Race Review - Green Beret Challenge

The Green Beret Challenge was a new race this year. Very lightly publicized and I only heard of it through a Facebook post. If you aren't into the local OCR scene pretty heavily (or have a friend who is) you probably didn't even hear about it.

Serious gear weight.

It sparked my interest for several reasons:
1. It was at Ft. Carson, which is probably my favorite venue.
2. It's obviously military themed, which means challenging obstacles.
3. It was limited to 500 participants. Small heats = good events.
4. It was inexpensive. $30 with no hidden fees.

I quickly signed up my son and myself and spread the word to my buddies, who didn't seem interested, and waited and watched the attendance counter on their registration site. I figured it might be a low turnout, perhaps so low it might get canceled, but the numbers climbed steadily and we got the event instructions via email a few days before the event.

SF Group.

Having been on the Ft. Carson Army Base several times over the last few years for Spartan races, I was looking forward to seeing where this race would be. I thought it might be in the same area, but it was in another section for the Special Forces group. 100% of the proceeds from this event would benefit the Special Forces Scholarship Fund.


We arrived to free parking and wandered up just before the first heat left. We were assigned a later heat and wandered around looking at the sponsor booths, raffle table and the Army type stuff. We watched the next heat get briefed and then wandered back to the car to drop off our goodie bags and get ready for our run.

Magic legs!

First step in the Green Beret Challenge is to write your heat number on your hand (we were in heat 5) and "bring it in" for a mission briefing. The briefing consists of a map with the course layout and a hard ass, take no shit, Special Forces guy pointing out key features. When someone would joke, he would just stare at them. It was pretty amusing, but the dude was super serious.


Then, we were hustled over to the starting area, just a few paces away, on the tarmac where we proceeded to do a quick warm-up that involved doing 1 minute each of push-ups, air squats and finally burpees. We had about a minute to recover, then off we went.

Pretty sure this guy wanted to punch someone.

This race was quite different from others we've done. It started with a long run (by OCR standards) of about 2.5 miles. This run was pretty flat, with some minor elevation changes, gradually went up a long hill, then the course veered sharply off the road and up a steep hill. The hill brought us to a walk, then we trucked back down, up a short steep hill ran along some covered fences where the Army canines are kept, then up to the obstacle area.

The obstacles were all pretty well bunched up, with a short jaunt in-between here and there. It was cool to be on a real deal spec ops obstacle course and I highly recommend it if you get the chance. There was a burpee penalty on this course, 10 for any minor obstacle failed and 25 for the 2 major obstacles (rope traverse and sled pull IIRC).


They had a balance post obstacle, which both my son and I failed (our only failures of the race). If you've ever done a Spartan Race, picture those posts, but with a greater variance of height difference, farther apart and all clustered rather than in discernible lines. There were a couple other balance obstacles, consisting of logs at various angles or with sharp turns in them.

Everybody loves burpees.

For ropes we had a horisontal rope traverse, about 7 feet off the ground, which frustrated a lot of people and had the only real obstacle back up of the course. A standard rope climb, that was only about 15 feet, I'd say. And, my favorite, a rope swing over a pit where you had to clear a horizontal log on the other side and then hop down.

In the push-pull-carry category were things such as a water can carry down and back up a short, not too steep, hill. A Prowler type sled push, with 2 plates on it if I remember right, that my son and I teamed up on as I don't think he would be able to do it on his own. This was on a nice artificial turf football field and we pushed it down about 30 yards, spun around and pushed it back. Lastly, was a heavy duty plastic sled, made for dragging wounded off the battlefield, loaded with sandbags to simulate doing such. This had to be dragged up a long gravel road, that had shallow ditches on either side that wanted to pull your sled into them. It was fairly heavy, but my 110 pound son insisted pulling his own. He managed it, but it took a long time as the thing outweighed him by a good amount. I was able to drag it up and back without too much trouble.

Course map.

After the final obstacle, it was a quick half mile or so downhill sprint to the finish. I edged out The Boy, being well rested after waiting for him to finish the sled drag. We finished just under 1:10 and the course record is somewhere around 40 minutes, I believe.

Post race we grabbed some fruit, Cliff bars and gatorade and prepared for the raffle. The raffle was very gun/gear guy oriented, so I bought extra tickets. There were 40+ grab bags with MagPul P-Mags and miscellaneous stickers and patches, several shirts and hats, stuff from Hornady, some nice looking fighting knives, and a light and a flash hider from Surefire. The higher end items included a couple really nice packs from Kifaru. If you're not into shooting sports, you may be disappointed in your win, like the chick next to me who won a rifle case. We, on the other hand, made out like bandits, walking away with several P-Mags (I even turned down one grab bag after winning for the 3rd time) and I scored a nice Surefire hat.

Raffle time, w00t!

We left content with ourselves and impressed by the event. It was supremely well organized with staffing all along to course who were helpful and encouraging in true Army fashion. It was well worth our time and one of my favorite races of the season. I really hope it returns, as I would definitely do it again.

Muchos swageros.

Race Review - Warrior Dash, Copper Mountain 2014

Warrior Dash.
Warrior Dash, Warrior Dash, Warrior Dash... What can one say that's not already been said?

This was my second go around at this iconic event. We decided to rent a condo for the night, as we felt we missed out on a significant amount of partying last year. And make no mistake, Warrior Dash is a party. This year we even witnessed a group of runners hauling a 1.75 of vodka with them, drinking all the way.

A fair representation of the event.

Much to my disappointment, this was not a timed event this year. The winners were based solely on gun time in the first heat. I guess it makes sense, considering the party nature of this "event" (no longer a race without timing across the board), but even though I can time myself, I do like to see where I fall amongst the other competitors. All that being said, it wasn't a big deal as we ran together with a friend who doesn't run, so we were in do danger of breaking any PRs that day.

It is a pretty place for a party, though.

We had a later heat this year, and didn't get running until about 11:30. The course started same as the previous year and was just about exactly the same except for a few things. The long balance obstacle was absent this time, and a new large climb/net/water slide obstacle was in play and a snowy area about 100 yards long, that was new as well.

Snow field was new, but not difficult.

All went pretty well until we got to the high climb up and over wall. This thing was backed up pretty good and we waited around for a good 10-15 minutes before getting our shot at it. After that it was cruising along pretty good again, up some hills, over some small obstacles, etc. Until we came down through the village, where we knew we were getting close to the end, and ran smack into the largest obstacle backup I've ever seen.

It was at the new super-slide-climb thingy, and there were literally hundreds of people piled up. We hemmed and hawed a bit, then worked our way through the crowd to see what the deal was. Towards the front of the line we got info that the water level had dropped too low and it would be "an hour or two" before they got the obstacle up and running again.

This line went way back, around the corner and down the block.

An hour or two? No thanks. Thus marked an OCR first for me, I skipped an obstacle. As we walked around the impressive looking structure, we saw the finish was literally 20 feet from the water pool exit. This made for a really anti-climatic finish, especially for us. In my opinion, there should be at least a little sprint to the finish line to make you feel like you've earned it.

Looked like it would've been fun.

We walked away feeling a little empty. Our non-runner friend at least got some exercise, but with all the walking and waiting we did, I think Dave put it best when he said "I don't feel like I did anything." It was true, my daily workouts and training runs are harder than that. Granted, it would be different running solo for time, as we didn't really get to push ourselves, but the obstacle backups were depressing, especially skipping one... The biggest one... And the last one.

So what else could we do but drink and eat and drink and drink. So we did. We wandered around the fairgrounds after getting cleaned up, watched some of the stage contests, drink a lot of beers and did a fair amount of people watching. Warrior Dash definitely brings out some interesting people.

Women's push up challenge contestants.

We were actually surprised at how early the crowd petered out. In my mind, I had expected the party to go late, but it was all but done by about 5:00. We wandered back to the condo and hung out in the hot tube with some other competitors and chit chatted and drank (too much) and were all in bed by 9:00.

Final thoughts:
Warrior Dash is a well organized event. It prides itself on the party. It's getting taken less and less seriously by the competitive OCR crowd each year, and the timing removal won't help that. It needs to be run either in a big group of partiers and taken lightly, or sprinted solo. Run late for the former and early for the latter. I had a decent time, but I didn't have a great time. I don't know that I'll run it again next year.