1. COURSE- I'll lump them together, but there were actually three courses in total to run. Labeled "Speed" (shortest course), "Agility" (medium), and "Strength" (longest), the task was to run all three as fast as possible (obviously!) within a one hour period, for a combined total elapsed time that would rank you in a time trial among all racers. The concept alone, I thought was outstanding. Their development and execution of it, however, was poorly done. Going just by the titles of their courses (which were all VERY short), you'd think those fitness elements would be the focus on each, or at least incorporated. Nope! The only thing that separated them seemed to be distance (1/4 mile, 1/2 mile, and 3/4 mile- I'm estimating). There was no more strength in the Strength race than any of the other two parts, and obstacles were so sparse that the day belonged completely to the fastest sprinters, as this was also on a completely flat lot, and not the mountain across the street where Spartan's Tuxedo Sprint visits every June. I'd love to see this event become what it could be, a test of the "ultimate athlete", but only 139 racers showed up to vie for that title! And with my total racing time being in just the 12 minute range, I can't say that it was worth my gas and tolls to compete in something that short. GRADE = C
2. FESTIVAL- As I mentioned, less than a couple hundred racers were all that descended on Tuxedo this weekend, so the party was a little self-limiting. I also don't know what they would have done should ten times that number have been present. There was really no activity other than to keep checking scores and get the swag (see below) and beer that was part of the deal. And grabbing a copy of their headline sponsor Men's Fitness magazine doesn't seem like my kind of post-race fun. With all the hype of an obstacle heavy event (really not so) I could have seen lots of contests being a hit as the crowd, although small, was very athletic and competitive. GRADE = C
3. SWAG- Although no finisher medal like usual [insert sad face] the takeaways were still pretty solid. But to fair, I 'm not sure what kind of medal would have been worthy from doing an OCR that only totaled about a mile and a half. I ended up getting multiples of some of the sponsor sample prizes from their tables, not knowing that on my way out we would also get them in our swag bag, which was an actual drawstring sack. The wicking tech material tshirt was probably the best part of the souvenirs. For the fastest racers, trophies went to the top 3 overall and winners of each race distance time for both male and female, along with the champion taking home a giant cardboard check for $2500 (and hopefully also the regular size one to go with it!). GRADE = B
OVERALL GRADE = C
