Monday, August 29, 2016

MUDTITAN 6 FLORIDA AUG 27 2016 ... A REVIEW





The Mud Titan 6 held on Saturday, August 27, was my 3rd Mud Titan Obstacle Course Run.

I believe the first one I ran was Mud Titan 2, and the 2nd time was Mud Titan 4.

On my first experience with Mud Titan, a few years ago, my daughter Emma and I were flabbergasted to have to pay for our run T-shirts, since a "free T" is tradition in OCR. Also I remember their wash station was a tank of water with some hoses and mostly empty after my wave.



I still came back though. Raymie and I showed up for Mud Titan 4 and there were free T's and better obstacles.



I skipped Mud Titan 5 due to a conflict with another run.



At Mud Titan 6 this past Saturday, we ran a course in serious need of repair and inspiration... but mostly repair.



The obstacles were mostly the same as Mud Titan 4, but many of these showed serious wear and tear. 



Some examples:



  • The sloped monkey bar obstacle should have had 3 working lanes, but a Mud Titan volunteer stood blocking two of those lanes because the structure was falling apart. One lane was open with the resulting bottleneck of runners. 
  • A pretty simple balance beam obstacle had crumbling rotted wood at the end of the beam where a runner would be expected to step before hopping off.
  • An obstacle that challenged your grip strength as you hung from a narrow ledge had loose spacer boards that moved and almost fell out as I moved along the board.
  • At one water station, a poor volunteer was dipping cups of water out of a cooler with his hands ... his fingers submerged in every cup he served.
  • The platform where a runner would stand to start the rings/cargo net obstacle had rotted and collapsed into a swaybacked shadow of its former self. This sagging platform made just reaching the rings a challenge.
  • At the finish, while their were cheerful volunteers handing out the traditional neck medalions, the water station was a garbage heap and unmanned.


There were other things that were not safety issues, but just seemed like "getting by".  The slide was narrow, barely wet, and pretty much a single seater, so that caused a runner bottleneck, as did the tire wall. We probably stood for 10-15 minutes waiting to climb that.



This is not to say that it wasn't fun, just that it had a rundown feel to it. 

On the positive side, the check-in was smooth, the price not exorbitant, and the volunteers all pleasant.



I'm not sure I will be back, but either way, I hope Mud Titan uses the time between races to address their sagging obstacle safety issues and rejuvenate the course.




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You get a lot of respect from me, FC! Not my kind of running, but still a master class on drive and determination (and fun).

I have similar thoughts about how races are run, sometimes poorly run. That St. Louis Marathon I did in April was a mess. And while I think all of my gripes were legit, I also think they were colored by my fatigue and self-loathing at the time (I did NOT run it well). Still, it's one I probably won't run again.

And I still wonder what the insurance premiums must be for mud runs like this. Was anyone carried out on a stretcher?

Note "new" link.

Julie Zickefoose said...

Constructive criticism, well short of blogshaming. Lissen up, MudTitan. Glad you finished and didn't fall through anything!

JZ

Sunshine said...

Way to go for completing it - it sounds like a challenge but also a lot of fun.