The Mosh OCR – Hazelwood, MO
I found out about The Mosh OCR when deciding to participate in the Heartland Elite OCR series. This is a series of races held by 3 different small OCR brands, and participants can participate in one of each to earn points toward the overall series podium. The Mosh OCR is put on the race company, Hazelwood OCR.
The Mosh OCR might be a small race in the way of the number of participants, but I would not consider the obstacles, the terrain, the creativity or the amount of effort put into this race to be any less than some other big brand OCRs.
Being newer to the OCR scene, I have not experienced much of the OCR of old. However, I was told by more experienced racers that this race brought back memories of the original days of OCR.
The venue was easy to find and the check in process was simple and quick. There was a workout room inside the community center that was full of machines and weights that was available for racers.
The race was held at a small community center with a large field, a few playgrounds, a skatepark and a community pool with water slides.
At the race start line, racers took off in waves of 2 at a time to prevent bottlenecking on obstacles. The obstacles were creative and made good use of the pre standing structures of the community park. We had to go underneath playground tunnels, traverse across a slack line in between skateboard ramps, rappel down ropes and cargo nets over the sides of balconies, run down water slides, trudge through the waves of the water park’s lazy river, kayak across a pool, walk across a balance beam in between bleachers, and carry a sandbag up and down pool stairs. They also had some fun, challenging rigs with unique holds and custom-made holds shaped like guitars and guitar picks. They had a rig made solely of tires that wore out your grip and core, a few high platforms to jump down onto soft landing mats, plenty of walls to get up and over, and a few obstacles the required strength to hit, lift, turn and pull heavy things. There were a lot of challenging but doable obstacles crammed into the 5k course.
The terrain was a mixture of open fields, a little bit of paved trail, and some very windy, technical wooded trails. One thing I also liked about the course was that it was very spectator friendly. There were so many areas within walking distance all around the park that spectators could watch racers complete the obstacles.
The staff were great as well. There was a volunteer at almost every obstacle that explained what to do and where to go next. All the volunteers were energetic, encouraging and seemed very happy to be there. The community was close and welcoming. One of the race sponsors was a local physical therapy business and they were offering massages and therapy to racers pre and post race.
There was a small podium ceremony in the gymnasium, with prize packages filled with goodies from 1st Phorm. It was a great race overall that probably doesn’t get as much recognition as it should, and I highly suggest it to any OCR fan next year!
