Viper redux
hcOn 8 Dec the hckbb (kbb not kkb) team went a little further north to sepang (instead of iskandar) in pursuit of cheap obstacle race. after factoring all the travel and accom costs, turns out to be not so cheap.
overall vibe of the race was bo zheng hu (没政府). alternatively phrased as malaysia boleh. from changing our start timings from 9am to 8am (officially too, swapping wristbands and all), to avoiding the start pen and just casually running into the pack from the sidelines (no barricades no timing chip means ok right??), we really ran our own race. though not to the level of those that we saw running the reverse direction (starting from the finish line???) or cutting across the loop back to shorten the distance.
maybe its the lower barrier to entry (75RM chipchip) or the lack of timing chip, but the crowd at viper seemed a lot more casual than the usual spartan /urbanathlon / commando challenge crowd in singapore. a lot more chubs ppl going for a stroll, uni friends walking the entire thing (walk 20km is painful just to think about). there were still the chiongsua runners' groups, but even they seemed more casual than the high panters [turns out these guys are runners for a cause so not quite chiongsua soz] and other sg running groups). least the paths are wide enough to accommodate all the walkers. plus the obstacles are spaced out enough to avoid bottlenecking.
this segues nicely into the highlight of the race.. the obstacles. the 20km was just time to cool off between them. also did not train for the distance so rip but story for later.
it didn't rain this year so there wasn't any mud crawls/ wades, only a dust roll under barbed wire because lazy to leopard crawl so... roll out! there wasn't any zappy stations either, to the eternal relief of the other guys. the usual climbing stations returned with low wall, chain link fence (creatively named "playing truant"), low rope, incline wall. there was also the hay birthday cake obstacle right before the finish line, which was progressively disintegrating as hay got pulled out from the bales.
hay juliet
and this bigass wooden scaffold to climb
actually not hard, just don't look down
assisted warped wall with rope. ezpz. especially with the gentle gradient and good surfacing.
ramp has good grip, so it isn't too hard. unless the rope you're trying to grab breaks
doesn't look os high from the top
also "catch the net", involving leaping about 2m to catch a cargo net before traversing under it to the other side. the other guys tio a bit of rope burn here, cuz catching it is not easy.
look at that teh tarik landing. also not representative, about 85% of people trying it ended up in the water.
catch net traverse well butt still wet, annoying
we kinda hacked this ditch obstacle by jumping over from one side to the other for 2/4 of the ditches. weichang threw down a rock to give us a leg up, though it nearly gged terence hansen (edited go POFMA) on the way down.
would look very different if it rained
there were the usual weighty stations as well, the angkat bola station aka marikita a sandbag, and the tire drag from point to point.
multiple traverse stations, with the walk the plank, monkey bars, cargo net climb, tyre traverse, and wire crawl (which the guys passed on because rope burn sux). also the cutely named "over your ex", which looked like this:
ez 4 longbois
some of the tyres had puddles inside - gross surprise! watch your step
the plank wobbles so i ended up doing it sitting down and scooting across. no face, but also no fail
wet backside
there wasn't a shocking station, but there was a chilling one, "brain freeze":
like the ice bucket challenge, except you dunk yourself in the bucket. and duck into it because there's a wall at the midpoint of the tank. not so much brain freeze as ball freeze, but the ice bath is quite shiok once you get out of the ice water. it was at the midpoint of the run though (obstacle no. 11 thereabouts), so less recuperative effect. we took out our shoes to save them from getting wet at this station, but it was kinda wasted cuz a couple obstacles later we had to dive into a water pit to get over a rotating rectangular block.
in the end the hardest obstacle for me was the 20km. right quads/calf started cramping at the home stretch, and ended up walking the last km. heng we started at 8am instead of 9am, managed to get back to the hotel and shower before the grace late check out time of 1pm. woohoo efficiency 10/10.
10/10 would do again. with more distance training. esp with this squad of supportive folks. sunshine coast marathon though... we'll see.
hckbbtea