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.