* From: Sarah Dalton
* Event Details
It was at Pineland Farms in New Gloucester. A beautiful facility, plenty of parking. The grounds are beautiful! It was touted to be a great event. Lots of advertising (locally). The food was supposed to be fantastic (a restaurant that serves good BBQ). However, they ran out of food while I was out racing and by the time I got in line, the facility supplied a couple dozen hotdogs. I imagine the planners wouldn’t make that mistake twice… but I was really disappointed that there wasn’t enough food.
There was a race shirt and a bib for Schwag and that is it for pre race… The “medal” at the end was a dime store beaded necklace that probably cost 50 cents each. Not what I expected.. considering normal 5k races usually have all sorts of vendors supplying free stuff (discounts to sporting goods stores, energy treats, chapsticks, etc). But it was for a good cause (Special Olympics). I would hope the money went to that organization in stead of the schwag.
* Race Details
It was a 4 mile race, and 29 obstacles. A very hilly course to say the least. I am having a hard time with the difficulty, because I have done only one other race. I found that most of the difficulty was from the climbing the hills after the plethora of creek beds full of knee deep mud. Mostly because the ground below the brush was clay, so there was nothing to get grip on when climbing up from the mud (already covered in mud). Again, I was disappointed that this race was as simple as it was. I was expecting more to be invested in making the obstacles other than water in low spots.
I mean, I am all for having fun and getting muddy, but 15 or so of the 29 obstacles were muddy trenches. Other than that, there was a rope swing (to get to the other side), a 20 foot drop that required holding a rope to basically repel down because the wall was clay and rocks at the bottom. There were a set of rods affixed to two trees, that we had to climb up and over, and 3 or 4 drainage ditches to crawl through, the final obstacle was 2 cattle trailers with a board between them at the top, that we had to climb up, walk across (or crawl for some) and scale down… into a dumpster filled with water. Presumably to get rid of some of the clay, mud and muck.
So I was challenged because I am not used to the hills and climbing
* Rating
Below Average
