Hobie Call

I do not believe so. There are 3 things that I believe need to change in order for the “sport” to really take off and be truly successful.

(1) RACE DISTANCE
Right now, the motto is “longer is better”. Spartans points system favors the longer races, and their championship race is the longest race in the series. Tough Mudders only real race is a 24 hour event. Warrior Dash’s 5-k races are a party, if you want to get serious, sign up for the “Iron” Warrior Dash that is 15+ miles long.
The problem with this is that people want this sport to require well-rounded fitness in order to excel at it. But the longer races are for elite runners. Case in point:
If you take the top 5 guys from the Crossfit games, and I take the top 5 guys from the Boston marathon, and put them into any obstacle race over 8 miles long, even if my marathoners fail miserably at the 5 hardest obstacles and have to do 30 burpees at each one of them, my 5th place marathon runner will still beat your 1st place Crossfitter by at least 5 minutes. That’s hardly a well-rounded athletes sport. Now, amongst the top runners, their abilities with the obstacles will matter, but if you’re not an elite runner, nothing else matters.
Until we get the distance short enough that there is some crossover between “strict” runners and other athletes, I believe the “sport” will have limited appeal to the masses.
I also firmly believe that the masses would prefer to watch the shorter more obstacle intense races. Longer races are less intense, physically and obstacle wise, and the athletes are more spread out making them much less appealing to watch.
Now, I’m not suggesting that we get rid of the longer races. Having a variety of lengths to choose from is a great thing, but the events that we “feature to the world” should be the shorter events.
(2) INDIVIDUAL RACING vs TEAM RACING
As long as the races are individual races, there will only be 3 or 4 professional athletes at most. They will win all of the prize money at the larger races leaving nothing for anyone else. You can be the 5th best obstacle racer in the world, and nobody will know or care, and you won’t be able to pay your bills off of racing either. The sport will have very limited long term success if there can only be a few professional athletes.
How to fix this? Team racing:
With team racing, there can be 20-30+ professional athletes which will create a lot more incentive for people to try and excel at the sport. Team racing also creates far better rivalries, which makes the races more fun to follow and watch.
(3) RIVAL ORGANIZATIONS NEED TO WORK TOGETHER
Now, this is the most exciting one of all, but also the most important. It’s the most exciting because the organizations don’t want to work together, but the athletes do. Whoever forces this to happen will have the collective marketing and publicity powers of the entire obstacle racing industry.
And how do the different organizations work together??….. With team racing. Each organization puts together a team to race against each other. Since most organizations resist this idea, it’s a “build it and they will come” idea. If you create a race and put out enough prize money, teams will show up. Now, Superhero Scramble has attempted this, but they lacked the money and marketing power to really get peoples attention. With Reebok partnering up with Spartan Race, it has created the perfect opportunity for this to happen. They have the money, and they have the marketing power.
Take one of your “Sprint” races (no more than 3 miles), load it with 30 solid obstacles, make the elite heat a team race, with enough money that even the 4th place team walks away happy, and the excitement, drama, rivalries, and viewership that this will create will have ESPN and major sponsors knocking on your door.

With my new goal being to chase the Spartan and Superhero Scramble points systems, here is my tentative schedule for the next few months.
5/18 Texas Spartan Sprint
5/25 Superhero Florida
6/8 Superhero Amesbury
6/29 Utah Spartan Beast
8/3 Washington Spartan Sprint
8/10 California Spartan Beast
8/24 Mid-Atlantic Spartan Super
9/21 Vermont Spartan Beast
9/28 Atlas Race Medford Oregon
10/19 Chicago Urbanathlon
Or Savage Race Florida

The second and final thing you will need for the 5k Obstacle Racing Fitness Challenge is a sandbag/slam ball, etc., basically something that you can throw on a track or infield without damaging the ground.
Men 30 lbs.
Women 20 lbs.
Here are just some of your options:

If you really want to go all out with the most durable bag I’ve seen, then the Ultimate Sandbag is for you. I took this out with the intent of destroying it in one workout. I brought a couple of friends with me and we went out to a rough jeep trail. Slamming it over the roughest of rocks, throwing it horizontally to test its abrasion resistance, the 3 of us beat that thing the best we could for an hour, and it took it with ease. Finally, I went out to the paved road and dragged it for about 100 yards to wear a small hole into it. And it’s not the kind of fabric that will tear easily, so I don’t imagine that hole causing any problems for many years under normal circumstances.

Another option is a slam ball. If you want something that’s simple and easy to get a grip on, then this is a great option. No bells and whistles, just a good ball for throwing. I do not recommend regular medicine balls. You don’t want something that bounces or rolls.

A third option and my new favorite (also what I’ll be using in the challenge) is a steelbell from hyperwear.com. This is the same company that makes the sand bags (pancakes) for Spartan Race. After seeing them in action at the races, they have proven to be more durable than I initially thought they would be. I prefer the steelbell over the sandbell because I like the smaller size and they are harder to keep a hold of, thus working your grip strength more. The main reasons why I prefer this is (1) you don’t have to finagle to get a grip of any handles like you do on the ultimate sandbag, and (2) it really is harder to keep a hold of than a slam ball which as I said, works your grip strength more (which is very helpful in obstacle racing).

If you’re on a very strict budget, this is for you. $3 for 4 sand bags (and I was ripped off) and $1 for duct tape. Tape each bag loosely (this allows the sand to move around which helps with durability). I just layered 4 bags over each other. I didn’t put it through a rigorous testing, but I did throw it around a bit including standing on top of a table and throwing it as hard as I could at the ground. It appeared to take it with ease. Durability is questionable, but I’m 92% sure that it will survive the 5k challenge.
Another unique option for you DIY’ers is to make a sandbag out of an old tractor tire tube. I’ll let THE man himself, Jason Moss demonstrate how to make one of these in a youtube video he made.

Your level of fitness does not determine whether you are a beginner or advanced athlete, your knowledge does. Your understanding of how your body works. How hard you can push yourself before the workout becomes counterproductive. Understanding that if you’re trying a new exercise, you better not push yourself too hard until you’ve done the exercise enough times to know how your body is going to react to it. Knowing what exercises are good for what sports. Understanding that as your workouts increase, so does the importance of nutrition. Understanding the role of water, carbohydrates, protein, fats, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and that the timing of what you eat is just as important as what you eat.

Workout:
Wearing a 20 lb. weight vest, run 6 minutes hard followed by 100 meters lunges. Repeat 6 times.

A beginner athlete would put on a 20 lb. weight vest, run hard for 6 minutes, lunge 100 meters, repeat that 3 or 4 times, then quit because they were to sore to go any farther. They would then go home and eat whatever was for dinner that night. They wouldn’t be able to workout again for a week, because their joints are achy from wearing a weight vest that their body isn’t acclimatized to, and their muscles are extraordinarily sore from all of the lunges that they aren’t used to doing. They risked injuring themselves from doing too much too quick, and not being able to workout for the next week is doing nothing for their fitness level.

An advanced athlete, would look at the workout and knowing that they’ve never worn a weight vest, 20 lbs. was too much to begin with. So they wear 8-10 lbs. They also know that lunges will make you very sore if you are not used to doing them, so they only lunge 20 meters between the running intervals. After their workout, they have a high quality post-workout drink designed to digest quickly and easily, knowing that the quicker they get nutrients to their muscles, the quicker they will begin recovering.

3 months go by. The beginner athlete has developed knee problems, and has decided that running is bad for you. The advanced athlete slowly progressed the workout each week, and is now doing the full workout with the 20 lb. weight vest.