Not a foam race, but did my first OCR last week, the Tough Mudder in Doswell, VA, and felt EXACTLY the same way. A good time is what you make of it, and despite all of the disorganization and chaos, we still laughed a lot. So I’m going to list this race in the “buyer beware” category…register and race at your own risk.īut all of that said, it sure beat staying home and folding laundry. As I mentioned earlier, it has the potential to be an awesome introductory race for first time obstacle course racers who want to get their feet wet (literally!). I have heard that others really enjoyed this race at different venues, so I truly hope that this is not the norm for this race series. Disappointed is the only word I have to describe my overall 5K Foam Fest experience. However, the lack of staffing, the lack of medals, the lack of obstacles, and charging for festival activities for kids left me feeling that this was just a money grab by another company looking to hit up the obstacle course racing world. I truly want to give 5K Foam Fest organizers the benefit of the doubt regarding the transportation issues. They were so incredibly apologetic about the whole situation, which was nice, but not their place to take the blame. Not only were they super friendly along the course, but they kept coming by with water and protein bars for those who were standing in line waiting for the bus. “I don’t want to get muddy” loved this foamy alternative. – It wasn’t very spectator friendly…other than the slide at the end, there were no obstacles that spectators could see. There was no mention of this in any of the emails or website (I specifically searched the “FAQ” ), so I was kind of taken aback that we had to pay. – The inflatable obstacles at the “festival” area cost about $2+ per child per obstacle. This could unfortunately be why they ran out. I hate to play the “he said she said” game, but I read from a fellow teammate who ran much earlier in the day that the medal tent was not staffed, and people were just taking their own medal(s). I don’t understand how they were THAT under prepared, as there were hundreds of people left to run the course. ![]() I LOVE medals, and call me silly, but it was a huge bummer to me that they had run out despite the fact that the race day wasn’t even half way over. – Many advertised obstacles were missing from this venue. Then we had to sit on the bus for another 15-20 minutes before we actually arrived to the venue. Unfortunately, we waited in a line, in the parking lot, for one full hour just to get ON one of the buses. – We arrived to the offsite parking lot just over one full hour before our wave time, as instructed by the pre-race emails. Let’s get the negatives out of the way so I can share the good stuff and end this thing on a positive note. In other words, this was not their first rodeo I expected much more out of this race series. The 5K Foam Fest, owned by Round House Racing, is a national run event. But from a consumer standpoint, the 2014 New England 5K Foam Fest was, unfortunately, a “fail” in my race ratings book. ![]() This is a first world problem at it’s finest. The day was not a waste, in fact it was far from it. I had fun, I laughed, I spent time with my family, and I got covered in mud. Of course, there were certainly thousands of other things that I could have done with my time on Saturday that would have been far worse. ![]() But as a blogger who reviews products and races in order to provide others with honest, unbiased opinions, I’m going to get to the point: 5K Foam Festwas a huge disappointment. I’m a glass half full kind of girl, and I really try to see the good in every situation…even a bad situation. I really, really, really don’t like posting negative reviews. Last Updated on Septemby Heather Hart, ACSM EP, CSCS
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