This week, I invited Matt B. Davis of Obstacle Racing Media, Josh Chace of the New England Spahtens podcast, and Mike Stefano and Katelyn Ritter of the Obstacle Running Adventures podcast on the show for a round table discussion about a whole host of OCR topics.
We start by talking about Spartan's addition of age group podiums: what Spartan's goal was, whether or not they acheived it, and how they affected the competitive field. That leads us to discuss the addition of numerous race series within Spartan, and their championship series.
We move on to talk about Tough Mudder's Tougher series, and then we talk about the two-loop format Tough Mudder tried this year (and why it failed).
That leads us into a discussion about the breakneck speed with which companies are adding race formats and making changes. We talk about the Spartan trail race series, and speculate on whether or not it will be successful in 2019.
We also have a quick talk about the festival areas and where or not they're getting better, and why that's important.
Amidst unrelated banter, we then talk about OCR-related TV shows, and what they do or don't do for OCR. We then go off on another tangent about podcasts and which ones we listen to, complete with plenty more banter.
We end our discussion by stating our goals for next year, both with podcasting and racing.
This week elite OCR athlete and coach Mark Batres joins me to talk all about training in the off-season: the dos, the don'ts, and how to train to improve your performance for the next year.
We start with Mark telling me about his OCR season went, and then he tells me all about the recent Spartan combine held in Laughlin. I also ask him if he's planning on running one of the new Spartan Trail races, and we chat a bit about that.
Mark then tells me more about his coaching business, and how and why he got started.
We then talk about the off-season, and Mark explains why it's not good to take an excessive amount of time off. He tells me about building a base, and discusses the best ways to use the off-season to improve your OCR performance.
I ask him about plateaus in training, and Mark tells me how they happen, and the best advice for pushing past them. We then discuss finding a balance between overtraining and not training enough, and I ask him what some of the biggest mistakes are that people make in the off-season.
We end by talking a bit about the Spartan U.S. Championship series next year, and Mark's goals for 2019.