I had the opportunity to travel to the largest prize purse event in Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) history, Tough Mudder Infinity in Saudi Arabia. I’ll be releasing an article on The OCR Report (www.TheOCRReport.com) covering the nuances of the experiences as well as a podcast on Strength & Speed OCR (Strength & Speed (teamstrengthspeed.com)). If you want to know about the cultural experience, check out those two options. For this article, I’m going to focus on the race itself.
Check In & Parking: Check in was pretty standard and with the athletes primarily living on site, you could check in the day before taking any stress away from race morning. The staff was helpful and worked through any problems athletes had including me switching from individual to team race last minute.
Parking was plentiful since we were in the desert. With most of the international athletes on site, it again made for a very convenient experience.
Festival: The festival was above American standards in my opinion. They had ample bean bag type seating and several tents full of sponsors. A brand of tea, fitness brands, car brands, Red Bull and supplement companies were on site giving away free samples or had displays to experience their products. They even had portions of the festival area covered by fake grass and overhead awnings making it a nice place to hang out pre/post race. Plus, there was an area included off to the side that had full healthy meals and smoothies if you were looking for something more filling.
The only possible complaint was there wasn’t as many bathrooms as most Americans are used to, but there was also fewer athletes. The bathrooms were nicer, more of an individual stall with running water instead of the American style port-a-potty. Bottom line, I would take this festival over most American festivals hands down even with the fewer bathrooms.
Weather: I’ve heard it rains in Saudi Arabia about 10 days a year…one of those days was the night before the race. What timing! This rain and wind caused an hour delay in starting time, but they course officials adjusted well and it ultimately didn’t change the length of the race (something that was rumored to be happening). During the race it was overcast making for great running weather. You couldn’t have asked for better weather. Had it not been overcast the athletes would have needed a lot of sunscreen since the 10k course had very little areas of shade.
Obstacles: I had a lot of people message me about the obstacles online and that they weren’t up to American OCR standards…and you would be right. Just look around at the Saudi Arabian landscape and you’ll notice there aren’t lush forests of wood to build elaborate obstacles from. Saudi Arabia is still relatively early in their OCR life, I would guess around 10-12 events max and that might be generous. I say this because you should understand what you are signing up for. I didn’t travel to the other side of the world for the uniqueness of their obstacles (that’s what you do for OCR World Championships). I came to Saudi Arabia for the experience, the depth of competition, to be part of history and to leave with stories you can’t get anywhere else. In that aspect, this is one of my top ten races of my 100+ event racing career.
The obstacles were pretty standard including Tough Mudder Classics like Kiss of Mud (low crawl), Ladder to Hell (giant’s ladder), Devil’s Beard (net staked to ground), Cage Crawl, Berlin Walls, Skidmarked and Everest (warped wall) to name a few. The only upper body obstacle was a set of rings over water, which should have been easy if you are an experienced OCR athlete. Arctic Enema was one of the coldest I have ever felt and I think the volunteers enjoyed filling that with ice and watching all the foreigners jump into ice water a little too much. Seeing their reactions was probably one of the funniest parts of the race for me.
Race Course: The course was a mix of loose sand and hard packed sand with very little shade. It had some spectacular views of the mountains if you had time to look up creating some pretty awesome memories.
Pre-race they did briefings in Arabic and English to ensure racers understood the rules. The staff was also available to answer questions if you had any concerns.
There was some issues with the timing chips. I don’t know all the details but I know the data was being recorded they just couldn’t display it on a large screen leaderboard like they had planned. The end result is the results need to be double checked manually so the official results won’t be out until a couple days after the event. While that is not ideal, the fact that they faced adversity and still managed to put on the event says a lot about their ability to overcome obstacles placed in their path. Plus, they had done a lot of prep work to ensure things worked out including having two timing chips per athlete and two mid-lap timing stations in addition to ones at the start/finish.
All obstacles were monitored by volunteers. Just like American volunteers you got a mix of the very attentive to all the way to “I’m going to sit on my phone for 8 hours”. I did see, hear and experience volunteers correcting people on more than one occasion which was nice. At the end of each lap there were two different people checking to ensure you had all five of your obstacles completion bands (you had to remove one if you failed an obstacle). The visible adherence to the rules was nice, especially with such a large prize purse and such a deep field of competitors at the event.
The Experience: I’ll cover this in depth in my article on The OCR Report and Strength & Speed podcast but I’ll just say it was something I’ll never forget. I never thought I would visit Saudi Arabia, as they were closed to tourism until around 2019. The level of competition was insane with the best from around the world converging. Unlike OCRWC though, there were very few other people besides the elites so when I was on the starting line I new a good percentage of the field by name. That was truly awesome and it felt like being in a private, elite, world class event. If you want to run with the best in OCR in what feels like a private event, you need to come to their future events.
Overall: I can’t say enough good things about this experience. While the American contingent would have liked to see more challenging obstacles, the overall trip was something I will never forget. For those looking to experience the world of Ultra-OCR, like Tough Mudder Infinity, make sure you pick up a copy of the only book focused on endurance OCR, The Ultra-OCR Bible.
The event company, CAB Sports, that put on the event teased this is just the beginning of things to come and I couldn’t be more excited. While OCR seems to have reduced in America, I hope this is the start of the explosion of the sport in the Middle East and the rest of the world. With the amount of effort they put into this, I could definitely see that being the case. The future looks bright and I’m excited for the ride!
