* From: Ann Priestman
* Event Details
The race took place in the parking lots/fields across the street from Gillette Stadium. Very easy to get in and out of, and not a bad walk over to the festival area. The course went along two edges of the parking so it was kind of fun seeing the racers first thing.
The festival area had all the basics but not much else – registration, bag check, merch tent, some type of food truck, and a large set of port a potties. Given that the race was in a parking lot in August, they really could have used an extra tent or two for people to hang out in out of the sun.
Swag: Usual t-shirt, some wrist bands, and a temporary tattoo. No medals at the finish line, though I heard that maybe you could buy one… see next paragraph.
The thing that annoyed me (and others I talked to) before the race is that there are a lot of extra costs. When I registered it was $54 and I had a $5 off coupon. Then while checking out I got hit with a $10 fee for vendor/insurance, another $5 because I didn’t want to go all the way to Gillette the day before to pick up my packet, and whatever the final $8.46 processing fee was. There are always a few extra costs on top of the registration, but this seemed excessive. On top of that I believe the event photos will not be free, though at least parking and bag check were. Someone posted that medals could be purchased afterward. I personally didn’t see this, but it wouldn’t surprise me given how much merchandise they were trying to sell on top of the registration costs.
* Race Details
Ok obviously this is not a Spartan Race, it’s a fun run, and my group and I all thought they totally delivered on the fun. My Garmin watch reported 2.8 miles, which is fine with me for this type of event. Another dog-leg though the parking lot would not have added much. There were only nine obstacles, but most of them were these massive inflatable things. Since there were so few, I’ll describe each of them (I’m not bothering to look up the actual names):
1. A six-foot wall (with shorter options) – Looking back this was completely out of place, but walls are always nice.
2. Big Balls – I would love to do the setup on the show, but this was probably the best they could do. It’s essentially three or four low to the ground in a bouncy house. None of my group did very well, but fun anyway.
3. Big water slide with tubes – Awesome.
4. Wrecking balls – A couple of narrow platforms over water with two large balls swinging over head. We tried it twice and I wiped out both times. This was the part that to me felt the most like the tv show.
5. Slide without water – Mostly fun because the guy was running the climbing section as a race
6. Bouncy house – Yeah just a big area to bounce around in. The most tiring obstacle of the day for my group.
7. Sweeper – Like on the show the sweeper arm rotates and you have to run fast or duck under it. Less challenging than it looked like it would be.
8. Foam thing – The idea was run fast, jump onto the obstacle and slide to the end where there’s a huge pile of foam. My group only made it halfway. Nice photo-op afterward with everyone covered in bubbles.
9. Water slide – Awesome.
The obstacle lines were shorter than I expected. For things like the big balls they had a lot of lanes to keep things moving. I think our longest wait was for the final slide, but even that was probably only 2-3 minutes.
One random nice thing: There was only one water stop on the course map, but three on the course. I don’t know if they added more when they saw it was going to be 90 degrees or had always planned for three, but either way they were certainly appreciated.
In closing, my group and I had a blast and that’s all I ask for from this type of race. After nearly every obstacle we felt like we wanted to run around and do it again. I would definitely do this race again.
* Rating
Above Average
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* From: michael downey
* Event Details
this review comes from the perspective of someone who ran last year when this was R.O.C. and saw quiet a few fatal flaws and going to see how it stacks up now.
the event was held in one of the parking areas across the street from gillette stadium so with that this event had free parking next to the main area not often we get that at a race. the registration tent was well marked out and staffed with as many people if not more than we see at a spartan. But this is also one of the areas where i call flat out bullshit on this event. even though it is very well stated and spelled out on there reg page they charge you $5.00 to pick up AT THE EVENT i have yet to see any other race charge people to pick up the day of. it does not help that they did not allow people to pick up anyone elses packet in advance ( something we could do last year to avoid this assine fee ) and that they only offered one pick up station AT the venue so anyone who works in or north of boston had little to no realastic chance to be able to pick up in advance. it also dosent feel right charging for something when 99% of the people working at that area and that event are voule
nteers . i overheard several other people as well as many posts on our page about this fee rubbing people the wrong way and its easy to see why. the next area that rubbed me the wrong way is something if you only do OCR you are used to pictures being included in the cost of your registration fee with this event since they know its a rather captive audicance they exploit that and charge for the ( i do not know the specifics just yet as in how much what options and such) this was also something last year we did not get because they claimed at the last second there camara crew backed out on them.
they did not charge a fee for spectators and for good reason there start area/ village just flat out sucked there is NOTHING and i mean NOTHING going on they had one small merch tent and as we were leaving a single food truck was pulling up. granted this was at patriot place so there were options on the other side of route 1 but still absoutly nothing to keep people there after you finish your race. also since this was on a asphault parking lot theer is ZERO shade for pre and or post race so with temps in the 90*s today even more motivation to scaddle right after finishing, and from the looks of the parking lot that was full at 8 am and empty by 1030 we were not alone in getting out of dodge. Also with this race having some very fun spectator friendly obstacles they do not do a great job at placement so spectators can see how fun the race is.
Ok so onto the race itself, after making it through a very poorly run start gate that had a line a good 200 yards. long there MC does a good job at getting people ready and make them do some silly dance moves then off we go for about .5 miles till you reach there first obstacle of a 4-5-6 ft wall ( runners choice on the height) and all had 2 kicker plates on it to get over easy and they also put a 2 ft high staging on the back side so you dont drop the full way down, not a bad idea considering for a big portion of the crowd that may be there first ever wall. next was BIG BALLS the first bouncy house obstacle and one that gives a lot of laughs and fun moves. about another half mile till you come up to one of there signature obstacles a 40-50 ft tall water slide that you use a inner tube to go down ( one of my personal favs) and first chance you get wet and cooled off. wrecking ball is next and i enjoy this obstacle but not a fan of the life vest you have to wear for it, the water is
no more tha 4 ft deep and for me being a bigger guy the vest was more a obstruction in movment. some more running than into a area with a few switch backs feeing 3 obstacles all on top of each other a small inflatable slide, a gaint 50ft long bouncy house and another big event SWEPER where a giant mechanical arm just goes in a circle and you try to run down a narrow path and not get knocked off. that brings us to the last two obstacles of foam of fury, you take a 50ft run and leap onto a foam and water covered inflatable slip and slide ( this had minor backups because most peopl choose to race each other and if you dident get enough speed on the run you got stuck on the slide ) and then HAPPY ending there largest and fastest slide.
we got in early so we did not hit any major backups but by 10 am HAPPY ending had to have a line of atleast 200 long and only growing, this is something they had issues with last year and with bad course design did not really fix it to well. backups at this race happen fast. with some more thought behind layout and planning i think they can reduce back ups at obstacles and help keep a better flow to the day.
overall even with the negatives stated earlier this IS a fun race and everyone we ran with enjoyed themselves and had a great time. i was not happy that they cut out a few obstacles and ended up with less than last year. i would like to see them get to aboyut 20 obstacles to be a really good event. even if they doubled up on some of the slides it would be fine. if you signed up on day one you are happy with things but if you signed up closer to the event you paid around the $80 mark and my opionion for what this race is its really not worth much over $65.00 price point, if they can add a few obstacles back it might be worth a bit more
* Rating
Average
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* From: Amy LaPanne
* Event: Wipeout Run, Hartford CT 8/8/2015
* Event Details
This is the race F/K/A the ROC Race, which I also ran last year and enjoyed a great deal. This year, I have to say I was disappointed by Wipeout.
Parking: Easy & free at Rentschler Field, though I was a little confused why we were getting flagged down to a very remote part of the parking lot when there were a lot of empty spots much closer to the entrance. We arrived at about 11:30 for our 12:30 heat, which was overkill. We had all picked up our bibs the night before, thank God. If you didn’t pick up the night before, not only did you have to pay $5, you had to stand in a line that looked to be at least 20 minutes long.
Schwag: I used a Living Social deal which got me upgraded to a tech tee shirt. This was nice, because the regular shirts were cotton, and nothing special. In fact the Wipeout logo was tiny on it, which made no sense to me. However, the tech tee is really sheer. It’s almost see through, and it’s even black! The logo appears prominently on it, but the design otherwise is nothing special. In my packet I also had a couple of plastic wristbands and a pretty cool temporary tattoo. There were options to purchase a medal with a box but for $35, I wasn’t willing to bite. Strangely today, they emailed me saying I could buy it for $40. Go figure. Anyway, the box included another t-shirt (of unknown opacity level), a decal, band-aids, and a headband, all with the Wipeout name/logo appearing on it. I didn’t stop at the merch tent, and it didn’t look like many other people did either. I never saw many people over there, so I’m not sure if people bought things in advance or just skipped
. The ROC merch tent was much busier. Their tech shirt was much better quality, and also, not see through.
Worse than last year: The “festival” area. Lame is the best word to describe it. Last year had a foam machine area that spit out tons of foam that we messed around in for a long time. Families had lots of fun with it too. That was gone this year. There was one food truck (which had fantastic smoothies and pressed sandwiches), and a slushy/fried dough stand. That’s it. There were a couple of inflatable “WIPE OUT RUN” logo things that you could take your picture with. The place was really dead & we didn’t bother hanging out.
Pictures remain to be seen but are supposed to be available this week. My understanding is that they’re somewhere between $5-7 each, but last year we didn’t find any of us. I don’t know that we will find any of us on course either since I don’t remember seeing any photographers, but there were some official picture stations at the end, and we did stop there for team photos.
Overall, I’ll probably do it again just to have a goofy day with friends, and especially because it’s probably the only race I’ll ever get my daughter to do with me but I wouldn’t pay more than $50-60 for it. Like I told my neighbor, this was no $100 race.
* Race Details
The Course: They could sure use a lesson from ROC on laying out an obstacle course. Last year’s race was much more evenly laid out with obstacles & running. This year had overly large gaps of running. Noticeably absent was the monkey bars, which was disappointing to me since that was the first ever set of monkey bars I successfully crossed. The obstacles vary a little from race to race, but they have some that appear at every race. Same as last year, the Big Balls was bottlenecked somewhere around 15 minutes or so, making me thankful to not be worried about being timed. The Wrecking Ball & The Sweeper both were mildly bottlenecked, maybe just under a 5 minute wait for each.
Better AND worse than last year: Spectator Access. The thing about this race is that it’s all about watching people WIPE OUT. Last year, spectators could only see the last couple of obstacles. Everything else was off limits. This year, spectators had access to most of the course, which was great – except there were really no clearly marked areas for them to walk, so they were constantly in the path of the runners. I didn’t have my family come since last year the access was so limited & I wish I had known about the change because they love a good wipe out.
Difficulty: This is not the kind of race you worry about being difficult. This is the kind of race you just go to have fun on, and hopefully wipe out, in front of photographers. I did wipe out – HARD – and got my best bruise ever, including all of the Spartan/Mudder/Rugged Maniac/Warrior Dashes, so well done there. Wipeout.
* Rating
Average
