Tag Archives: featured

With this year's race season getting into swing, there are a lot of things we are doing to prepare ourselves for our individual events. We are training on the regular, making sure our gear is up to par, but are you getting yourself truly prepared for your next race? We've aimed to make that much easier with a new release of our OCR Preparedness spreadsheet.

It wasn't long ago that I had found my perfect Hydration Vest. However, you know as well as I do that things change and keeping an open mind is paramount. I had recently come across a reinvented vest from Salomon in the hopes that I could find something a bit lighter that sports a lower profile than my everyday wear. Enter the ADV SKIN 5 SET, a sleek, low-profile, lightweight vest from the team at Salomon. Not only is it very light, it looks good too.

I have been around the block this year. I have gone through a number of injuries that have inhibited or limited my participation in almost all of my events this year. When Killington started rolling around, I was nervous about running the Ultra Beast on this mountain again. Last year, the mountain almost took me out when my knee decided to make everything past mile 11 grueling. This year had its own set of challenges and again, conventional wisdom would suggest that I take the safe route and just run the beast.

If you have the itch for a long race, one of the items you will likely need is a headlamp. With so many options out there, it can be a daunting task trying to pick the right one for your needs. There are a few brands that lead the pack, Black Diamond, Petzl, Princeton Tec, etc. Unfortunately, it seems that one company doesn't seem to be mentioned all that much, and it is confusing as to why. Well, no more. COAST has set out to change all that, and your mind, with their FL75.

As the OCR Championship Season is upon us, eyes move to Lake Tahoe as the sports finest head west for the Spartan Race World Championships. So let's kick this season off in style with the gear and races that the leaders of the pack will be sporting. OCRAddict has partnered with Marena for a killer giveaway!!! Two prizes for our fellow #OCRAddict, a $300 gift card to Marena's top of class compression gear and a free Spartan Race credit.

We are are all looking for the right shoe, the right pack, the right pants, the right... or anything for that matter. With every single shoe manufacturer jockeying for your hard earned cash, which of them should get it? There are brands like Reebok, Merrell, Salomon, Altra, inov-8, Ice Bug, and the list goes on and on. For years, I have been running in many of them, but the inov-8 200's have been my go-to shoe for just about any race. Well, Inov-8 has another shoe, the X-Talon 225's, and they look sexy.

Since the dawn of time, man has been looking for... wait, what? This is OCR, not a history lesson or a PBS documentary... nevermind. Since I broadened my OCR horizons a few years back, one event I look forward to, almost as much as Killington, is Savage Race in Albrightsville, PA. Not because it's Albrightsville, PA, but because it is Savage Race, and it is close by. If you hadn't guessed it, I am a fan of the Savage Series, but there just aren't enough of their races to go around. However, when it does come around, you should get your butt out there and get Savage.

It is starting to feel like the good Lord has a ‘sense of humor’ we’ll call it when Texas decides to have a race and for the inaugural United States OCR Championships he definitely had a “here hold my beer” type inspiration. This time though instead of making the obstacle crazy amounts of water on the course, he decided to go with logistics as the first obstacle of the event. Finding a way to get to Y.O. Ranch Headquarters for many became significantly more complicated as Hurricane Harvey (in case you missed it) raged from Southeast Texas to parts of Louisiana. The result was the disruption of one of the World's busiest airport hubs and a man-made gas shortage based out of fear. Either way made things exciting.

A recent article by Brad Stulberg provoked me, outside of being angry, to counter some of the points made; namely that "Participating in endurance sports requires two main things: lots of time and money." Outside of being a "hit piece", much of the article is arrogant and uninformed. While the first claim is absolutely true, you do need plenty of time, the second is absolutely false. You do not need a lot of money, it is not "white privilege" or a white collar job... at least for OCR. You do not need to be a masochist. We at OCRAddict want to get everybody out on the course and if a lack of funds has kept you from getting out there, we are going to help you get over that wall (see what I did there...?) and get on the course.

Many of us have been there; we are training hard, running hard, then we start to feel some discomfort on the outside of our thigh down to the knee. Some of us ignore it until it is too late, some of us start taking the time to understand what is going on and correct it or treat it. Usually, in a runner, this is the start of ITBS (Iliotibial Band Syndrome). If you let it linger too long, you can put yourself out of commission quickly. The best thing to do is start treating it before it even happens.