Obstacle Racing World Championships

REME Sport

Obstacle Racing World Championships 2022

Scribe: Cpl Titcomb, Armourer, 28 Engr Regt (C-CBRN) LAD

Logo of the Obstacle Racing World Championships

Now in its 8th year, the annual Obstacle Racing World Championships is the culmination of the racing calendar where up to 2,000 athletes compete over a weekend to determine who will become the next world champion. This year’s championships took place at Stratton Mountain ski resort in Vermont, USA.

The format of the event consists of four races in three days, which vary in distance and obstacles. The races are a 3km sprint which takes place on the Friday, a 15km standard which takes place on the Saturday, 8km team and a 6km charity run which both take place on the Sunday. This was my first world championships in three years since COVID-19 put a hold on overseas competitions. I was competing in my age category all weekend and was hoping to come away with at least one podium throughout the event.

The first race being the sprint is all about completing the

Urban Sky Obstacle

DropZone Obstacle (Photo credit to OCR Nation)

obstacle as quickly and efficiently as possible. Any mistakes you make can often make the difference between winning and losing. Since I am more suited to longer distance events, I took the sprint as an opportunity to get a feel for the course and getting used to the elevation. While the sprint race is only 3km long it still had over 280 metres of elevation gain. After completing all the obstacles first time and getting some good speed on the descent I knew I had placed well but didn’t know exactly where I had finished due to the start being staggered. I crossed the line in 3rd place in my age category which gave me a good confidence boost ahead of the main race.

The standard course was just over 15km and had 1,300m of

elevation, making it one of the hilliest courses the world championships have ever put on. Again, I was racing in my age category which I knew would be tough as some of the other athletes didn’t run the previous day. This time it was a mass start, meaning if you crossed the line first, you would win and be crowned World Champion. I knew some of the fresher athletes would be hoping to get a good start, so I sat back for the first few obstacles until things started to spread out. After a very quick descent to a group of obstacles in a gravel car park, I found myself with a 30 second lead. From there I just settled into a rhythm and just watched my lead get bigger. The second half of the course had the steepest climb which was 1.2km long and almost 350m of elevation, from there it was a mental battle to just not make any mistakes and keep a good rhythm. After a few more obstacles at the top of the mountain it was a long steady run down towards the event village. Here I would be coming across 8 obstacles almost backto-back. Keeping it smooth and efficient, I completed the remainder of the obstacles and came across the line in first place just over 14 minutes ahead of second, making me the 2022 25-29 age group World Champion.

The final main race was the team event, in which I was running with two other UK athletes Jason and Louise. After such a tough couple of races, we as a team chose to run in the open combined event, this meant there wasn’t a huge amount of pressure on us to finish well and we could enjoy the race a bit more. The team event is split into 4 sections: speed, technical, strength and team. I took the speed section which was first and managed to give our team a 2-minute lead which eased pressure on my teammates so they wouldn’t have to worry too much about making any mistakes. After Louise completed the technical section, we were still in first, she then handed over to Jason for the strength section before we regrouped and ran as a team. Just before we completed the rest of the

Team Race Open Co-Ed Podium

course as a team we had unfortunately dropped to 2nd. Despite that we all ran really well and complete the remaining obstacles first time and crossed the line in 2nd place. Overall, it was a hugely successful weekend competing against some of the best age group athletes in the world. Having achieved three podiums, became a World Champion, and gaining a different podium medal in each event just made the whole trip worth it. Building on the success of this year’s World Championships, next year I will be stepping up into the elite field against some of the best athletes in the world.

15km Podium (Photo credit to OCR Nation)