This isn’t so much a race review for an event I hit up, but a general comment on poorly organized, potentially dangerous races in general – and how much support the OCR community is giving them.
Firstly, check this review out –
http://travlete.com/2012/10/16/review-sqwish-sqwash-challenge-tampa-florida/
The Sqwish Sqwash Challenge in Florida was universally panned as terrible – from the organization of the event, to the actual event itself. I mean, check out the video of the monkey bars …. or rather, the ladder strung up on a wobbly frame, with a step ladder to get up … *REALLY*?
It would be easy to shrug off as a one time deal – but this is their third event. They have appeared on the Matt B Davis podcast, and made some big promises. Even worse – they are not the only race series doing this.
If you read into the comments, and on their website – this is compared to the much bigger Rebel Race – they have an event in MA coming up soon. The Renegade Playground Challenge, a NH race with plenty of experience behind it just had a terrible event – running out of water, having obstacles collapse and not get repaired.
It’s one thing to attend an event and find it too easy or lacking a challenge, it’s another for the event itself to be downright dangerous.
So, question for the NE Spahtens – what does it take to stop the OCR community from supporting these guys? Why do we keep signing up for every OCR event on the market? It’s not like they are cheap days out … and those medical bills afterwards are even more costly …
Thats the challenge, right? How do we support the new races, and give them the chance to become the next big thing, without supporting the races that are just putting together the barest minimum of effort, taking all the registration fees, then stringing ladders up on frames and calling them a challenge.
In this case, the Sqwish Sqwash guys (and in my example, Rebel Race too) are taking advantage of the OCR craze – they are putting on poor, problematic events – and doing multiple of them – and people keep signing up. A short amount of research on their Facebook pages shows a ton of negative feedback, criticism – and still, folks give them their money.
Personally, I try to be picky. If the race has a poor reputation, I won’t support them.
As a newbie, and completely financially challenged right now, I save my dollars for tried and true races, like SR because after doing research, I know what I’m going to get for my money. I also know that once I start racing, I will have that “itch” that everyone talks about. I will probably sign up for some less than stellar races. I think sometimes the OCR community tries to give start ups the benefit of the doubt — in the beginning I am sure it was trial and error before they perfected the SR, TM and WD models. I do agree that the arena is being flooded with junk, but out of that junk may come some top notch events that rise to the levels of the big three. Who would have ever thought a Zombie race would be as good as it is? When I first heard about it, I was skeptical. Safety is absolutely a must-have when it comes to sports, but I also see it as every good thing out there whether it’s a company or an idea or a sporting event, had to iron out the creases before it became great. X Games come to mind. I’m sure there were hiccups with that too. The junk races will fade out, so until they do I will just research and not jump into every OCR coming just to get a fix.