As Lombardi Once Said "What the Hell's Going On Out Here?"....And How Does That Relate To The World Of Obstacle Course Racing

2013 has been another interesting year in the world of Obstacle Course Racing (OCR).   The phenomenal growth continued and looks to be off to a great start for 2014.  Although the industry has seen a number of new races come and go.  With some never getting past the announcement phase, while other races managed to collect entry money without ever actually putting on a race.  This past year also saw the first filming of a race by a major sports network.  That was NBC Sports filming the Spartan Race Championship in VT last September.  Although the resulting TV program was not quite a thrill-a-minute [Obstacle Course Racing on TV...well, it's a start!] it was a big step towards building a fan base for this emerging sport.

Speaking of championship races, there was another trend developing late in 2013.  Where last year saw new races growing like weeds, the new trend seems to be for Championship races.  So far, besides the already established Spartan Race Championship, there were announcements from Warrior Dash, OCR World Championship and well, another race called OCR World Championship.  Strangely enough, neither OCR World Championship race actually exists right now and don't seem to have the OCR racing community support at the moment.  Go figure!....growing pains I guess.

Then there was the announcement of a new OCR sanctioning body [USOCR].  Interestingly, this sanctioning body seems to have come to being by self-proclamation...kinda like the big-bang.  Not that I have any objections to this or questions about the qualifications or motives of these individuals.  It's probably a good and necessary step in the growth of the sport.  Just seems like this should grow (as my son might say) organically as OCR matures.  A coming together of the major competitors.......to bring order from chaos, so to speak.  But again, what do I know.  Some are born great, some have greatness thrust upon them and some just declare themselves great and leave the proof as a class assignment.

There's an interesting dilemma here too.  One of the major OCR promoters isn't even a race!  That being Tough Mudder.  It's not a race...it isn't timed...so how do you have a champion when you don't even have a winner!! [Although there is a "World's Toughest Mudder" competition, which is run in a different manner than their other races].  This could actually get sticky (no pun intended...no really!) at some point for Tough Mudder.  Without timed events, they can't be used as qualifying races for any of the so-called championship races.  So they may be left as the only major competitor with a "let's just have fun" attitude.

Last April I was prognosticating on the future of OCR [see The present and future of Obstacle Course Racing (Part1) and The present and future of Obstacle Course Racing - Part Deux)] and a major shortcoming of the races is that virtually no one could see them. At the time, there were a few obstacles visible to spectators, but the vast majority of the race was out of sight.   At the Spartan Championship in Vermont, there was definitely a huge improvement in fan viewing. Quite a number of obstacles were near the festival area, including Barbed-Wire-lite...so named (by me) because of it's shorter length, 2 foot clearance and relatively dry condition. Looks impressive, but not too scary to the non-racer (read: parents, non-racing spouses, kids, etc) and barely an inconvenience for the experienced racers.

So fans were able to get a view of their racers although most of the race, even this one, still takes place off stage. And how do you know when your racer would come through that area?  Go grab some food and you may have missed them...and not even know! That's double tough when you're talking about a course where the WINNING times were near 4 hours.

Another thing that hasn't changed noticeably from last year is that you still can't really track the "elite" racers at the event. At Vermont, most everyone racing was out on the course anyway as the winners were coming in.  Unavoidable in this particular instance I guess.  There really should be a separate day for the elites to run this Championship race...maybe...someday [note to self - see multiple new championship races announced recently].  But I suppose, one thing at a time.  First, they need to figure out how to cover a race and make it exciting.  Someone out there has to know how to do that!

The Present and Future of Obstacle Course Racing...and other secrets of the universe (Part one)

I've only been observing the sport of Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) for around 2-1/2 years now.  My introduction to the sport was purely accidental, but I can truly say, I will never be quite the same.  I've also been racing for almost two years...although it's not what you would call competitively or even regularly until this year.  Normally, two years would not be considered a very long time to be involved with a sport.  But since this sport is relatively young itself and really has only become popular in the last year or so, 2-1/2 years has seen much change.

There are many different races and it seems that a new one pops up every week (a sure sign of their growing popularity).  Each has it's own story, which I'm not going to try to recount here.  But there are a few that stand out as the leaders in the field.  In all fairness, I have only run the Spartan races so far (Spartan Race homepage) so I don't have first hand knowledge of the others.  However, by most accounts, Spartan Race and Tough Mudder (Tough Mudder homepage) are the top two race promoters.  I've also heard that Warrior Dash (Warrior Dash homepage) is another promoter that puts on similar races.  There are others too, but many of these seem to be more concerned about gimmicks than serious, challenging events.

 

The big question though is, what is the future of OCR?  Last year I first started hearing talk about the subject.  I heard people talking about a racing circuit, sponsored teams in competition across the different courses, standardized courses and even talk of an Olympic sport.  Of course there's always someone looking towards the future of any activity...and that's important.  Seems to me though that before you can talk about professional OCR racers, you have to develop fans!

When that question was posed last year, that was my first thought.  How can you have a sport without fans?  And how would you have fans when the only view of the race was the start and the finish?  In fact, at that time, the only real interest in these elite racers was from...well...from the non-elite racers.  One of the unique qualities of the sport was the very fact that any racer could run the same course, the same day...even during the same heat...as the elite racers.  You could appreciate the accomplishment of these racers because you could test yourself against the very same course.  I mean really, what other sport allows virtually anyone the chance to get on the same field as the very best and compete equally?  Baseball, football (American or the rest of the world's version), track and field?  Try it at those events and they arrest you!

Two problems were evident immediately though.  The first was that, even at the race, the elite race was started and finished before most of the other racers were even there.  Even if people wanted to see the race, more than likely you were either on the course or about to be go on when they were finishing or awarding medals.  And these non-elite racers are your most likely candidates for "fan-dom"...at least to begin with.  They have to spread the word.  Right now, they're spreading the word about participating...but not about watching.

The other, more serious problem, was that even at the race, there IS no way to watch it.  There's no leader board, no announcements...nothing to tell you what was going on.  If you were lucky there may have been an announcement at the end...if you were lucky.  And if you were interested in following a race that you couldn't attend...well, all you were likely to hear is an update or two, then a Facebook post of the winners.  Could you place cameras throughout the course, at various obstacles and some key points...so people can watch the racers and their progress?  The excitement is knowing where you favorite racer is and rooting them on during the race.  They actually did this very well at the Olympics with mountain bike racing.  While I had no particular interest in the racers or sport as a whole, the way that they broadcast the race, I was not only able to follow it, I found the race exciting and entertaining.  Lesson number one I guess, is learning what's already working successfully.
 

....so ends part one....more thoughts and ideas on the present and future of OCR in part deux (that's French for "what didn't fit on the first page" I think)....

Part deux...[link to the second part of this blog post]

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