbanathalon in San Francisco.

I was thinking, hmm I have not received an announcement that the gates are open & early signups are in effect.

I didn’t get the memo

It is no more. Men’s Health is now partnering with Rugged Maniac OCR. Dagnabbit. I will try to  solidify my rant to just a couple sentences. I liked the Urbanathlon for what it was not. It was not dripping with mud, arctic enemas (yes it is a thing) or water slides. Nothing wrong at all with that, it is just great that Urbanatholon offered a different challenge. I liked it for things like the tough hills in San Francisco and the stairs – both you could not avoid, run around or find some way not to do. Of course yes it was a great excuse for me to take a trip north. Crap. Pout. Lastly, the overarching rant is looking forward to going back to challenge myself on the course and get a better time even if they throw more at us like they did last year.

However I will say this. I am happy that the race did not go belly up after entrants had already paid their fees. Leaving people on a note like that puts a bad taste in peoples mouths. I have nothing but good memories of it. It is a often common trend among OCR’s. I was looking into other races to do & remembered the Battlefrog races. But lo & behold it went under. At least Battlefrog returned the fees to those that signed up. I was really surprised as it seemed it was gathering steam pretty well. But maybe it was too fast.. Add some bad press to the mix of destroying parts of Lake Sonoma. No bueno. Definitely makes you appreciate all of the work it must take beasts like Tough Mudder and Spartan going.

So another door closes…

I have signed up for the Epic Series here in San Diego on December 17th. When I was searching for races I remembered reading about it last year. Looks right up my alley. I will for sure have a review of it. Aside from that…

I am volunteering at a Tough Mudder in October at its SoCal event.

Why? Why not? I get to:

1. Cheer on people in the race, I know how much that helps.
2. Have a birds eye view of the course & get ideas of strategy if I plan to do it.
3. Discounted entry fee for a future race! (so yeah, I guess I plan to do it!)
4. See how a big OCR runs behind the scenes & meet the people that make it happen.
5. Have some volunteer swaaag.

I still do want a reason to travel to San Francisco for a race. It was just a great trip, a challenging race & some fun r&r in the city for the next couple of days. I have not seen anything yet. I will do a Spartan someday or the other popular ones. But I just wanted to try something different. If anyone has any suggestions feel free to share!!

If you have any inquires about my personal training services outdoors, or group classes at Function First in San Diego…  or questions about OCR’s feel free to contact me at incrementalfit@gmail.com.

Ciao!

-Damien