Savage Race Explained

Savage Race Explained

This one was a bit more fun than the first two. It’s made up of a ditch of water, with two sets of barrels set close to the water. In between the barrels are hurdles that you have to climb over. The point is to crawl under the barrels (in the muddy water), and over the hurdles. So that one was fun. The fourth obstacle was the back scratcher. This one was one of my favorites. It’s made of a wood wall about my height (5’ 8”). No break in the wood, and nowhere to put your feet, the goal is to essentially do an assisted muscle up, and pull yourself over. I didn’t realize I could do that, so it was cool! Big Ass Cargo was next (sorry, Mom, that’s the name of it!). This one was purely height, nothing cool, and one of my least favorites. I just got over and didn’t have any fun on it  obstacle number 6 was Great Wall. This was another of my favorites! It’s a big wall (hence the name) about 7 feet or so tall. You have to jump up, pull yourself up, and swing your body across. I was able to do it without any help, so I guess all those pull-ups are paying off  I think at this time we had gone around 2 miles. We were still feeling really good, and I was pretty hyped that I had been able to do all the obstacles so far with ease. Next up was Block Party. 

For this one, we had a huge block of cement attached to a rope that we had to pull toward us (maybe 20-25 feet). It was pretty easy because the obstacle was inside a wooden frame, so I put my feet up to the wood (that gave me something to push my feet against), moved my hands as far forward as they could reach, and used both arms to pull (instead of one arm pulling at a time which would make them fatigue faster). We finished that one, walked our blocks back to where they started, and kept going. Obstacle number 8 was Me So Thorny, more barbed wire. We got to Shrivelled Richard (an ice bath), and as we approached it, I told Levi “when you jump in, breathe out so you don’t start hyperventilating.” I didn’t take my own advice, though, because I was the one who started hyperventilating  So we jumped into this ice bath, swam under a wall, and then got out on the other side. It was cold. But we moved on to obstacle number 10 which was Venus Guy Trap. This is the one where we had to summit yet another wood wall. This one has a ledge at the top making it harder to get over, but also has two places to put your feet: the very bottom, and the very top. Thankfully I was able to make it over this one as well! The next obstacle was Savage Falls. This was a ridiculous obstacle where we had to walk or swim through a natural spring. That spring was the coldest thing I think I’ve ever walked into—much colder than the ice bath. I moved through that thing slow as molasses which actually makes no sense considering how cold it was. I just wasn’t expecting it, and it made me freeze all up.

That one was by far my least favorite! Well, I wanted to be a baby about how stupid that was (seriously what was the point of it?), but we moved onto Nuttsmasher, a balance beam.

 Our feet were so muddy at this point, you would think everyone would have been falling into the water, but no one was, at least when we were passing! I felt I was going to fall in for sure (balance is not my forte), but I made it through somehow! Next up: Holy Sheet. This one was weird. It’s made of a rope with both ends attached to the metal rig holding it up. So you had to walk your hands across the rope (feet hanging free), and once you get across that, there are three chains with balls on the ends that you have to swing to. I didn’t make it past the rope portion, but Levi said holding onto the balls was extremely difficult! I can only imagine… We kept moving, and got to obstacle 14: Twin Peaks. This is made of two concave wood walls one after another (hence the name ). There were blocks to get your footing on each wall, so they weren’t hard. I was pretty tired by this point, even though we were only about halfway through  However, when I saw the next obstacle, my excitement rose. It was called Kiss My Walls. This one is a bouldering wall that you walk from one end to the other. I actually thought it wouldn’t be too hard, but I should’ve known better than that. My feet were muddy and slippery, it was wicked hard on my grip, and I fell off 3 times. This obstacle didn’t have water when you fell so I was able to just climb back on where I fell off (that still counts as completing it, right? Eh, I should’ve probably gone back to the beginning each time I fell, but hey, oh well.

Twirly Bird. In this one you held onto a ring with one hand, and with the other, grabbed onto a cluster of ropes, I don’t remember how many times you had to do that because I fell off after the first rope, but I do know there was a rope directly after that one lol. I fell into the water on this one, so I just kept going instead of going back and trying to get it. Mud ‘n Guts was up next. This one was another barbed wire obstacle, but this time you had to climb into the mud and just get yourself through. It actually felt pretty good to be in some warm mud on an easy obstacle. I probably could have stayed there for a while and relaxed 😏 Man I remember when we got to the next one, Sawhorses, I was feeling like so dead.

These were just wooden logs set up on beams that you had to jump pull yourself over. On one of them, I went to pull myself over, but didn’t get a big enough jump, and ended up falling backwards into my butt. Eh, I was being a big baby. Man, at this point, not only was I getting exhausted, but I was so thirsty I thought I might pass out. I felt better after we got done with the next obstacle, number 19: Davy Jones’ Locker. This is a jump from I don’t know, 20 feet? It looked a lot higher from the top than it did when we got down 🤣 I’m so afraid of heights, so I was a little nervous, but it was fun! We FINALLY reached a water station, and right after that we reached obstacle 20, Savage Rig. This one was frustrating, annoying, and generally just ticked me off. It was made up of a ring, followed by two ropes, followed by three pulleys with rings on the end. You had to swing from rope to rope, then get your feet onto the rings of the pulleys to move across those. I tried that one SIX TIMES before I finally got it. Ugh I think being tired was starting to make me a little bit psycho. My arms hurt so bad when I finally got across it I laid on the ground for probably five full minutes before I finally got up to walk again. I really wanted to get that one though…even once we did start moving again, my arms were still so pumped and in so much pain. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so die hard about that obstacle. We started making our way up the mountain AGAIN, and when we were almost to the top, we got to obstacle 22: Lumberjack Lane.

This one was stupid. All you did was grab a 3-4’ log, carry it around a bend, and drop it back off where you got it from. I don’t know what the point of that one was, but we moved on to the Big Cheese. This one was a wall with big round and triangular cut outs that you could hold onto to climb over. I was so over the race by this point. We got to obstacle 23: Battering Ram and I kind gave up on that one when I couldn’t do it 😬 battering ram was made up of these weird holds attached to the rig that you had to make slide across to the other end by kicking/swinging your body. There were two of the holds though, so halfway through, you had to move to the second one. The holds didn’t slide very easily either! Obstacle 24: Culvert Crossing. This was another dumb one where you just climb through these tubes lol. But the next one kicked my butt: it was called Mad Ladders, and was made of first, a rope ladder, then a rope with wooden pieces attached, then a netting to move across, then the rope with the wooden pieces on, and the rope ladder again to finish.

It LOOKS easy, but it was so much harder than it looked. No wonder it was called mad ladders, cuz those ladders made me mad!!! When I got to the end of it, I collapsed on the ground because my arms hurt so bad, and told Levi, “I’m SO tired!” There was a volunteer right there who chuckled at my drama, and encouraged me to get up and keep going. I’m not gonna lie, I kind of wanted to quit. I am very mentally weak. Next up was obstacle 26: Sawtooth. This was an obstacle basically like monkey bars, but it progressed upward until the halfway mark, and then it progressed downward. I made it about a quarter of the way across (halfway through the upward progression), before I fell in the water. It was actually farther than I thought I would make it! I wish I had stuck with it and tried to get farther though, my mind gave up on that one before my body did. By this time we were only walk/running, so we walked/ran to Colossus. When I saw this one, I got scared. It looked hard!!! It was made up of a concave wall about 50 feet high, with a rope hanging from the top, coming about halfway down the wall. You had to run up the wall, grab onto the rope, and pull yourself to the top.

Levi went before me on that one, and helped me get up, but it wasn’t really as hard as I thought it was going to be. To finish this one, though, you had to slide down the other side of the wall (where there was a slide). This was actually a really fun one! Obstacle 28, pedal for the medal, was another dumb one. There was a wheel with rope attached to it, and at the other end of the rope a tire was attached. You had to lay on your back, and use your feet to pedal the rope around the wheel, and bring the tire to you. You then had to carry the tire back to where it started. Obstacle 29 meant we were almost done!!! I was so ready. This one was called Wheel World. It was made up of bars in a circular shape (making a wheel), the wheel would spin around when you hung onto it, making it possible for you to get from one wheel to the other, but of course, also making it hard to get there lol. I didn’t think I would be able to do it, but I was able to get all the way from one end to the other! I don’t know how because at this point I was SO TIRED.

At the end of each climbing obstacle, there’s a bell that you ring when you finish it. And on this one I could not reach the bell!! It made me so upset. I couldn’t believe this was basically the final obstacle and I couldn’t ring the bell to it, I actually started to cry lol 😢 I’m ridiculous 🙄FINALLY we made it to the final obstacle, Blazed. This was a little fire that you had to jump over, which actually was pretty scary because I was afraid I was going to fall into the fire lol.

When we got through the finish line, we were given our finishing medals, T-shirt’s, and some water. Aside from a Trimino (protein infused water), there was no food though, which was pretty disappointing. Usually after any race there’s some kind of snack like bananas or crackers, so I was not too impressed with that part. Altogether, though, it was really fun, and I would definitely make this an annual race!!

So there you have it! The savage race with each obstacle. For me, it was the hardest mud run we’ve ever done, but that’s probably because I finished more obstacles than I’ve ever been able to do before. I got pretty down on myself during the race for getting so tired, and not being able to do a few of the obstacles, But I just have more work to do, and there’s nothing wrong with that! Have you ever done a mud run or wanted to do one?

Soli Deo gloria,

Charity