Patriot Challenge

You can't tell it in this picture of me approaching the finish line, but I am having fun.  The Patriot Challenge was a 3 mile obstacle
course at Lucas Oil Raceway.  Billed as a family-friendly course with obstacles that are challenging but still doable for anyone 10 and above.  I do not see how any 10 year-old kids could have done a few of those climbing obstacles, however, without some help.  Especially since even I was not able to pull myself up a couple of them where I had to use only my arms.


I did attempt all obstacles, and ran the course in-between obstacles, and finished in 57:19, placing 104th out of 405 overall.  I'm very pleased with that.  My son ran it too and finished in 41:37, placing 37th overall.  He needs to run the Elite course next year.  He did skip one obstacle - crawling under a tarp through mud & puddles.  That one scared me a little but I still did it.  The water slide also scared me - it was pretty much a straight drop down, then ramped back down & launched you straight up, leaving you to land in a deep mud puddle.  It actually was pretty exhilarating!

I will definitely do this or something like it again next year - I had a total blast!  Next year, I might consider wearing fingerless gloves to help with my grip on things like monkey bars.  And I will definitely train beforehand by working on pulling my body weight up with only my arms.  Laura told me to do that, but I didn't.  I did follow part of her advice though - training by running on different types of terrain and running with wet socks & shoes.  Very helpful, as not only did this course leave me wet and muddy, but it was also raining the entire time (in case you were wondering why I'm not muddy in the picture, it's because the rain washed a lot of it off).

Other observations: check-in and the vendor tent areas were both a little disorganized, but as this is only the 2nd year for the event, it's probably understandable.  No swag bags - just t-shirts & finisher medals.  Free beer, too, but I skipped that.

Obstacle/course list:  1/4 sprint down drag strip (still don't know my sprint time), street hockey dribble around cones & shoot, drag a tire through gravel, water slide into mud pit, climb over mud hills and crawl thru more mud pits, water station, bars to either hurdle/climb over or crawl under, grenade toss - miss the target and do a crawl under a tarp, a whole area of large hills - some mud, some weed covered, some gravel, crawl under an old car up on blocks, climb blocks & oil drums to get on top of a semi (couldn't do this one), climb over chain link fence, monkey bars (fell off), crawl on back under ropes, water station, balance beam over mud pit, crawl under tarp thru mud puddles, jog thru rings in mud, climb over mud hills, rope swing into mud pit, jog thru tires, climb up over some weird wooden structure (couldn't do this one), tire flip, hills under bleachers covered with rocks, hurdle/climb over concrete barriers, roll tire around cone course, receive a flag and run 1/4 mile to the finish line, where firemen were waiting to hose you off.