Down and Dirty Obstacle Race - Hartford, CT

Anyone been to Hartford, Connecticut?

Not me. I asked around and no one's been. Hmm, it's a city that used to have an NHL team, so how come no one's visited?

Subaru Down and Dirty Obstacle Race (formerly Merrell Down and Dirty Obstacle Race) has been on my radar for a couple of years. This season I finally get to cross it off my race bucket list.

There are two distances, 3 and 6 miles, and the extra challenge called the Brick Division - participants bring an empty backpack, the bricks are provided, and the choice to complete either the 3 or 6 miles with those bricks.

Of course I wanted to try 6 miles with bricks, hey it's perfect prep for GoRuck, right?

Hartford is about a 5 1/2 hour drive, but I get to drive through Vermont! Funny side note - telling the border guard exactly the nature of my visit gets him all curious. When I get to the part about the bricks, he's clearly amused. "Niiiiiice!" he answers.

Once I'm on site to pick up my race packet, I try not to look at the obstacles set up but invariably the camera comes out. It's also super humid (about 30C with humidity) so tomorrow should be a hot one.

Race packet includes a Brick Division finisher shirt (orange! yay), bib and small goody bag - Subaru buff, snack-size Larabar, two sample size Paul Mitchell leave-in hair treatment (whoa).

Pre-race fueling habits of a couple of my teammates are rubbing off on me, & thanks to Chowhound I find a cool burger place to check out - Plan B Burger (several locations in Connecticut), plus a decent beer menu.

Undecided about which burger to choose - 3 slider option!

Shout out to Mr. Lew and his burger quest, I think he may approve of their classic burger offering - freshly ground hormone and antibiotic-free beef, topped with lettuce, tomato, onion & their house special sauce. Simplicity rules!

Next day is race day, and interestingly enough the 6 mile heats are all before 8am. The venue is Riverside Park, a large and beautiful park that's pretty flat terrain-wise. I also check out a few of the activities happening before I load the pack.

A carnival game!

Anyone participating automatically gets a Subaru paracord bracelet (with another bracelet going to a member of the armed forces) As I'm mentioning to the volunteer that I can't sign in with a Canadian address, a guy nearby who overhears this mentions he's originally from Laval. Small world!

More freebies found in the Subaru VIP tent: lip balm, sunscreen, eye black stickers, Subaru lanyards..The bonus here for Subaru drivers is a parking lot just for owners (even a Subaru owner yes/no on the registration form!) The Subaru VIP's also got some snacks, coffee, and a Subaru-branded towel. (Wow, I just said 'Subaru' multiple times in the same paragraph! My English prof would have had my head for repetition)

The Larabar tent has 2 different flavours to choose from in bite-size format, as well as stickers!

As the start time comes closer, I finally head to the brick pile:

Men get 5, women carry 3; they weigh 5 pounds each. Participants were also advised to bring duct tape and packing material. Bricks get taped together, and like my rucking training - wrap them in towels (not the best move, as I'll find out later) to secure them and soften the edges.

There aren't many runners in the Brick Division, and since I haven't done an obstacle course with a weighted backpack yet I'm hoping I don't look like the rhino from Jumanji.

Brick Division participants get a head start before the open 6 mile runners, so it starts off with a short, grassy hill climb, then quickly back down to the first obstacle, the Mud Pit (first of two). Anyone with a backpack has to take it off and push it in front of them as they crawl under the banners.

The terrain is mostly flat, wide (enough to allow 2 runners to run side-by-side) and quite agreeable, so I manage a slow trot. Open participants start to pass and I wistfully think for a second, "If I wasn't carrying this rucksack with bricks..." then I'm forcefully reminded to run my own damn race (thanks, Solo. Now how do I get your voice out of my head? Hee hee)

Along the way, I get shout outs and encouragement from the runners, some think I'm crazy for wanting to run with 15 pounds strapped on me. When Brick Division participants pass and cheer on one another, there's a small bonding moment, as we call each other "brick." "Good job, brick!"

Behold the course map!

From an obstacle standpoint, none are very complicated or extremely difficult, and several involve variations of a cargo net climb.

- Low Crawl: crawling in a pool of water under a net. Again, the rucksack comes off, and it is dripping with water once I'm out. Uh-oh, the towels have soaked up the water, adding weight to my load. Suddenly the towel idea isn't looking bright in the least.

- Give me 20: just like in the army, drop and do 20 push-ups. Did them all on my toes, with the bricks :)

- Plank It: set of parallel bars that participants had to cross while in a push-up position (me on XMan's version) This was probably one of the harder ones simply because of the bricks. The girl next to me is grunting and groaning with effort.

- Marine Hurdles: like wall climbs, but looks like we're jumping over balance beams.

- Balance Beams: it's hard trying to stand up on it with a shifting weight on the back. Thanks to some kind and attentive volunteers, I get across.

- Cargo Climb: Classic cargo net climb.

- Monkey Cross: quite the original obstacle https://flic.kr/p/jnxRmC
(Pulling on the rope overhead means whoever's on the far side has less rope to work with)

- Tires: tire crossing but some are random stacks of two to prevent racers from running across. A neat twist

- Jim's Jungle Gym: variation of cargo net climb https://flic.kr/p/ngru3C
The footholds have enough real estate to plant and push with a leg to get up

- Ladder Wall: climb up one side, climb down the other. Located after a small, small hill climb.

- Military Walls: not quite a five foot wall, and as a little bonus we grab a slam ball (different weights for men & women)  to toss over the wall before we hop over. I try the usual of planting hands and jumping to get myself over - nope, not when I'm about 20 pounds heavier. Note to self: practice getting over smaller walls with rucksack.

- Tunnels & Original Hurdles: the "tunnel" looks like a fabric tube found in an indoor playground. Cannot fit self on all fours with rucksack in opening, so off it comes. Original hurdles = not quite five foot walls to jump over, and again need a boost for these.

- Sand Bag Haul: different weights again but not super heavy, short loop to carry

- Heavy Hoist: like Spartan's Hercules Hoist but with sandbags

- Chill Out: also found a few ice chunks floating near the surface

- Rock Wall: rock climbing handholds on wall. Pretty cool, however I'm getting fed up with the bricks and opt out of the highest wall

- Slippery Mountain: at first I thought, "Why is this so small?" when I saw it the day before.

Turns out it's covered in soap and we have to pull ourselves up while on our bellies. Nice!

The second mud pit is next and the water is GROSS. Light brown in colour, it leaves us stained that same colour, and I almost tip over backwards when I put my soaking rucksack back on. The second water crawl doesn't help much with rinsing off.

Finally, we get to the last obstacle, the Monster Climb: same thing on the way up & down

Finisher medal looks like a large, painted dog tag.

There's body wash provided at the rinsing stations. Yay! Smells like coconuts.

Finally get rid of the bricks, and two guys who are also emptying their rucks congratulate me on finishing. I mention I'm practicing for GoRuck but not sure how the actual event will turn out; one guy answers while grinning, "If you're crazy enough to do this with bricks, you'll be fine!" 

I figured I'd swing through downtown Hartford to grab a coffee (not Dunkin' Donuts) for the road, and find that everything's closed. It's close to 11am and no signs of life anywhere. The small town of Brattleboro, Vermont has more charm and character! (Except for the microbrewery not yet open when I arrive...)

Final thoughts on Down and Dirty Obstacle Race: glaring absence of photographers on course. Racers were invited to share their photos on the Facebook page, but not even one camera at the finish line? Minus 1.

I'd qualify this one as an entry level, and the 6 mile option is for someone who wants to test the waters of a slightly longer run with obstacles. I can already think of many fellow racers who would hit the ground running at full speed and never look back, since the only slowdown at some of the obstacles was the wait. Add the challenge by choosing the Brick Division, so at least there's some effort involved.

Would I do this again? Maybe, maybe not, but I realize the next day that my rucksack is beyond filthy even after a quick rinse after the race. It takes me almost half an hour to clean every single corner, seam, and compartment (many of which I discover while hosing the whole thing down multiple times) So I'd hesitate knowing the cleanup that follows...even as I'm posting this, I'm still finding hidden dirty spots.

Results are posted the next day, and I find there were 18 female Brick Division participants. Did I end up like the Jumanji rhinoceros? Well, close enough, as I'm second to last. Some people just took off at the start despite the weight, so that's something I'm going to have to practice. 

Crossed this item off the race bucket list, now next is another item - Perth Kilt Run. Will there be a Guinness record set that day?

Mud Hero Ottawa - the epic birthday shenanigans

Good Sunday morning, everyone.

I take a look at my legs and spot a few more bruises and scabs that I didn't see yesterday. Oh well, at least today we're in it for fun.

Up until now I've never run Mud Hero, and I've only heard good things about it from people of all fitness levels. That, and everyone is always sporting huge grins in the finisher photos and they are extremely muddy. 

I also get my first dose of Bridgehead coffee, hmm this may be my Ottawa go-to to fuel my caffeine habit.

We all gather and await the birthday girl and her entourage - we know something huge is coming up, we won't expect anything less. Plus, they've been very secretive. At some point we spot sombreros...

...they have dressed up as the 3 Amigos! I'd almost walked by them until I spotted someone wearing a team shirt (thanks, Justin)

We mug for photos along with mustaches before heading out to the start line. Already people are noticing the detailed costumes.

One of the plans is to push Tanya the birthday girl in the mud while she's not paying attention. Or perhaps engage her in a mud fight.

Since the race is being held at a paintball site, there's plenty of background decor for shenanigans. But first, some small incline walls to jump over, then some mud and water crossings. Someone gets the idea to ambush Tanya as she emerges out of a wooded area by throwing mud at her. Surprisingly, it holds its shape, almost like a squishy snowball! 

The volunteers are great - full of energy, always encouraging, and of course (un)willing recipients for muddy hugs and high-fives. 

Gotta love paintball terrain settings

Standard obstacles like cargo net climb, Kong (part ladder, part cargo net) climb, seesaw run, Car Park - the one I've been looking forward to, which is jumping across parked cars. And then with about 2km to go, behold the mud crossings.

I've done quite a few of these obstacle course runs where getting muddy is guaranteed, or advertised as "muddiest (insert distance in KM)", but this stretch was maybe amongst the longest mud crawls I've ever encountered. It was either squishy mud that sucked your shoes off, or swampy crossings (where some of us ended up armpit-deep)  

The birthday girl realizing she may be in too deep

I was actually reminded of my first-ever Spartan Race (Tremblant 2011) where the mud crossings were something like what we saw. It's laborious, we hear sucking sounds everywhere, people fall in including Tanya, who somehow blames me because I'm the closest!

The mud doesn't stop and then we get to the huge waterslide. So much fun, enough of a drop to gather speed before we hit a giant pool of water. (Somehow, someone's sombrero stayed on)

Keep your hands inside the ride at all times

Once we think we're de-gunked, then there's a huge mud pit crawl (under some wooden beams) to the finish. Combined with yesterday's event, I don't think I'll be properly clean for a week.

SO. MUDDY. There's even mud bulging in my side pocket!

A cool bonus is swapping the timing chip for a beer - Beau's Lug Tread! Yeah! Another cool bonus - at least 15 of us from the same team signed up so free Team Mud Hero buffs! Yeah yeah!

One of the best weekends so far in my race calendar - I do believe this edition of a birthday run may be something of a benchmark in terms of shenanigans. As for the rest:

- This song, and this song from the Rock Band party (now which one got stuck in your head?)

- en route to Ottawa, Jen remarks, "I think our stuff's beginning to smell now", but we also happened to be passing cows grazing

XMan Race Sutton part 2 - not having lunch = ?

Uh-oh.

As I said before, due to timing of changing of the volunteer guard, I didn't have a chance to eat lunch since I wanted to get in the next available afternoon wave. I don't think I'll bonk, but I also hadn't had a chance to fully hydrate. It's the cramps I'm worried about.

While waiting in the start line area, the 2nd to last obstacle (the warped wall - Dark Angel) isn't far away and the emcee is commenting on a participant's Speedo as he climbs over. It's Sexxy Eddy! I give him a shout out.

Off I go at 2pm and once again the course plotters have laid out some great trails. Some rolling climbs on grass, in and out of the trees...oh and obstacles, of course. 4 foot walls, log carry, a new one called Xosquelette (Exoskeleton):

There's lots of mud; unfortunately it's grey in colour, is rather pungent in odor and full of little rocks, some of which end up in my shoes. This will test the properties of my new socks by MudGear (review to come soon).

Barbed wire crawls (2 of 3), a tunnel crawl (Labyrinthe) get us all covered with mud for a stretch. Getting to the rope climb at that time of the day - the ropes are completely caked and I can't even get a proper J-hook and slide off, so I have to settle for the knotted rope.

When the angled walls appear, I help people get over, then I get a small boost. At the next wall, I'm all alone, so I throw caution to the winds and get myself over without looking too clumsy, or losing any teeth.

Top Gun (the paintball gun obstacle) comes up soon enough so I take a couple of extra seconds to guess where the barrel is pointing...and I hit the target with my first shot. Yay!

Making great use of the terrain and trees, we get to CZJ (Catherine Zeta-Jones), with crisscrossing strings to duck and weave around; Koalex - like Spartan's Tyrolean Traverse, without the water, plus it's angled downward. Thanks to CMQ spring training camp crash course, it's much easier to navigate (thanks Sara!!)

Still covered in mud, we slide under a fence and the 8 foot wall looms. I try to get over unassisted, but it's become a roadblock in my mind. Ugh. With a little help, I get over.

The monkey bars haven't changed, but once again I freeze and it's another roadblock. That, and maybe since I spent part of the morning pulling people over the SuperXman wall (or wasn't letting go of someone's hand...or maybe NOT HAVING HAD LUNCH), once I lift my arms to reach the first bar, they feel heavy. Arrrgghhhhh! I cooperate with someone and we help each other across. This is not how I wanted things to turn out.

Finally, a water obstacle, although at this point the mud is drying and looking like scales on my skin. It's like Tough Mudder's Cage Crawl, so once we are out we run down a slope towards none other than SuperXman. It takes me 2 trampoline bounces to get over that bad boy, so anyone who said they were too short for it...

Back in the woods we find another unique XMan creation, Le Funambule ("Tightrope Walker") - there are small knotted cords hanging at regular intervals, so particpants grab one and shimmy along to the next one to continue. The photographer captures participants in moments of extreme concentration:

"I have short arms...how will I grab this?"

Hell's Path, which is like Quintuple Steps, has been re-tweaked, I heard (steeper angles, wider apart). Both tries I fail so I run the penalty loop and move on.

More obstacles - a tire flip followed by a playground fence climb led to the most technical section of the race, which included 2 creek crossings. A pattern I'm starting to see with both XMan and XTrail at this venue is coming out of a large drainage pipe into a creek. Instead of jumping in (and risk busting an ankle) I sit at the edge of the pipe and snag my shorts on something. Oops.

The water is pretty chilly so at some point I lose feeling in my feet. We go in and out of the water, up some rocks almost Gollum-style, and back down across another creek. This goes on for a bit until lo and behold we reach possibly my favorite obstacle - Indiana Jones! Again, zip line into the water, hollering the whole way down.

The technical sections continue until music and the emcee is heard in the distance. The goofy, Wipeout-inspired inflatable obstacle is next. I crawl across, then I choose to opt out of the Platinum Rig (seriously...I need to conquer that at one of the XMan races this season!) Finish the last obstacles and...done!

Cleaning up reveals the more-than-usual scratches and bruises on the knees and elbows, which is what I've come to expect from XMan, plus there were quite a few crawling obstacles on mud-covered rocks, or in PVC pipes (Les Égouts)

Mud's supposed to be good for the skin, right? On the drive to Ottawa our skin feels all stiff, crackly and dry. It doesn't really matter, because at our destination (Kelly's house) cupcakes await! Those, plus Rock Band with the girls tops off a great day.

Next up is Mud Hero Ottawa which includes a birthday run - shenanigans guaranteed!

XMan Race Sutton part 1 - introducing SuperXman!

Behold, a back-to-back event weekend: first up, XMan Race, followed by Mud Hero.

Typically I don't like to look at what obstacles I could potentially encounter on course since I like to be surprised. I'd been told that there were some insane creations for this year's XMan Race series so I had to bottle my excitement. What else can the crew have in store to make it better? Already there's a lot of good things being said by elites and open participants alike about the whole experience.

A few Ottawa Mudd Queens, Jen and Darcy, will get their first taste of XMan and see what it's all about! I hope I haven't hyped it up too much..

This weekend I am pretty much the designated driver for Jen, and Friday night kicks off with sushi and goodies. Saturday we get there bright and early; it's sunny with a bit of a cool breeze but once everyone gets running it should be alright. Volunteers are arriving in bunches as well.

Race packets are ready to go - racers get a finisher shirt, a headband, a bracelet, an XMan sticker and a beer ticket, plus a finisher medal at the end. I find out I'm assigned to a new obstacle (SuperXman) that has been revealed in a teaser video. Also, since it's more than halfway through the race, I get to test it out before everyone arrives to figure out how it works in order to help the racers (and myself!) conquer it. And who doesn't want to bounce on a giant trampoline?

The calm before the storm (photo credit Nikky Brenic)

Once again the giant Alpha Obstacle Training flag is spotted with Jesse in tow.

The elites go off and we make our way to our posts. Turns out next to the SuperXman is Spydex - a fun obstacle involving a rope swing into an angled cargo net.

It isn't long before the first elite is spotted - Marco Bédard - and he practically clears the platform right off the trampoline. He's pretty much done Spydex when Jesse comes barreling down the hill, grinning and waving at the photographer before getting some good airtime. Not too long after, the elite females appear, no surprise Claude is in front. I'd also had a funny Facebook chat with Judith Marcoux on how she'll find me on course since she won't be wearing her glasses. She's wearing an Elmo tank top (props to her for not taking things too seriously!) and is easily found as she approaches.

The elites put on a great aerial show (perhaps they've seen the video), easily flying through the air onto the platform. As the open wave participants start to come in, some take a couple of bounces before getting over, and some just slide on the trampoline surface straight towards the obstacle. I've noticed they're shining with dirty water, which accumulates on the mats on the platform, making them slick.

Jen makes her way over and the first thing she tells me is how much fun she's having. XMan is almost like a playground for obstacle course runners! Good twin Darcy shows up a little later on and she tells me the same thing.

I eventually climb up on the platform after seeing participants struggle to get over. This also puts me in a precarious position of not being able to leave a water bottle or snacks next to me. It isn't long before I'm covered in dirty water helping participants climb up, and trying to coach others to get over the platform. Some listen; some don't and painfully struggle, others miss and knees painfully bang into the platform. There is a lot of swearing going on.

It's not THAT high...if I can make it, you can!

At some point the blue padding on the edges of the trampoline keep coming undone, so I radio the section head and explain what's going on. Not even 15 minutes later he's there, temporarily securing the pads with zip-ties. I tell you, the XMan crew really care about everything.

I blink and Mudd Queen Brandy is on one of the trampolines, she succeeds in making her way over. I'm just bummed out that in the whole kerfuffle of the obstacle, I don't have my phone on me for a selfie.

I am relieved of my duty but since I'd like to run and finish earlier so we can head out to Ottawa, I wanted to get in the next available wave...which meant foregoing lunch. I'm frantically eating some snacks to have some sort of energy reserve (a protein bar and the ever-handy Fruit3 bar) Now I'm seriously worried at how slow I'll really go since I haven't had much to eat since half a buttered bagel at 8:30. I'd sort of planned to do a bit more pedal to the metal for this race, but..

To be continued..