“Look, at the end of the day, most of us are extremely lazy and our modern environment allows us to be lazy. Basically, he said, OCRs are more fun than marathons. In a phone interview with Spartan’s founder, Joe De Sena, I asked him about the appeal of OCRs compared to traditional road racing. Since each was founded in 2010, Tough Mudder reports 2 million total participants and Spartan claims 5 million. At the same time, participation in Spartan, Tough Mudder, and other OCRs are on the rise. Running USA’s annual report stated that only 3 percent of those running road races in 2016 completed a marathon. After peaking at 19 million finishers in 2013, participation fell to just over 17 million in 2016, according to The New York Times. Participation in traditional road races such as marathons and 5K’s, while still high, is on the decline in the United States. In some of the most intense races, participants might be asked to army crawl under live electrical wire or carry 60-pound sandbags up a ski slope in the middle of running a half marathon. These organizations put on OCRs that cover distances between three and 30 miles with the addition of up to 35 obstacles along the way. The two biggest names in the world of obstacle-course races (OCRs) are Spartan and Tough Mudder. For the endurance athlete who gets bored easily, a new genre of race has emerged-peppered with obstacles requiring feats of strength and dexterity (Crawling under barbed wire! Climbing a rope! Throwing a spear! Burpees!), and designed to be an over-the-top spectacle where participants emerge covered in mud (and maybe blood), as if they’ve survived a battle. But the idea of trotting along a boring old paved road for 26.2 miles doesn’t thrill everyone. Completing a marathon has long been the ultimate feather in the cap of an amateur endurance athlete.
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