20 Flipping Miles 200 Flipping Obstacles! WE DID THEM ALL!

Here we have the Ratrace Dirty Weekend highlight video and write up.

When: 7th May 2022
Where: Burghley House, Leicestershire
Who: Martin, Holly, Paul & Nathan – AKA Martins Spartans

Write up.
Ratrace Dirty Weekend has been at the epicenter of UK OCR for the 8 years and this year it was its very last. Having done this event in 2019 all by myself I was truly amazed by the sheer scale of the adventure. The course is well over 20 miles and boasts 200 obstacles ranging from small and silly up to massive and scary. The entire event really is quite colossal. Its so big that even with an enormous amount of editing and culling this video is over 40 mins. A combination of so many obstacles, 20 miles and 4 people just meant a lot was filmed. But that’s ok 
On the day itself we rocked up nice and early so that we could get registered, have a look around and get our bearings. The event is massive so it soon becomes overwhelmed with folk milling about the event village. We got our packs, I did my little video bits and we did the last round trip to the car to prepare. Then straight back and pretty much into the warm big top tent with Keith the long standing Scottish MC of Ratrace.

Without much delay we were off, running in a rather packed wave through the scenic grounds of Burghley House which was prominent in those first few miles. Here theres a few smaller obstacles just to get us warmed up but nothing major.

Now theres far too many obstacles to describe really, but the standout ones start at the water area at mile 6. This starts with the high jump. A massive 3 story wooden structure standing over a manmade hole filled with water. Now as you approach you do not necessarily appreciate how high it is, from the side you can really get a scale. It really is only apparent when your climbing up the back of it. You climb up 3 separate sections to get to the top. The entire way various folk are coming back down as they’ve chicken out. As it comes to your go and you inch towards the edge you soon realise why, its high, really high. You don’t get too much time to think here as the marshal counts you in, with my selfie stick in hand Holly and I commit to the jump and we are in. Next up Nathan and Paul, now I thought we might have a hesitation on this one, but there was none, they both plummeted into the pool we were still in. Great to see, I was pumped. The water section then has us go through a lake system multiple times in and out the water, lots of great moments.
After this the next stand out moment was the wooded area, named EWOK village. Its named this as there is a series of massive constructed permanent structures for you to weave through. These are once again about 3 stories high and very intricate.
The last noteworthy section is the final section, this has a concentration of really cool obstacles, but the one that I want to talk about is the travellator. This 45 degree reverse conveyor belt stands at 19.9 mile when you are all but spent. You need to dig deep for a solid run up and hard on the power until you reach the top. I went first, got to the stop in one, all good. Paul tripped on his first go but scooted up after, Nathans effort was brilliant a little trip but recovered into powering up. Hols had 3 goes but got to the top with one last push. After this it was the final climb up yet another massive structure for the final slide, and what a slide it is. All 4 of us piled down into a crumpled mess in the back barrier. After this we hopped out and it was done.

What I liked
The scale
The staff are great
Keith, he is Ratrace to me
The obstacles

What could be made better
This is a bit of a moot point since the event has been discontinued,
But, if I had to say something constructive.
Bottle necks were a big problem, queues at every big obstacle
No T shirts, this just makes me sad
Some of the obstacles had not been maintained some not working at all.


Conclusion
It really is quite sad this was the last event. There isn’t another race that comes close in scale to this one. It was clear that due to it being the last one a lot of the equipment wasn’t working up to scratch, a few examples the washing machine foam obstacle and the mud house neither were operating. The queues for the bigger obstacles really were a pain, huge queues held us up many times, these became very frustraing. I’d imagine this was due to a combination of course bottlenecks and oversubscribed waves. Ive seen this at other OCRs handled quite well as a good well designed OCR course should never bottleneck. It was noticeable worse this time round than it was when I last did it in 2019.
Regardless of these issues the event still sits at the top of the pile, its sheer scale really makes it unique in the world of OCR. I may have only done it twice but I am really sad it is done.
Overall it was a great day out with my team, some great memories made and a great little video.