My OCR season highlights

My OCR race calendar for 2017 has been pretty epic, participating in 29 obstacle races in the UK and Europe. Learning from my race schedule in 2016, I decided to only do established OCR races and ones that have had good reviews from trusted racers. This meant that I didn’t run any “duff” races and can honestly say each 2017 OCR was awesome. You can take a look at my race calendar for all my reviews, but here are my OCR highlights from 2017.

• Europe’s Toughest Mudder
  • Tough Mudder is one of my favourite races series (in case you didn’t already know) but the Toughest Mudder series took it to the next level. Europe’s Toughest Mudder was based at the Midlands venue (Belvoir estate, near Grantham) and was a shortened (5 miles) Tough Mudder course ran for 8 hours, with participants running as many laps as possible within the time limit. The difficulty being that the race starts at midnight and ends at 8am. The winner, Jon Albon, completed 50 miles, whilst I managed 25. Next year I am back again and aim to completed 30 for “contender” status for World’s Toughest Mudder. ETM was my first taste of endurance racing and I loved the lap elements whilst keeping warm and fed through the 8 hours.

Arctic Enema (3rd of 4)

• Toughest
  • Toughest Races is a series that travels across Europe. I was fortunate enough to go to Amsterdam in the early part of the year and then entered again when Toughest came to Pippingford Park. So very different from other races I ran, giving me the opportunity to try new obstacles, whilst having the confidence of trying “fast lanes”. Copenhagen is on the TBC list for next year!

Start line selfie

• Tough Viking
  • Another European race makes it to the highlights, purely down to the obstacles and layout being quite different to anything in the UK. The Stockholm race was their “crown jewel” race and it didn’t disappoint. A series similar to Toughest, without being too serious with elements of Spartan. This 15km race had the tallest half pipe and longest swim I have encountered, whilst red bull at the half way point was pretty helpful!

Tough Viking Super Ramp

• Tough Mudder London South
  • Nothing really different about TMLS compared to other races, however it was the first one I ran solo. Really enjoyed the different experience that running solo brought about when the “challenge” is meant to be taken on as a team. I will be doing a few Tough Mudder races next year solo in preparation for ETM and WTM.

Tough Mudder London South BlockNess 1

• Tough Mudder Germany
  • I went to Tough Mudder Germany with  group of OCR Solo Mudders for a 40th birthday party. The race itself was the longest Tough Mudder I had ran (20km), whilst the “surprise” obstacle (20m slack line) was a fun addition. This is in my list of highlights, not because of the race, but the company and the weekend surrounding it. Oh and birthday cake and Jaegarbombs in electro-shock therapy.

Honourable mentions

• JCB Mudrun – a great local OCR (£40 including beer and burger at the finish) ran by JCB with ALL proceeds going to charity.
• Wolf Run – Another local run which gets thousands of runners over the race weekend. Solid obstacles with good trails. I can see why they have a great reputation
• Mudnificent 7 – A race hosted by Obstacle Race Magazine and made up of 7 different OCRs taking on a section each.
• Airfield Anarchy – Sadly the last “Epic Weekend” in which you were able to take on one of the best obstacles in the UK – Take Off.

That was my 2017 OCR highlights, I already have a number booked for 2018 and cannot wait to start the OCR season again!