#BattleFrog Race Review

The summary to this blog post is that the BattleFrog race was awesome. Well organized and on par if not tougher than the Tough Mudder and Spartan races of similar distances. If it comes to your area sign up and your will not be disappointed. 

Yesterday my friend and I participated in the BattleFrog race and I have to say that it was well worth it. My basis for comparison are the Tough Mudders and Spartan Races and this ranks right up there with them in terms of quality, organization and difficulty of obstacles. If you are a Spartan or Tough Mudder enthusiast, then this is an event well worth your time. And if you have kids you will like it even more are their festival area was packed with fun things to do in addition to races for all ages including a mile long race for older kids and a short fun run for kids 4+.

They also had a lot of obstacles that I have not seen before. This made it all the more fun. They had an angled wall traverse that had ropes for you to use to get across. They had a long cargo net set vertically for you to get across. They had a long rope across a river to climb across. They had a rope swing over a mud pit. All of these things were new and innovative and made the race fresh, exciting and fun.

I had assembled some pictures to give you a good idea of the course and then I found this video on YouTube that has all of the obstacles in it. I can't tell the story better than this.

Note the first part of the traverse wall has rope on it instead of wooden blocks.

Picture of the rope traverse taken the day before the race and before the overnight downpour.

All mud, all day

I will note that Tough Mudder and Spartan Races have more participants and that there were opportunities for serious backlogs at some of the BattleFrog obstacles if there were more people. My friend and I were the first open wave and had to wait a little bit before the rope traverse across the river but nothing else held us up significantly. Again, with more people some of the obstacles could have had significant wait times. I get the feeling that BattleFrog is a well organized event so I would not worry about this becoming a problem until it is a problem. 

There was heavy rain the entire night before the event making the trails extra muddy. This was a good thing since it kept the weather cool and not 90+ degrees with 100% humidity which we can get in New Jersey in August.

More than any other race the BattleFrog challenged upper body strength with many rope climb obstacles. Aside from the traditional rope climb, there were 12 foot walls with a rope and their Tsunami obstacle which is a larger, steeper version of Tough Mudder's Mt. Everest whereby instead of having people help you up the ramp, you grab onto a rope and pull yourself up. They also had more than one tunnel to crawl through and one of them had a rope for you to pull yourself. Again, not an actual rope climb but something to tax those muscles as you made your way through the course.

What all of this means to me is that I will be putting more emphasis on towel pull ups and bent over rows at the gym. I did a lot better this year with the upper body challenges than I did last year but I still need to be able to climb a rope.

Finally, this event attracted a few of the elite runners in the sport including Hobie Call, Junyong Pak, and Laura Metzner. Also, less known to me were a contingent of Canadian obstacle racers that ended up doing extremely well. With the exception of the Men's winner, Hobie Call, all other podium spots were taken by our friends from the Great White North. 

It was fun to see these elite racers in person and I must mention that Hobie Call and Junyong Pak are extremely nice guys who are generous with their time to participants like me and many others. They are there to race and do their business but don't mind talking to fans. Our sport is lucky to have such great ambassadors at the highest levels.