Race Review - Great Pumpkin Haul 2014

This was our 2nd visit to the Chatfield Botanic Gardens for The Great Pumpkin Haul. The last time we were here was 2 years ago at the inaugural event, so we decided to pay another visit to see how the event has evolved. In some ways good, and some not so good. The major player in this race is the pumpkin that you pick yourself, and then get haul with you for the full course. Prizes are for fastest run, largest pumpkin, best costume and something with hauling 2 of the orange orbs, that I wasn't exactly clear on.

It can go hard or easy. The choice is yours.

This race was quite a bit larger than it was 2 years ago, and they split us up into heats. These heats, however, were only staggered in 5 minute increments, which was far too short a time in my opinion, at least for how this race was setup. Last time we were here, the race was 2 laps of a 1 mile circuit. This was improved with a single 2 mile course this time around.

We were in the 3rd heat and quickly caught up to the 2nd heat at the first obstacle, which was a crawling obstacle made up of some boards and hay bales. A fine obstacle, but it was pretty low. I couldn't even roll my pumpkin under it, so had to find it's narrowest point and push. Not sure what people with even bigger gourds did. But worse than that, it was only wide enough for 2 people to scoot under at a time. That coupled with the fact that it was so early in the race caused a massive backup, and we waited around for several minutes before we got our turn. Many people chose to skip it altogether.

After this, only about 50 yards further on was a short tube crawl, that was also a bit backed up, but not nearly as bad. Then it was a pretty good run with some simpler obstacles. One was a duck under weave type thing that wasn't exactly clear on how it was to be performed, so people just kind of did whatever. The hazards are pretty simple, jumping over hay bales, climbing through and under bungee cords and things of that nature. The biggest challenge is predicated by what size pumpkin you choose.

So, there's this.

Of course the obvious answer is to pick the smallest one you can find, but when there's more than one man around, there's competition, and someone's going to push their better judgment aside. This year it was me, bumping up to 29.5 pounds and my son, Kellan, increased his haul to 22 pounds. This does create it's own set of problems, especially if you're smaller framed like my son and can't hoist the mellon up on your shoulder at least some of the time.

We finished in just over 35 minutes, and if not for the backups, we probably would've shaved a good 10 minutes off that time.

41 pumpkin birthday burpees. The Boy cheated.

This is a very family oriented event, and if you're like the jerk who pushed his way through everyone on the bridge crawl obstacle, you should probably just stay at home. There will be a lot of little kids around and there's no big prize money, so relax and enjoy the crisp clean Autumn air. Post race had some free beers, food vendors and discounts off the fall festival corn maze. The "band" seemed more like a few dudes trying to wing a jam session (complete with an ad-hoc beat-box portion that was quite amusing) more so than anything really cohesive.

It's a good family fun run or race as a group event for sure. And if you're planning to go to Chatfield Botanic Gardens to pick a pumpkin anyway, for about the cost of the corn maze entry and a medium pumpkin, you can race and get the free beer plus still go home with as big a pumpkin as you want. My only real complaint is the festival grounds seemed to shut down and pack up really early. It was such a beautiful day for drinking beer in the park. :)

Post race in the corn maze.