Tag: tuff scramblers

Tuff Scramblers is a smaller (but growing!) OCR held in Rehoboth, MA – though their website makes reference to the fact that they may be hitting the road or creating some new locations.  They hold 2 events a year – one in the spring (usually May) and one in the fall (usually October).

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This was my 3rd Tuff Scramblers; my 2nd of the fall race variety.  In 2012 I was still recovering from a broken hand so I couldn’t take on the course in all it’s glory, but I did what I could.  I also remember it was REALLY chilly.  This year the weather was much more cooperative with highs near 70 degrees and no injuries to speak of to hinder my abilities.

Jeff and I arrived really early – around 7:30am.  I think there may have been 6 cars in the on-site lot at the time we arrived.  Needless to say, parking was not a difficult thing at all.  Since we were one of the larger teams, we were offered a spot to set up a tent and essentially make a home base for all of us to gather when we weren’t racing, or watching, or taking in the sites. We found our spot and set up the tent, then hung around by the traditional campfire we’ve come to know and love at this event.  The tent area was conveniently located right across the way from the campfire, and gave a reasonable view of the ending leg of the race.   This was a great way to make use of this little section of land and I think there were a total of 6 teams who were granted the opportunity to use this perk.  I thought this was a nice touch!

Once we were set up, we headed back to registration.  It was still really early and volunteers were accumulating at this point.  Registration was a breeze.  No lines for Jeff and me.  Since we were recognized we didn’t even need to show ID.  We collected our tech shirts (ladies received pink, and gents received gray – however I understand you could trade colors later in the day if you had a preference for the other color) and pint glasses (which, I discovered have the date on them!) as well as our bibs and free drink coupons (we opted not to get meal coupons at registration so these weren’t included).

The festival area had plenty going on.  The Air Force had a presence.  Reebok brought their store on wheels and had various shoes and workout attire for sale.  B-Low The Waist had a tent set up.  Core Power was offering samples right near the finish line.  Unleashed set up camp right across from our tent and was using the Salmon Ladder as a contest to win a free spring race.  There was also a food/beer tent.  The DJ was set up closer to the Starting Line but all of the speakers were aimed at the festival area, so there was never a time you couldn’t hear him – unless you clearly weren’t paying attention.

The spectator areas are among the best anywhere.  I was able to watch our elite team run through a number of obstacles without having to move too far from where I initially entered the spectator area, from this one location I was able to watch nearly 8 obstacles be traversed.  The course is set up in just a way that all the boring trail running (let’s face it, it isn’t as exciting to watch someone negotiate technical trail now is it?)  is left out of sight for the spectators, but several times they end up in a rather large clearing where really all of the actual obstacles are set up.  There are a number of photo opportunities and (from the runner’s perspective) it’s awesome to have random people, as well as teammates and family, cheering you on.  I honestly don’t think there is another race out there that has this level of accessibility to the course.

At the Starting Line there was an MC clearly announcing everything we needed to know about the course.  Heats seemed to be heading out a couple minutes early, if not exactly on time.  Since each heat was separated from the next by about 45 minutes, the heats had plenty of time to move through the course without the next heat being hot on their heels.

The course always surprises me.  Sure, the layout isn’t going to change drastically, but I can honestly say that each of the 3 times I’ve participated in this event, the course has had upgrades or changes.  The course start was the same as it was in the spring, but different from where it was last fall.  Each race, the evil mastermind race director adds some new level of fun and crazy to what already exists.  This time around was no different.  You can always count on the pickle barrel hop, and the pillar hop, as well as the balance beam and over-unders.  When you sign up for a Tuff Scramblers race you can count on some mud to muck through, ant hills to climb, and rocks to traverse.  This time around we encountered a pipe a-frame to conquer (think an A-frame ladder wall, but instead of wood use 5 or 6 inch PVC pipe) and, to add a little extra difficulty, we were being sprayed with water from the top.  Also, for the first time ever the hay bales were stacked 4 high – and let’s not discuss how the monkey bars were being sprayed with water too!

I’d also like to mention the course marking situation.  This year course marking was the best yet!  Both times previous, I lost the trail in the middle of the woods.  On the most technical parts I would focus so much on my foot placement that I’d miss a turn and when I looked up to see where to go I found myself spinning in circles looking for some tape or an arrow.  This never happened on the course this time.  The course was marked so well that I never questioned where I needed to go – even when I was deep into race brain!

There were plenty of water stops along the course.  I actually had to tell a young volunteer that I didn’t need any water at one of the stops.  It was great that the volunteers were standing at the ready with cups of water in hand, so they could just pass them off to racers as needed.  While I didn’t need all the stops, the weather was perfect for a comfortable run, it was good they existed.  The water stop at the finish line was visible to finishers.  Our very own Corrine was volunteering at this station too which was a bonus!

Getting clean is sometimes a challenge after these types of races, but I think they are well on their way to having the market cornered on this front.  While I didn’t utilize the facilities, I did peek at what they had available.  In the spring there were 2 semi-private shower stalls available to clean off.  These stalls were wooden frames with shower curtains and a hose.  The failure was that once clean, there was nowhere else to go to get changed.  Also, the line for these showers was probably about 5 deep all day long.  This time there were 4 stalls (2 for the ladies and 2 for the gents) and they had wooden doors.  Changing rooms were made available in form of horse trailers – which I found hysterical and appropriate being that we were on a farm!  I even heard a rumor that the water was warm (not hot, but also not cold).  This detail wasn’t exactly confirmed.  I did ask around and heard mostly that it wasn’t cold – but we’ll go with it all the same.

All in all, this event is always well organized and fun.  I’d expect nothing less from the organizers.  The bonus is that it happens to be one of the closest races to my house I’ve encountered to date.

PROS:
* Awesome Course Markings
* Improved post-race cleanup
* Team Tent area
* Festival area
* Spectator area
* Organization
* Dated Pint Glasses

Possible Improvement:
It is really difficult to find any negative points for this event.  While chatting with others, I heard a couple people lament that they couldn’t purchase food.  It seems if you didn’t pre-purchase a food coupon at registration then food wasn’t an option.  While this does allow for quantities and food supply to be managed, it frustrates the individuals who just can’t make that decision so far in advance.  Maybe this can be modified for the future.

We arrived fairly early in the day and managed to get one of the last two parking spots in the on-site lot. This was very convenient for us, but after talking with other team members, the remote parking would have been almost as easy. The remote lot was a mere half mile from the venue, which made for a fast and easy walk. If you didn’t feel like walking, they ran a shuttle bus back and forth on a really quick and convenient schedule. Most that I spoke to took the bus if it happened to be there and walked if it wasn’t. Either way, parking was easy. There was a $5 fee per car, which seems to have become the standard. I’m fairly certain, this was to offset the cost of running the bus all day.

Check in was in a very small area, but since this isn’t an outrageously large event and the starting heats weren’t overcrowded, it went very quickly and smoothly. You turned over your id and they handed you your bag, your drink/over 21 wrist bands, a pint glass, and your t-shirt (a nice tech tee in whatever size you requested when you signed up). It took less than a minute to be all set to go. They also had a bin full of samples to hand out where you could take what you wanted. This would be easy to abuse, but I only saw people taking one of each available sample and leaving what they didn’t want. Personally, I like this because I was able to leave behind the things I know I didn’t want which kept them from being wasted.

Spectator check in was equally as easy. Passes were $5 each unless you brought two food items to donate to the local food pantry. I love this! I will gladly bring a bag of food if given the option and Vince said there was already a bit of food in the truck when he brought his to the check in table.

There were a few tents set up for vendors and I remember seeing the Army, the Air Force, B-low the Waist (apparently a game that has been going on since 1929 that involves secret hand signs and slug-bug like punching that I simply can’t fathom being fun at all (but then again, I don’t think I’m their target audience!)), and Muscle Milk were all there. Muscle Milk had free samples available for everyone which was nice. There were also a few physical challenges that people could choose to participate in – a salmon ladder (if you don’t know what this is, check it out on YouTube – http://youtu.be/T0Vd74et8ss ) and a push up station where you had to put your feet on a suspended board while you used suspended rings as handholds. This one looked like a great challenge and I meant to do it. Unfortunately, I remembered about 10 minutes after we left.

There was a DJ running music throughout the day and someone would periodically come on the loud speaker to warn you what wave was coming up soon and tell you when to start lining up. The DJ lowered the music a few minutes before each scheduled wave so that the announcer could thank everyone and remind us why we were there (donations were made to the Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Resource Foundation) and about the expected teamwork on the course (if you see someone in need, be sure to help). A quick 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, GO and we were off!

The course was great! We looped around in open grass fields and went across the festival area several times. This was great because it brought spectators right up to the action. They had the course well marked off, and even though spectators were able to cross the path of the runners, I didn’t see or hear of anyone getting in a runner’s way. They had a cattle gate very close to the start of the race that actually held the people back until the last runner passed at the beginning of each wave. I thought it was fun to see them all packed up behind the gate as we went out. The trails through the woods had a good mix of small hills, small stream crossings, and mud. They also had a lot of rocks. I mean A. LOT. OF. ROCKS. For seasoned trail runners, I’m sure this was pretty easy stuff. For those used to only running on well groomed and obstacle free trails, this was a bit of a challenge. I pushed myself to go pretty fast until the second time I almost rolled an ankle – and after that, I took the really rocky areas a bit more slowly. This served to reward those who train in those terrains while punishing those who don’t. Again, I think this is a good thing.

The obstacles were more varied than I have seen in any other race. They had some standards such as a low crawl through mud, over/unders, a cargo net, pipes used as balance beams, and monkey bars. They had good use of natural and man-made terrain such as tall dirt/mud/rock hills, some boulder hills, a slippery mud wall with a rope assist, and a short swim. Then, on top of all that, they had some really unique obstacles as well. First, there were giant concrete filled barrels spread across a small pond where you had to jump from one barrel to the next frogger style. Then, there was a second, similar obstacle with concrete pillars of varying heights to jump across. There were two “walls” made up of large PVC pipes stacked on top of each other that were a little tricky because they were so slippery. And, finally, there were large tubes  positioned at about a 45 degree angle that had water cascading down inside that you had to crawl up through to the top of a hill. To make this possible, there was a rope hanging down through each tube to help pull yourself up, but there was not much room to maneuver inside! I definitely give them an A+ for creativity on their obstacles!

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Our photographers were able to capture just about every obstacle on the course as they were mostly very centrally located around the festival area. The runners did the trail portions in loops away from the center in order to get the distance in. This made it extremely spectator friendly and added to the enjoyment of everyone. I give them an A+ for this as well. In addition, each wave was sent off 45 minutes after the previous one. This allowed the fastest runners in each heat a fairly free course through most of it. They would catch the slowest runners of the previous heat, but not until pretty close to the end. There was virtually no wait at any obstacle which is impressive!

I only had a couple of negatives to point out for the day. First, the water at the finish line was not obvious and we had to search for it a while before finding it. Turns out it was close, but not well marked and easy to miss with people standing around unintentionally blocking it. They also ran out of water before the last heat even started. If they restocked again later in the afternoon, I missed it as each time I walked by it was still empty. Second, there were no recycling bins for all the beer cans and plastic bottles that were consumed in the festival area. It is possible that they contract with a trash company who will sort it all out off site, but if that is the case, it wasn’t made known. And finally, they had four semi-private shower stations available (which was not a negative at all!) but there were no changing tents anywhere. This meant that if you were needing to change, you were taking up a shower area and keeping others from using it all the while. I would love to see the same shower area with two small changing tents nearby for men and women. As it was, we made due holding towels for each other as we hid behind a tractor on site.

These are very minor negatives for what was a great day! Overall, I have to give this event an Excellent rating. They have announced a fall event for October 19 and I am very excited to participate again this year. I hope we will have a large contingency there!

Team Photos