Dirt in your skirt blog

OCR Kids: Spartan Race vs. BattleFrog Series

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Maia Cammisa

Maia

 

I am nine years old (almost ten), and I run obstacle course races.  The Reason I like obstacle course racing is because it is fun.  It makes me stronger, or it requires strength in not only your arms, but your legs.  It makes me confident, and I even forget I am afraid of heights.  I am so proud when I’m finished.  Now I’m going to compare the two kid’s races I ran (Spartan and BattleFrog).

 

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Spartan is a good starter course, just not the challenge I usually look for.  It’s really fun and the obstacles require a lot of leg power, because you jump a lot.   I really liked the elite volunteers, because they kept shouting, “Great job you guys!” and “You can do it!”  They had a warm up, but they did not include us in asking us what kind of exercises we knew.  I only remember having to do burpees a lot before we started, but that made us feel like part of the grown-up race.  The course, at the Charlotte Sprint, had jump throughs, cargo nets, over unders, walls, jumped over logs, and run up and down ramps.  The cargo nets were my favorite part of the race, because I like to crawl and climb. The course was a mile on a trail, and it had some trees, and a little bit of mud.  I was barely dirty after it. But it was exciting for me because it was my first race.  I will say I did have a lot of fun.  It was just really easy, and there were only a few obstacles in comparison to BattleFrog.

 

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When I did the BattleFrog, they had more obstacles than Spartan.  It offered the challenge I was looking for, the way my mom makes it sound when she talks about it.  BattleFrog also had more chances to get dirty, it makes you look like your are tougher, and you look cool when it dries.  We were asked to help with the stretches.  They picked kids out of the crowd to help with the stretches. The volunteers were really nice and shouted things to encourage us.  They told us what obstacles were in the race, and to watch out for the mudpit if you did not want to lose your shoes.  The obstacles BattleFrog had were mudpits, hay bales, walls, a creek you had to run through (with rocks and lots of deep spots), ladders, log pulls, cargo nets, net climbs, a rock climbing wall with a slide, a dirt pile, and the Normandy jacks.  The Normandy jacks were my favorite, you get to finish at the same place the grown-ups do.  I asked my mom about them, and we looked them up and learned about what they were.  They were used in World War II as traps with mines on them to keep troops off the beach.  I liked that we can also learn history from an OCR!  The BullFrog Mile was the same, but longer with more obstacles than the 4 year olds had in the TadPole Dash. There were not any injuries during the kid’s races.  But, during the 4 year old race, they should not do the gunshots because it freaked the kids out.  I hope they change the time for the gun shots or the time for the 4 year old race.

Both races were very exciting for me, but BattleFrog is my personal favorite.  I hope to more OCR in the future!!!

 

 

 

Editors Note:

Maia Cammisa is an obstacle racer and the daughter of Amie “LiveWire” Booth. She will be writing one article a month about Obstacle Racing from her point of view. Look for an article next week from her on Mudrunguide.com. We look forward to sharing her stories and points of view. 

She saw me running around at a recent race and asked her mother what I was doing, after being told she told her mother she wanted to do the same thing. She also would like to write a kids book about OCR from a kids point of view. We are honored to welcome Maia as a contributor for Dirt in Your Skirt. ~Margaret Schlachter