* From: Ann Priestman
* Event: Gladiator Training Grounds
* Date: 2015-06-06
* Event Details
Parking was easy to find and very close to the festival area, and bag check was free. The festival area seemed a bit nicer than last year – more centralized and more picnic tables.
Swag was the standard medal and t-shirt, with water and bananas at the finish line.
* Race Details
I ran this race last year, and since then I believe they bought Renegade Playground’s obstacles leading to what they said was 40 obstacles. I didn’t keep count but I’d believe it – there were obstacles everywhere! I’m sure I’m going to miss some, but offhand I remember tons of A-frames, short walls and 6-foot walls, some inverted walls, monkey bars, mud mounds, a crawl through some mud, some cargo nets/other climbing structures, rolling a tire, and ranger bars. Some of the duplicated obstacles all came in a row – there were three inverted walls in a row, and a series of I think 4 A-frames. I’m undecided about whether I liked that or not – it seemed repetative, but I also felt like I was getting better with each obstacle.
I brought my friend and he thought it was a great first race. None of the obstacles were too crazy but it also wasn’t a big deal if we had to go around (which we had to do for a couple of A-frames and inverted walls).
One tiny complaint is that one of the walls felt a bit wobbly, but when we mentioned it to someone at the finish line she went over to check one of the walls, so hopefully that was a temporary problem.
Overall I thought it was a really fun local race and definitely improved over last year with all the new obstacles. Most of the individual obstacles weren’t too hard, but all together they made for a pretty good challenge.
* Rating
Above Average
