After Race Report: Savage Race 2019

Savage Race this year changed up the course quite a bit, but still had a lot of familiar territory.

Location: Cat Spring, TX
Wave time: 11:20
Clear time: 2 hours, 28 minutes
Distance: 6.9mi

The course this year started from last year’s finish and went sort of in reverse, but ended up covering some of the previous trail.

I raced this one in my new Topo Ultraventures; they held up pretty well for their first time out. The wider foot was nice and the grip was good. The added cushioning over my previous shoes (Salomon Amphib) was noticeable. 

My big goal for the race was to beat Sawtooth, which is a rather difficult monkey bar setup (starts with a steady incline, then a sharp decline, then a sharp incline, then a steady decline). Unfortunately, that middle transition tripped me up more than it should’ve and after two tries my left hand was a bit torn up. I felt my grip was pretty strong, so the training I had done did the job; it was more a technique issue. 

I skipped the front half of Colossus (warped wall) partially due to a) torn hand and b) I hate warped walls. Bah.

The best of the new obstacles (for me) was Chopsticks, which had swaying planks with thin footholds that had to be transitioned across. “Inversion Therapy”, another new obstacle that consisted of three sections you’re supposed to hang off of and get to the other side, seemed pretty meh.

Around mile 5 my calves got a little twitchy, but nothing bad. Mile 6 had a cold front roll in, and it looked like the weather was going to take a bad turn (driving in, there were severe thunderstorms that I thought had caught up to the area), but it cleared up in short order.

Overall, I felt like I had a decent showing though I still need to work on run consistency and upper body/grip strength.

Onward to Terrain Race.