Saturday, August 19, 2017
Last year a group of Ann's friends did the Vino & the Beasts obstacle race outside of Geneva NY, and Ann went along to take pictures and cheer them on. And then somehow they convinced her to sign up for this year's race - apparently they got significant discounts for signing up right after the 2016 race... I know the price was up to $80 for people signing up over the last week, for a little over a 5k including a bunch of obstacles. Oh, and a bunch of wine and beer tastings at the vineyard afterwards (hence the title VINO & the Beasts, and I suspect a lot of the appeal of this particular race series.)
I went along this year to take pictures, not sure how much access I'd get to the course. Well, it turned out I had complete access - I ran and walked everywhere Ann's group did (well, the portion of her group that was at the back of their heat, with her) without doing any of the obstacles, since I had a camera in hand and I also hadn't paid any fees or signed any waivers.
I would classify the course as an easy 3.5 mile trail run... mowed paths, dirt doubletrack, and so on. The obstacles ranged from stuff as simple as barriers to climb over or under, to several involving cargo nets (both vertical and horizontal), a huge inflatable slide, a crawl through muddy water, and a swim through a 15 ft deep mucky pond. Ann made it through all of them, though she did say that swimming with shoes on was very difficult.
I had a couple of people comment that they'd hate to have to run the course to take pictures - all I can say was that it was a lot less boring than standing around waiting for people to show up wherever I was. And I got in part of today's run in the bargain.
One comment was made that maybe I should have gotten a finisher's medal since I did the whole distance - except of course I didn't pay the fee, and I didn't do any of the obstacles. And I've got to admit, since the wine offers no additional appeal to me - I'm not feeling any inclination to do the race officially. It was fun to be out there supporting Ann (especially knowing I could cover the distance with no difficulty) but nothing grabbed me about today and left me saying "I've have got to do one of those..."
