Portland Rugged Maniac 2018

Portland Rugged Maniac 6/31/18:

As I am trying to venture out to the other OCR race companies.  As someone who had only done Spartan Races until the beginning of 2018 I was excited to try new races with different obstacles.  I will say that Rugged Maniac was by far the most fun race I have done to date.  Everything from the obstacles, venue and the announcers all just showed that this race was for fun and nothing else. 

The Portland Rugged Maniac is held at the Portland International Raceway (PIR).  I’m sure as most people hear a racetrack isn’t really the best place to have an OCR event, but thankfully PIR also has a motocross track in the middle of it.  This allowed for rolling hills and some elevation changes, however as far as OCR events go this would be considered a flat race.  I didn’t mind the flat course as someone who grew up watching racing and racecars it made for childlike laughter as I ran across the racetrack. Rugged Maniac counters this flat course with the fact that pack in twenty-five obstacles and many of them unique and different. 

With obstacles for OCR events, there are what I like to call the usual suspects.  Rugged Maniac had what most events have like barb wire or rope crawl through water and or mud, a hanging obstacle with rings or rungs, a few walls to climb over and a fire jump of some sort. 

It was the other obstacles that made Rugged stand out for me.  The Gauntlet and Frog hop where obstacles that had you run or jump on items that were floating on water.  Since they were only held on by a few points caused them to tip and flip which made for very entertaining falls into the water.  Antigravity was another obstacle that was unique as it had trampolines that had you jump from one to another and then grabbing onto a rope cargo net. 

The other standouts were off the rails and a warped wall.  Off the rails was fun as you had to run jump and grab onto a rope on a rail.  The rail was positioned, so you had to slide up and hit a bell before falling into the water.  If you didn’t get enough momentum you didn’t make it to the bell and would stall in the middle of the rail, but no matter what you were going to get wet because there were still several feet of water past the bell.  A warped wall from a certain TV show was always something I wondered if I could do.  I am happy to report that I was able to do it and what made it even better was that after you scaled the warped wall, you climbed a cargo net to the top of a huge inflatable water slide. 

The other impressive ones were the ladder tilt and the crag.  The ladder tilt was another TV show obstacle but was incredibly difficult due to the rungs being so slippery that they seemed to have been greased.  The Crag was another inflatable that had three levels at chest height that you had to climb over.  An adult sized inflatable is something that also gave me childlike laughter as I was able to bounce my way up and down the inflatable.

The Beasts OCR team was out in force for this race with over thirty-five members at the race.  Beasts OCR was proud to have lots of members in the competitive race and even had several places in the top ten or better top three.  Including first place finisher Jeremy Kaufmann, second place finisher Taylor Overmiller, Lorenzo Contreras in eighth place finisher, and Patrick Olson in ninth place.  Tasha Overmiller was the sole female top ten Beast with a fifth-place finish.  There were several Beasts that ran the course several times including Myke Thompson who was just a mile short of a marathon of Rugged Maniac laps.

In the end, this was by far my new favorite race to date.  It is a great race for beginners, elite level athletes and everything in between.  With the unique fun obstacles and even new obstacles this year and hopefully for years to come.  This will be a race that will have a permanent spot on my calendar every year.    If any Beasts haven’t done a Rugged Maniac, I highly recommend it.  Look at how much fun people are having.

Terrain Race 2018

June Terrain Race 2018:

While I normally run early morning heats, I had to run a much later heat for the Portland Terrain Race.  Thankfully, Beasts OCR had the largest registered team for the race, which meant we got to set up and hang out under a tent provided by the race (complete with chairs, a table, and a large tank of water).  Having a communal space to congregate and BS made waiting for my heat to start enjoyable.  It felt like Terrain Race really wanted to treat the biggest team with a sort of reverence as they didn’t rush us to pack up and head out, even though they had rolled up several of their other tents, drained the pools, and were well on their way towards cleaning up by the time the last of our members decided to leave.

At the starting line of the race, there were three large above-ground pools that participants had to climb in while receiving safety instructions and waiting the last few minutes for their heat to start.  The starting tubs where great fun, even though (for me) they kind of canceled out all chances at warming up before the race.  The course itself was a good mixture of hills and flats and easy and technical terrain.  The race was hosted at Sherwood Forest Equestrian Center, giving the course a really great mix of technical and even terrain that wove through hilly pastures and wooded areas.  It made for some good times running down hill, but the up hills were long and tough, even on my hill trained legs.

The obstacles were a nice mixture of fun and difficult.  For me, the difficult ones were things like the rope climb, Tarzan ropes (four climbing ropes in sequence that you had to swing from rope to rope), the multi-rig (different overhead holds that you had to swing across), and finished with a set ascending and descending monkey bars.  These obstacles were made even more difficult when running latter in the day as the obstacles were either wet or covered in mud, a real test to fatigued grip.

Even the fun obstacles were at least a bit challenging.  The four, six, and eight-foot walls felt like standard fare, but the twelve-foot wall didn’t have any footholds, which made many racers skip the obstacle altogether.  The mini golf, which involved whacking a tire with a sledge hammer, was fun and terrifying at the same time, as I nearly got hit by another racer as they swung their sledge hammer.  My first lap, I had to wait a while at the sand bag carry and monkey bars, and I had to skip the yolk tire walk through a pond altogether because the line was almost all the way back to the previous obstacle.  I did get a crack at the yolk tires my second lap, though, and it was the only obstacle I felt needed some polishing—most likely a longer, wider course and more sets of tires.  My wife, who ran earlier in the day, encountered a sizable line at Tarzan, which she skipped.

The hardest obstacle for me was a length of pipe that was about half full of water that you had to crawl through.  I am not much of a swimmer, and, while the river crossing and the multiple water pits didn’t bother me, crawling through a pipe half full of water caused me to freeze up a bit.  I was able to conquer my fears and made it through, but it was definitely a mental challenge, even on my second lap.

I have run very few OCRs outside of Spartan, but Terrain Race was one of my favorites.  Maybe it was because I got to hang out with my fellow Beasts and maybe because it was just a whole lot of fun.  The course design was solid, and I will continue to keep this race on my books every year that it is available in Portland.  I liked it enough that I might even travel to other cities once I finish with personal things (school).

Beasts OCR is a family team and we tend to run together.  Beasts OCR, as a team, ran ninety-seven laps of the Portland Terrain Race, which is over 242 miles ran.

Where did Average Joe Go?

Well I know it has been a while since I posted anything.  I still am Average, and I still am fairly Fit.  I will say that blogging took a back seat as my wife got hurt and was unable to do much around the house.  So I had to become a single parent essentially for a solid few months.  I also decided to get my Masters Degree, so that is also taking a lot of time.  At first, I didn't feel like I should do anything outside of the family, school, and the occasional workout.  Although now that I am solidly in the Master's program I know that I have more time then I thought I did.

So while I am not traveling to any OCR events this year, it doesn't mean I am not doing any.  I am going to stay in the greater Portland area and give love to local events this year and probably next.  I have done two already called My Muddy Valentine (Link) and Dirty Leprechaun (Link).  I have a lot more events that I have planned, and most I will say I have never done before.  Namely, Rugged Maniac (Link), Terrain Race (Link), and a Goruck Light (Link).  I will do two events that I did last year mainly the Spartan Race (Link) with the Hurrican Heat added on and hopefully Howl at the Moon.   Howl at the Moon's website hasn't updated so I can only hope they will host it again this year.

I am around and working and being fit.  Today was a rucking work out, and I also picked up garbage along the road that I run.

I will say that carrying a twenty-pound trash bag was a hell of a grip workout.  I probably still could have picked up more, but the bag was tearing, and I didn't want to dump it everywhere.  So I tied it up and hauled it the rest of the way home.

Check out my Instagram for more about my workouts at average_joe_fit772
Don't forget Mudgear and Rock Tape

Average Joe update and Dirty Leprechaun Race Recap:

For the 2018 year for personal reasons, I decided to stick close to home instead of traveling to races.  So instead of traveling for Spartan races, I will spread the love to as many local races. 

The second race of my season was Dirty Leprechaun.  This is a smallish local event that was held at a venue called Lee Farms.  

This venue had several small tents with food and beers.  They also had three large bonfires burning that were lifesavers.  While waiting for the start time and you have already removed all the extra layers that you didn’t want to take on the course.  I know that several people wanted to run the second lap and never left the bonfires as it was quite cold.  The parking on site was great and very well organized.  

With me running the race with my wife as she is trying to recover from her knee injury I decided to run with a ruck pack.  A twenty-pound ruck made the run interesting.  Especially, under the ropes, as the pack got caught every time.  So, I ended up having to completely emerge under the water to get under them.  The sleeves of my white shirt will probably never be white again.

The mud on this race was no joke.  After my last race and the mud took a lot out of me as I tried to take it slow and steady.  This time I got a running start and sprinted across as fast as possible.  By running, I didn’t sink nearly as much and didn’t even have to worry about my shoes coming off this time. 

The only new obstacle that was different then the last race at Lee Farms was a horizontal ladder.  It was a rope ladder that was held on at two points.  It was very prone to tipping, and it was a struggle for a lot of people.  Some crawled, others shimmied down, and I chose to just drag my lower body across.  By keeping the lower half of my body still, I was able to keep the wiggle from the ladder down.  It wasn’t until I reached out to far for the next rung that my pack shifted and the whole thing flipped over.  It wasn’t high enough off the ground to hand under it, so I called it quits about three rungs from the end. 

In the end, the race was the same as the My Muddy Valentine with only the single difference.  The thing I noticed this time was a large lack of volunteers on the course.  The race before had volunteered at almost every obstacle, and this time there were only for or five obstacles that had volunteered at them.  It was too bad, but overall still a very enjoyable race.

This is one of the easier races and would be great for new to obstacle course racers or new to mud runs in general.

Average Joe OCR Workout

Well I have talked about my workouts in the past, but I realized that I never really laid it all out for people.  So I'll talk about why I do certain things and how I think it will help my OCR goals.

Lets distill down what is involve in an OCR.  In the end it is a race and that involves running, but there are the obstacles as well which involve strength.  So there is no one thing that you can truly focus on to be good or even great at OCR.

When I started running I knew that I had to ease into it.  I had an ankle injury many years ago while playing football.   So I started small and short distance with breaks in between.  I knew that if I did to much to fast I would cause me pain and potential injury.  So I designed a way to run with breaks in between.  In order to train like a race I would need to throw some strength training into my running so that my body knows how to adapt to the sudden change.  I feel that this is what caused me to be so successful in my most recent race.

So as a start I would go only a half mile out and back for a total of a mile.  This was a good start as around my house has a lot of hills and this route had a large downhill, but also I would have to go back up it to get home.  Running hills is basically a must for OCR training.  I started to gradually add miles to my runs like many of the half marathon training schedules show.  Adding a mile every week so that your runs gradually got longer and longer.  What I did differently was add in what I called rotations in between my miles.  So that I would run a mile stop and do strength exercises before running a second mile.  This rotation continued until I was up to five miles and at that point I started to add miles between stopping.  The reason was because the longer OCR events had sometimes a mile or two between obstacle stops.  So my rotations stayed right around three strength rotations, but instead I would do two miles before stopping.

As my runs got longer I would continue to do more miles between stops.  In the end for my 13.3 mile training run I stopped and did a strength rotation every three miles.  So I ended up doing three rotations in between the running.

In the end I would run no more then three days a week.  Even that was only when I was trying to make sure I was in enough running shape to tackle a half marathon distance OCR.


So now that I have talked about the running part lets talk about the strength training part of the race.  Yes it is a race and running is important, but on most OCR companies failing an obstacle is punished in some way shape and form.  That punishment can be worse then the rest of the race combined.

So what kind of things should you train to do OCR?  Everything is really needed.  The best way to start is at least body weight exercises. 

Push ups with knees up or down will start building your push strength. 

Crunches help your core strength which will help support your back when carrying heavy objects.  

Burpees are a great full body workout that is required if you do Spartan OCR (its the punishment).

High Knees works your calves and hip flexors in order to aid in jumping.

Squats works your quads and gluts to also aid in jumping and the ability to move heavy things.

Lunges to work your stabilizing muscles in order to keep your legs healthy with all the running.

These are just a few of the exercises that can aid in an OCR race.  No if you noticed I didn't have any of the traditional lifting exercises above.  That is because these were the exercises that I would do in the middle of my runs.

Also during my runs every other week I would add either a bucket carry or a sandbag carry to my runs.  These were also planned to aid in my general strength and cardio conditioning to be prepared for the races.


Then I strongly believe that weighted exercises are very important to improve strength beyond body weight and also to improve grip strength.  Weighted exercises need to target muscle groups that you specially don't work with your body weight exercises.  Area's like biceps, triceps, back muscles and forearm muscles.

Bicep Arm Curls work the biceps which aid in pull strength.

Triceps behind the head raises that helps with your push strength like pushing yourself over a wall once you grabbed it.

Pull ups or Lat Pulls to work the back to aid in pulling yourself up to a bar or wall.

Dead Hangs to help grip strength so that you can hang from objects for long periods of time.

These are just a few of the exercises that I do in my workouts.  I do strength exercises at least twice a week.

In the end during the "off" season of my OCR training I did a rotation where I would run three days a week and lift two days a week.  Then the next week I would switch it around and lift three days and run only two.  I felt like this was great as it would keep my body guessing and caused it to have to adapt to changes faster.  I saw a great improvement from my last 2016 race two my first 2017 race. 

Of course I have recently seen a Stadium Race that I have signed up for in November and the obstacles look very different.  I am going to come up with a different training plan for this other type of race.


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