DOWN AND DIRTY
THE ESSENTIAL TRAINING GUIDE FOR OBSTACLE RACES AND MUD RUNS
MATT B. DAVIS
FOREWORD BY SCOTT KENEALLY,
DIRECTOR OF RISE OF THE SUFFERFESTS
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
by Scott Keneally, author of Playing Dirty and director of Rise of the Sufferfests
PREFACE
PART I: RACE BASICS
CHAPTER 1
THE HISTORY OF OBSTACLE COURSE RACING
CHAPTER 2
THE CURRENT STATE OF OCR
CHAPTER 3
GETTING READY FOR YOUR FIRST RACE
Featuring Holly Joy Berkey, a.k.a. Muddy Mommy
CHAPTER 4
FINDING OR STARTING AN OCR GROUP
Featuring Paul Jones of the New England Spahtens
CHAPTER 5
CHOOSING YOUR FIRST RACE AND REGISTERING
CHAPTER 6
OTHER KEY POINTS FOR NEWCOMERS
PART II: TRAINING FOR PERFORMANCE AND CONQUERING THE OBSTACLES
CHAPTER 7
GET OFF THE COUCH AND RUN YOUR FIRST MILE
CHAPTER 8
MASTERING THE MONKEY BARS
Featuring gymnast Anthony Matesi
CHAPTER 9
GETTING OVER WALLS AND OTHER OBSTACLES USING PARKOUR
Featuring Parkour expert Matthew Willis
CHAPTER 10
WORKING YOUR CORE
Featuring obstacle coach Ekaterina “Solo” Solovieva
CHAPTER 11
DOING PLYOMETRICS TRAINING
Featuring Jeff Cain, EdD
CHAPTER 12
INCREASING YOUR GRIP STRENGTH
Featuring obstacle builder Rob Butler
PART III: ADDITIONAL TOOLS FOR MIND AND BODY
CHAPTER 13
FINDING MOTIVATION
Featuring Doug Grady
CHAPTER 14
CREATING A BACKYARD OBSTACLE COURSE
CHAPTER 15
ADDING CROSSFIT TRAINING
Featuring CrossFit box owner Janice Marie Ferguson
CHAPTER: 16
EATING FOR OCR
Featuring elite Spartan Pro Team racer Alec Blenis and Death Race winner Nele Schulze
PART IV: ADVANCED OCR
CHAPTER 17
TRAINING FOR 24-HOUR AND ENDURANCE OCR EVENTS
Featuring Amelia Boone and Olof Dallner
APPENDIX A: OCR COMMUNITIES
APPENDIX B: OCR RESOURCES
INDEX
PHOTOGRAPHER CREDITS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Here we go.
FOREWORD
Shortly after Outside magazine published my first feature on obstacle racing, a cover story about the scandalous origins of Tough Mudder, Matt B. Davis reached out. Like an OCR fan boy, he enthusiastically picked my brain for any details or dirt left on the editing room floor, and then asked to interview me on his podcast. At the time, I was holding out for an interview with a more—how to put this?—professional outfit. Say, 60 Minutes, for instance. So I politely declined, though this did little to deter him from asking. Again and again, again and again. The man is nothing if not persistent—think Cujo—and this rabid fanaticism has helped Matt become the most connected journalist in the OCR world. Thanks to a weekly podcast with a broad spectrum of athletes and industry insiders, and in-depth reporting for Obstacle Racing Media, Matt has gained the trust and respect of the community. So it made sense that he would land a contract to write this book. But his real stroke of genius wasn’t the book deal itself, it was Matt’s ability to “write a book” without really writing at all. Thanks to a mix of arm twists and guilt trips, he managed to outsource half of the work to others. Smart, right? Brilliant, actually.
No wonder they call him the Wizard of Obs.
Scott Keneally—Author of Playing Dirty and director of Rise of the Sufferfests
The author, commonly known as Cujo to interviewees.
PREFACE
You’ve seen pictures of friends muddy, bruised, and bloody, wading through ice-cold, blue-tinged water, chest deep in mud, or painfully trudging through a curtain of electrical wires. Despite their clear suffering, the photos taken at the finish line show your friends smiling broadly. Your coworkers come in to work on a Monday with large medals around their necks or orange headbands on their foreheads, beaming with pride. They can’t wait to tell you about the pain they endured, the barriers they overcame, and the laughs they had.
Get ready for a whole new kind of race.
Obstacle course racing and mud runs have exploded in popularity in recent years. Though they began just a few years ago with a handful of military boot camp–style events taken on by the brave, stupid—or both, obstacle racing is now a worldwide phenomenon. Experts are predicting it will soon be a $1 billion industry, and the participant numbers could top the 4 million mark.
The obstacle course racing world is everywhere you look, and it goes far beyond the mud pit. The news media constantly features stories on obstacle course racing, including national outlets from the Wall Street Journal to 60 Minutes. Outdoor gear, clothing, and shoe companies sponsor races and market their products and advertisements to obstacle course racers.
This book offers in-depth, expert advice on how to train and prepare for mud runs, obstacle course races, and endurance events. Having participated in more than forty races, I’ve acquired a ton of knowledge in the past few years, and I can’t wait to share it with beginners and advanced obstacle course racers alike. I’ve also tapped the vast knowledge of experts in the industry, including elite athletes and specialists such as Death Race winner Olof Dallner, World’s Toughest Mudder Amelia Boone, Spartan Pro Team Racer Alec Blenis, and obstacle builder extraordinaire Rob Butler.
Two types of people will benefit from this book. The first are folks who have never done an obstacle course race and are looking to find out where to begin. This book is going to help you get there in a relatively short time.
You may be someone who goes to the gym once a week (or less). You probably have not run more than 1 mile (1.6 km) in the past ten to fifteen years. You may not be able to do more than two pull-ups in a row. No problem. You’re exactly where I was a few short years ago when I signed up for my first Tough Mudder. I hadn’t run more than a mile or lifted a weight since middle school. This book will get you at least five times more prepared than I was before I tackled that first 10- to 12-mile (16.1- to 19.3-km) obstacle course race.
The second group that will benefit from this book is the more experienced racers who are looking to gain an edge by reading and incorporating ideas about training, form, and diet from some top elite athletes and experts in the sport. My experience in the past few years includes running more than forty obstacle races and producing more than seventy podcast episodes about obstacle racing. In those episodes, I interviewed more than fifty athletes and more than twenty race directors. I asked many of those racers and directors to contribute their expertise for this book. They offer their advice on running, training, CrossFit WODs (Workout of the Day), nutrition, hydration, gear, and more.
“Get faster, go farther, and prepare to conquer any obstacle.”
This book will cover a variety of topics and get you more prepared and involved than any other book of its kind. You’ll get some history and learn about some of the founding fathers of the sport—before it was even a sport. If you’re a beginner, this book will get you off the couch to run your first mile. It will get you prepared to climb those first ropes and crawl under the first set of barbed wire. For the more experienced racer, this book includes some advanced techniques and other more serious (and dangerous) ventures. (Death Race, anyone?) For the newbie and advanced
alike, the industry’s top athletes will teach you how to get faster, go farther, and prepare to conquer any obstacle. You’ll also find resources to help you find more folks like you who are currently training for these races and looking to form a team.
Friendships are forged over fire.
Here’s your opportunity to learn from the best in the business how to improve your ability to go over walls, under wires, and through mud and fire. My hope is that you find what I have found by choosing to participate in this new and growing sport: a way to push your body and mind to places you never thought you could go, the freedom and laughter that you experienced as a ten year old by losing yourself in an obstacle course, and the amazing friendships you’ll create with other racers.
PART I
RACE BASICS
1 THE HISTORY OF OBSTACLE COURSE RACING
If you’ve purchased this book, or if you’re currently reading it in the bookstore because you have time to kill, you’re most likely well aware of what obstacle course racing (OCR) is. However, what good would I be in presenting this book to you without laying out a basic definition of OCR?
Per Wikipedia, “Obstacle racing is a sport in which a competitor, traveling on foot, must overcome various physical challenges (obstacles). They combine mud and trail runs designed to result in mental and physical collapse. Obstacles include, but are not limited to, climbing over walls, carrying heavy objects, traversing bodies of water, crawling under barbed wire, and jumping through fire. Many obstacles are similar to those used in military training, whilst others are unique to obstacle racing and are employed throughout the course to test endurance, strength, speed, and dexterity.”
Muddy moments like this have been happening for longer than you may think.
Obstacle course racing can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, who used a form of obstacle courses to train for combat. Today, branches of many militaries use confidence courses as a way to train their soldiers. Steeplechase, (which was born in 1860 and later became an event in the modern Olympics), had runners jumping over wooden hurdles and through water obstacles. Basically, as long as people could run, they’ve wanted to jump over, on top of, and through things along the way to test individual athleticism, to compete against each other, and to simply have fun.
You can spend hours scouring the Internet or the library (remember those?) to find specific facts on what the early races looked like. Perhaps you could even find out the first person who said, “Hey, instead of just a foot race, let’s see who can go through that thing and over that stuff, the fastest and the best.”
For the purposes of this book, we’ll jump ahead to a recent century to see how modern OCR was born.
In 1987, Billy Wilson, a.k.a. Mr. Mouse, created an event called Tough Guy in the U.K., which featured huge walls to climb and mud to crawl through, and was the first event to force people into frigid water and subject participants to electric shocks.
Mr. Mouse was very proud to tell me, “I created Tough Guy as the Fun Run that combined fun and fear. No timing chips were needed, no set measured distance, and no prizes. Runners encountered Terror Miles, Brutal Wooded Hillsides, Farm Much, Cattle Electric Fences, Tree Climbing, and Swinging Ropes. We also created the system of numbering racers with a marker pen because paper numbers got destroyed.”
In 1993, Camp Pendleton, in California, put on a basic confidence course with some extra mud thrown in and invited people to run it. Sixty-five people, mostly military personnel and their families, turned up, and the event was considered a success. It’s now known as the World Famous Mud Run.
Bob Babbitt, an experienced runner and triathlete, was intrigued by the fun he had at an event called a “ride and tie.” In the event, two runners are paired together, each team has a horse, and they leapfrog each other over the course of 28 miles (45.1 km), taking turns running or riding the horse. In 1999, Babbitt decided to replace the horse with a bike and add some obstacles and mud, and the Muddy Buddy was born in Oceanside, California.
All of these events were successful by their own measurements. They each continued, without any real national attention, year after year.
Then, in the latter half of the 2000s, three companies with slightly different philosophies came along and started a full-on OCR revolution. This movement is what led to the writing of this book.
Now let’s talk about what has come to be known as the Big 3: the Tough Mudder, Warrior Dash, and Spartan Race.
Mud pits are some of the best posing opportunities.
Tough Mudder
In 2010, Will Dean and Guy Livingstone were Harvard students from England who saw the success of the United Kingdom’s Tough Guy and wanted to bring a form of it to the United States. With minimal investment, they put an event together in New Jersey. Will was quoted as saying, “I wanted to make something that was Ironman-meets-Burning Man, a test of all-around fitness, but in this fun, slightly quirky environment.” Dean and Livingstone expected to get about 500 entrants. They got just less than 5,000. The videos from their first view events went viral, and people could not wait to sign up for future events. Execs at Tough Mudder have been quoted as saying, “Experience is the new luxury good; buying stuff doesn’t make you happier.”
Warrior Dash
In 2009, Warrior Dash came onto the scene with their first event in Illinois. Their idea was to ask weekend warriors to get off the couch and race through a 3-mile (4.8 km) course with some fun obstacles and lots of mud. When the racers crossed the finish line, they were given a Fred Flintstone–style warrior “helmet,” a beer, and a king-size turkey leg. People couldn’t wait to get those photos on Facebook. The next year, Warrior Dash held a dozen events nationwide.
Spartan Race
Joe DeSena and Andy Weinberg had been successful endurance athletes who had traveled the world doing all kinds of crazy adventures. The problem was that those events required lots of travel and time away from home. The events also required a large pocketbook, and only a certain demographic could compete. So in 2005, DeSena and Weinberg put on something known as the Death Race in their home-town of Pittsfield, Vermont. They wanted to test people’s will, athleticism, and endurance in a way that no one had before, without having to travel halfway around the world. With no rules, course, or official start or end times, the Death Race attracted only the extremely brave/insane.
In 2010, DeSena and Weinberg set out to create an event with a similar intensity, but scaled down to a real 3- to 5-mile (4.8 to 8.1 km) obstacle race with an actual start and finish. DeSena and Weinberg can often be heard preaching the “gospel” of Spartan, which is basically the belief that in today’s modern world, “everything is too easy,” and we live in an “everyone-gets-a-medal” society. If you come to a Spartan philosophy, DeSena and Weinberg promise that “You will discover a sense of exhilaration and personal achievement that has eluded you in every other sport or endeavor, and you’ll see yourself in an entirely new light.”
The variety of physical challenges will require practice and patience, but the rewards will be sweet.
Hold on tight.
Of the Big 3 events, the Spartan Race is the only one that times all racers and has penalties for not completing. Its organizers are proud of their promise that you’ll be “ranked, timed, and judged.”
These three races all became massive successes, and they each grew exponentially in their first two to three years. Every other day, it seemed, an article was written in a major publication about the world’s fascination with getting dirty and pushing physical boundaries.
The organizers of these races set the bar with high production values, well-trained and enthusiastic staff and volunteers, obstacles that are extremely well-built, and lively festival areas with beer, food, and music. They quickly became the measuring stick for all the other events that sprang up in this wave of excitement.
Obstacle Racing in the United Kingdom
The Tough Guy Challenge was the first official obstacle race worldwide, put together by
Billy “Mr. Mouse” Wilson in Wolverhampton in 1987. (See page 20). It wasn’t until 2009 that Spartan Race arrived. Spartan brought a new approach, with timed races and varied distances. What quickly followed was a flurry of races, like the Nuts Challenge and Total Warrior, each with a different presentation and challenges.
Tough Guy would later inspire two Harvard guys to start Tough Mudder in the U.S. For more on that intriguing and controversial tale, I highly recommend Scott Kenealy’s article, “Playing Dirty” in Outside magazine (November 2012). Tough Mudder came to the U.K. with strong foundations, ready to really shake things up.
Today obstacle racing is booming. There are more than 80 different race organizations putting on events. Meanwhile, Mr. Mouse’s course has grown and grown on its permanent site and now boasts more than 200 obstacles and up to 5,000 participants per event.
Obstacle Racing in Australia
In 2008, a bike and mountain race company called Maximum Adventure produced an event called the Tough Bloke Challenge. This race was inspired in part by U.K.’s Tough Guy and brought in about 500 participants. Maximum Adventure later added a less intense event they called simply “Mud Run.”
A few years later, Warrior Dash made its way over from the United States, and a local company called The Stampede launched. A local favorite, The Stampede currently attracts 8,000 to 10,000 participants. In 2012, Tough Mudder exported its widely popular brand of racing and brought a staggering 20,000 participants to its early events.
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