Obstacle Racing Elite vs. Elite Runners

Ask the average 20 something to name current boxers. Then name current mma fighters. See which is greater.

Spartan world champ from last year. Looks like any decent 10K runner:

http://obstacleracingmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/vermont5.png

Can someone give an example of what the obstacles at Spartan Races are like? Why are they so hard? I am just trying to get a feel for why someone would have to do the burpees instead of finishing an obstacle.

Thanks

Tell me this Rose chick and this Amelia chick arent married? I think their boyfriends or husbands may be homosexual as these chicks look like straight up dudes. YUCK

I will take a runner girl anyday rather than a buffed up chick with a *ick

I'm an almost 40 year old ex-serIous runner who deadlifts over twice his bodyweight while also running sub 18:00 5ks. That's not a great deadlift but good enough for my goals and still relatively strong.

The bench is an easy lift to test. How it relates to "real life" has no bearing on its selection. Its just an easy upper body lift to grade.

Alan

This obstacle racing stuff is actually bad for sports in general. Its a venue for dopers and steroid abusers. I've been to these races and I've been to cross fit gyms. Trust me when I say, a lot of guys at these spartan races are juicing!

Until they add drug testing at these events I doubt you will see any real elite runners dominating unless they too start juicing. I remember reading a post where one of the top guys in obstacle racing was arguing with a friend of mine who is an elite runner about drug testing.

The obstacle racer said he did not think they should test at their events. He seemed to be totally against keeping his sport clean. Laaaaame sport with lots of tools in the obstacle world. Any runners giving up running for that, good riddance!

While I agree with you, I don't think lameness comes from a lack of testing . . . I mean, have you heard of cycling or sprinting?

It's lame cause of the burpees

Cycling and sprinting both have testing. So at least there is an attempt by their federations to even the playing field. Obstacle races are just creating an environment for dopers and steroid abusers to gallop worry free from testing. I think thats lame. Just go to a cross fit gym and you too will notice the personality trait disorders going on due to steroids. These folks make it unpleasant for guys like myself whom would like to try these races but just dont want to be around tools and juicers pushing steroid regimens on newbies

RunnerTriesSpartan wrote:

For example, two of the top OCR women, Rose Wetzel and Amelia Boone, are very different types of athletes. Wetzel's 5k PR is 16:14 (http://running.competitor.com/2014/07/obstacle-racing-2/ocr-athlete-profile-rose-wetzel-sinnett_107142) and Boone's is only 18:43 (http://games.crossfit.com/athlete/123757).

Neither is even remotely close to qualifying for the USATF (15:26).

Renee Baillie's 5k PR is 15:15, and she finished more than a minute ahead of Wetzel in Warrior Dash WC.

Ok I know where you are coming from. But it is not hard to bribe any testing administration.

Lance Armstrong bribed the UCI to hide his positive tests. He claimed he had taken like 400+ clean tests.

Just sayin don't focus so much on the use of PEDs and look more into the burpee issue. That's all.

PlayInTheMud wrote:

Not butch.... athletic, and hot. Unlike all the skinny-fat girls on your xc team.

Some of those women don't even have defined abs.

This is how real athletes look like...

brotherly lovers wrote:

Tell me this Rose chick and this Amelia chick arent married? I think their boyfriends or husbands may be homosexual as these chicks look like straight up dudes. YUCK

I will take a runner girl anyday rather than a buffed up chick with a *ick

Dude, you are idiot! I would take Amelia anywhere she asked me to anytime. That women is gorgeous all over.

Athletic? wrote:

PlayInTheMud wrote:

Not butch.... athletic, and hot. Unlike all the skinny-fat girls on your xc team.

Some of those women don't even have defined abs.

This is how real athletes look like...

http://www.sirwaltermiler.com/win-shoes-new-balance-rowdiest-fan-night/http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Shannon+Rowburyhttp://www.zimbio.com/photos/Shalane+Flanagan/Kara+Goucher/Olympics+Day+9+Athletics/hiq0LxBDWfH

In this case, the real athletes are .... ehhhh... good at running?

really? uhhh wrote:

Ask the average 20 something to name current boxers. Then name current mma fighters. See which is greater.

Ask the 4.4 million households who shelled out $100 to watch Mayweather-Pacquaio two weeks ago, the 40K plus who showed up to watch Canelo Alvarez fight James Kirkland last week, or the million plus who will watch Gennady GGG Golovkin fight Willie Monroe on HBO this weekend. I bet they might know a few.

I would much rather pipe the ladies in PlayInTheMud's earlier post. Gotta love 'em big tits!

runnertriesspartan wrote:

really? uhhh wrote:

Ask the average 20 something to name current boxers. Then name current mma fighters. See which is greater.

Ask the 4.4 million households who shelled out $100 to watch Mayweather-Pacquaio two weeks ago, the 40K plus who showed up to watch Canelo Alvarez fight James Kirkland last week, or the million plus who will watch Gennady GGG Golovkin fight Willie Monroe on HBO this weekend. I bet they might know a few.

Your anecdotes fail to convince.

One fight. The only fight the public has cared about in a long long time. It may be the last. How can the last mega fight in recent history been one that was 5 years overdue? It's because the public at large didn't care in the interim.

Listen, I used to box. I had to endure listening to a bunch of people on this forum and elsewhere talking about how Pac won. People don't know boxing anymore.

Millions of people are now participating in MMA on a local level. This is not true of boxing. If you can't see the writing on the wall then what can I say?

Forbes addresses the subject much more succinctly:

Anecdotes? These are literally the three biggest fights happening THIS MONTH. There cannot be more timely, relevant evidence than that.

Your source is from 2007, meaning it's outdated along with your belief that boxing is somehow dying. Around 2008-2009 a lot of people PREDICTED the rise of MMA would mean the fall of boxing, but the exact opposite ended up being true. As MMA grew, so did this generation of boxing. The numbers don't lie.

It's obvious that MMA has expanded in popularity over the past 10 years (even though the UFC has really struggled in 2014 and 2015), but that hasn't coincided with the fall of boxing as some bloggers predicted. Boxing is so much more than Mayweather-Pacquiao, as evidenced by the literally the next two big fights in the sport (previously) referenced, each of which doing huge numbers.

Maybe you can find a Myspace blog or something to further your evidence.

Yes the article is from 2007. That lends some context here, they were just showing the profitability from the growth from 2001 to 2007 alone:

UFC pay-per-view buys in 2001: 145,000

UFC pay-per-view buys in 2007: 5.1 million

The average UFC pay-per-view event draws 3 million male viewers between 18 and 49...

Need something more recent? 2013?

The Sports Business Journal reported on an annual survey which tracked the habits of avid fans of boxing, MMA and professional wrestling. The Scarborough survey polled more than 200,000 residents over the age of 18 in 77 of the country’s biggest markets to find out how avid fans are to their particular sport.

The survey determined that of the 48.4% of the U.S. male population, the UFC (74.6% of males polled) is most popular of the three sports among males with boxing a close second (72.4%) and then WWE (62.8%). However, women (52.6% of the female population) preferred boxing over the UFC with the WWE third.

As one might expect, the UFC did well with ages 18-44 while boxing was more popular among 30-44 year olds. WWE did the best with baby boomers 30-44 years old. But, this does not jive with the polling numbers which state that 51.7% of those WWE fans polled have no children.

....

One of the more interesting takeaways is that Boxing and the UFC are still neck and neck in fan popularity. Yes, its not a competition between the two but its interesting to note that boxing and the UFC both had 19 telecasts over 1 million viewers in 2012. Boxing had 2 network telecasts over the 1 million mark while all 4 of the UFC on Fox network events went over 1 million viewers.

So what will happen as the current generation gets older?

http://mmapayout.com/2013/05/survey-shows-popularity-of-boxing-and-ufc/

Also, your wiki link disclaimed: Note: The UFC does not release official PPV statistics, and the following PPV numbers are as reported by industry insiders.

Back to the topic: I do hope that obstacle racing brings more people into racing. I do. But I am also saying that I would put my money on the UFC growing over boxing in the next 20 years.

OCR had 4x as many participants as marathons in 2014.

OCR is the fastest growing sport in the world.

Runner arms are small.