Savage Race Obstacles

I’m going to talk about my experience at the 2016 Savage Race. I want to talk about, first of all, it was an amazing day out there. Savage does a great job with its basic, what we’ll call, the standard Savage obstacles. So sawtooth, you’re always going to see sawtooth monkey bars, and it’s solid. Shriveled Richard, always going to be there, and it’s fucking cold. Davey Jones’ Locker, big jump, going to scare you, and it’s going to be there. A nice addition that I’m not sure was always there, or maybe, I think they made it better, was Thor’s Grundle. Thor’s Grundle is essentially the Spartan Race Dunk Wall, but several of them. So get to the wall, go under, go to the wall, go under. Cold, scary, you know, a good part of an obstacle race.

In addition, they gave us a bunch of new ones this year and they all delivered. Savage, I feel like, much like Tough Mudder, going to bring you a new obstacle set every year.

Spartan and BattleFrog, to be honest, it ends up being a lot of heavy carries, a lot of rigs, and to me that’s boring. So what did Savage bring us?

Well, they started with Squeeze Play. I believe it was the very first obstacle. Squeeze Play looks simple, just crawl under this thing, but one of those things that once you start, it’s like, “I’m in mud! I’m underneath a thing! What am I doing?” On the Fence, another new one, pretty simple, but it hurt. So jump on the fence, do this, and it hurts real bad. Big Cheese, nothing too complicated to this one, just a kind of standard climber wall with holes, but again, nice to see a mixed-up thing. Pole Cat we’ve seen a couple different ways. Tough Mudder did this at WTM with Gut Buster, and we actually saw it first with Urban Mudder with HeadRush.

The last new one, which was right at the finish line, was called the Savage Rig. Now, at this point to me, the rig is yet another me-too obstacle, meaning everybody’s doing it and there’s not much ingenuity to it. It’s a rig. A rig is a rig is a rig. You want to make it super-hard for the championship race for Spartan or double the length for the BattleFrog championship, whatever, great, but again, I’m kind of tired of seeing rigs. I don’t think it does much for us in terms of innovation.

Let’s talk about the medals. Last year, kind of rinky-dink. This year, kind of massive, right? Way bigger! Like this one could actually eat this one. Better medal.

Shirts? Last year, light blue, all the states they hit, kind of cool. Finisher 2015, nothing on the side sleeve. 2016, again, this thin, we all love super, super thin, keeping it simpler, though, just the Savage logo. Finisher 2016, little sponsor on the back, again nothing on the sleeve, but much like Spartan, a thinner cotton, a thinner shirt, victory again, 2016 shirt.

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Matt B. Davis

is the host of the Obstacle Racing Media Podcast and the author of "Down and Dirty-The Essential Training Guide for Obstacle Races and Mud Runs". He is also the only (known) #wafflehouseelite obstacle racer.