Crackneck

I was registered to run the first wave of the day at 9am so figured I had time to go do the 10k time trial at Trotters at 6am. Fresh from that run/race I headed straight up to Doyalson for The Australia Day Raw Challenge . The event site was already pumping by the time I got there and picked up my race pack, no bib – which was fine because I tend to either lose them ( The Stampede sticky bibs) or get impaled by the pins when they come lose (Trying to climb over a net while being impaled at Tough Mudder ). I met up with the Obstacle Racers group at their tent and dumped my bag there before heading for the start line with the other first wave racers. The MC did the usual job of getting people pumped and then we were off, the run leg was the same as we’d practiced at the camping weekend only this time there was actual mud. The running spread the field out a bit for when we hit the web of ropes to crawl and climb through. Then onto the sandbag carry where all the competitors trudged ar...

The Beach Bash really started for me on the Friday night before the race was scheduled to run. My cousin Gil and I did a tour of the obstacles starting with what looked like a slip & slide, sandbag carry & tyre crawl at North Shelly before heading to Toowoon Bay where the big walls were setup. Fortunately we’d left the lone security guard behind at North Shelly as we tried out the big walls. There was one 3m wall without any helpful step-ups, but I figured out a creative way of getting over it. Meanwhile Gil who is very tall could just run, jump and pull himself over. We spent a bit of time speculating exactly how the course would work at Toowoon before heading to the Entrance Baths with the giant scaffolding stairs, tyre pile & tunnel crawl. Testing those out, we headed for the Memorial Park down The Entrance where the smaller 2m walls and the tents for the Fitness Expo were setup. Content that we’d scoped out the course we headed for home and prepared to run the next day...

The Obstacle Racers Australia group had hired out the Raw Challenge venue for the weekend to allow anyone who was willing to fork out the $25 to cover expenses to come along and train on the obstacles. I got to the venue in the early afternoon of a very hot Saturday and met up with the two dozen or so people who were milling around the unofficial camping ground, some of the folks I knew from different exercise groups or had seen online, but most of them were new faces. James who runs the Obstacle Racers site got a large group of us together and led us out onto the course, the run leg wasn’t particularly challenging as we charged down past the cricket fields and through the very dry bush. Some of the racers who had done the Raw Challenge before pointed out where various obstacles normally are but weren’t setup for that day. The first real challenge we got to were the pipe logs, essentially very high hurdles. A log of wood covered in a slippery plastic pipe set at about chest height (f...