Wednesday, March 18, 2015

BattleFrog Central Florida Review

BattleFrog Central Florida Review

by Patrice Chen
(If you do decide to try Battlefrog use code BFCHEN to give your 15% off.)


            I ran this race completely for fun. While on vacation I managed to get a throat infection and I was on pain killers and antibiotics while racing. So this was going to be a take it easy race. I was suppose to race at 930 am but asked if I could race at 830am as I wanted to watch my girls run at 12. They said I could just go whenever I want which I did. I think in the future BattleFrog might want to keep an eye on how many are in which wave as the first heat after the elite was really big and had quite the bottleneck at the start of the race.

            I’m not going to go through every obstacle as there is a pic of the course so everyone can see all the obstacles there was. I will say they had some unique obstacles and I enjoyed all of them. My favorite was amphibious assault. You had to shoot targets with a paintball gun from 3 positions. Lying down, kneeling and standing, it was just random targets to hit no bulls-eyes or figures to shoot but still lots of fun.

            I failed 3 obstacles on this run which is unusual for me but I am fine with it. The first one I missed was called the caving ladders I think. It was a small metal ladder above water that you had to climb upside down. The ladder rungs were only about a foot wide. (see second video for the obstacle) So you could only support yourself with one leg at a time. I think I could have done on it if I had taken my hydro pack off as the extra weight didn’t help me at all. The next one I failed was wedge Donovan, this one is basically the sternum checker in other course. I made the jump but not high enough onto my hips and when I came down managed to bonk my head so opted to not give it another try. The last obstacle I failed was the monkey bars. Normally I can do these no problem. However they had them at the very end of the course and my arms were spent. Also they were not meant for short people the starting rungs I could not reach unless I jumped for them.

            I enjoyed how the course was set up as there were lots of water obstacles in the first half of the course.  Every time I was getting really hot there seemed to be a water obstacle. I was getting a kick out of all the Florida people complaining about how cold the water was. I really enjoyed it and found it quite refreshing.

            I have a few complaints about the race, the course was on a ATV compound but it also used farm land I guess. There was a lot of cow patties. I mean I think that was the biggest obstacle for me was trying to avoid all the cow patties. The other part was there was quite a few places that people could easily cheat as there was not enough volunteers to cover everything. Not a big complaint as I know this happens in most races. I think the big thing was that the volunteers would let people go by with out doing all of their penalties.  In this case the penalty was a 10 - 8 count body builders. I know, I know I should not complain because I was in the open heat but it still really bothers me.

            I loved the ending of the race with the tsunami obstacle. The warp wall was slippery wet to run up and they had ropes you could grab to help you up. Even with the rope it was still really difficult. The slip slid they had on the other side was amazing. I’m not afraid of heights or anything but this was intimidating. I had to take a few minutes to psyche myself up to go down it. Fast and fun though once I went down.  They had the famous normandy jacks at the end to go through which got you nice and dirty just before you finished. Then there was the coveted medal at the end. Always great to see. However because the 5km and 15km course ended at the same place you had to be asked which medal you get. Not a big deal but it would have been nice not to have to be asked what course you did.

The festival area was well done as well. They had a food truck section with about 5 trucks and a tent to sit under. For the kids there was an inflatable obstacle course and cameo face painting. There was a couple of fitness competition you could sign up for and they had awards ceremony. The music was blaring all day and it was a great atmosphere. Of course the great weather we had that day really helped. There was smiles everywhere in the festival area. Also there was a place to take pics with props but I missed out on that as I didn’t see it.



My kids did the Bullfrog mile kids race. I think Battlefrog did an amazing job with the kids races. They had some small 1foot walls for the little kids to job over and some 3 foot walls for the older kids to get over. There was a ton of obstacle for the kids races. My kids loved every minute of it. The kids also got tshirts and medals. The medals were exactly like the adults only smaller so they were pretty proud of them. If you want to see some pics of the kids race go to my fb page there are some pics there.

Just a last note, this race cam be very expensive for the whole family to attend or if you are bringing family to watch. My kids raced and I still needed to buy a spectators pass for my husband to get in as well. The spectators pass was $10 for adults, $5 for kids. Other costs were $10 for parking and bag check was another $5. Add in the cost of food if you buy any on site and it ends up being an expensive day but well worth it.

            Overall I had lots of fun and would recommend this race for everyone to try! The obstacles were challenging and they had lots of ones that I had not tried before. It was flat terrain so if you are a runner this is a great race for you. If you have not done an OCR before I would not recommend starting with this one. Some of the obstacles can be quite intimidating. If you do decide to try Battlefrog use code BFCHEN to give your 15% off.

Link to video of Battlefrog central florida By Arnel Banawa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf_8v5oWGLs


Unedited one with the obstacle I failed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNUlWl4WqfE&feature=youtu.be


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