It’s the holidays, and lets face it, with no Christmas Day races to speak of – you can eat pie with your odd Uncle Bob, or you can listen to some obstacle course race specific podcasts.
Is it really a hard choice to make?
Wait – you don’t know what a podcast is? A podcast is an audio recording, freely available for download to your computer or phone. Typically, they are released frequently, and in todays examples, they are covering the world of obstacle course racing. If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to them, meaning new episodes just show up, magically. If you don’t, both of todays shows are also on stitcher radio too, which lets you listen to them in anyway you can imagine.
Today – I’ll introduce you to two podcasts. They have both been running for some months, and cater to two very different markets in the obstacle course world. Truly, there is something for everyone.
Matt B Davis – friend of the New England Spahtens and editor of the US arm of the Obstacle Racing Magazine has been putting out a live podcast every Monday night for a while now. You can sit in a chat room on his website, and listen as he brings guests on the show, plays recorded interviews, attends and reviews races – all kinds of stuff. Matt clearly knows his stuff, knows his athletes and knows his races. He hasn’t been afraid to get quite up front and direct with race directors who haven’t put on the kinds of races they’ve promised, and he even stayed up and interviewed folks racing for a full 24 hours at the Worlds Toughest Mudder.
Personally, I listen to these in the car on my drive to work – I sometimes find the “phone line” quality a little hard to make out, over car speakers and engine noise – but that shouldn’t be a problem for those of you who listen on headphones or computers – for anyone who is a little more advanced in the OCR world – perhaps looking to travel for your tri-fecta, or filling out your race calendar with training races while preparing for your serious races – this is a must listen.
Daniel and Laurie are west coast based podcasters, and they do an excellent job of covering the “entry level” racer. The production values of the show are top notch (Daniel mentions he does podcasting for other outlets – and clearly, it’s not their first rodeo), and they do a great job of making obstacle course racing accessible and easy to understand. They put out a show every couple to few weeks, and these are pre-recorded. Between them, they cover a really good range of “I’ve only run/walked a few events” through to having completed a couple of Tough Mudders … they aren’t as involved in the OCR world as Matt, and some of the names and lingo that we take for granted don’t really impress or mean anything on this show.
Different audience than Matt’s show, but no less important for it. 9 shows in and they are talking to Warrior Dash – so clearly, they are doing good things!
So – this holiday season, when you’re driving the kids between family visits, or hiding out from that crazy aunty in her ugly sweater – make sure you’ve loaded up your smart phone with an episode or two of each show, give them a listen and get caught up.
