Nasty is a 5-6mi race with 20-25 obstacles along the way. It was held at the Massanutten ski resort in the Shenandoah Mountains in Virginia. The obstacles are based on designs from the Special Forces Obstacle Course at Ft Bragg and the BUDS Obstacle Course at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado. The course was planned, organized, run, and monitored by former and active duty military special operations soldiers. Most from Army Special Forces but a few others from Marine Force Recon/MARSOC and one or two from the Naval Special Warfare community. Roughly 3000 people registered. They were broken into starting waves that began at 0700 and went until 2pm, every 10min or so. My brother and I were in the 1020 wave.
My dad drove us to the race. It was definitely in the mountains, my ears popped several times just in the car. Parked, checked in and picked up our packets. Like I said, the course is on a ski resort. Its designed so that the staging area was the large open area at the base of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd slopes. The 4th and 5th slope and the chair lift slope were a short walk away.For apparel, I wore a black synthetic running shirt, compression undershorts, a pair of old soccer shorts, thin toe-socks, a pair of thin calf socks over those, both my red and black pairs of calf sleeves, and my new Peregrine trail shoes. When we check in, they told us that gloves are highly recommended. Thanks for the heads up GoRuck!
I should also say, the map above is a little distorted. First, its upside-down, North is down in the map. Second, the obstacles aren't in order. Third, there are obstacles on there that don't exist.
Here is more accurate map using Google Pedometer. The green dot in the upper right is the start, the red dot in the middle is the finish. The numbers are mile markers. The yellow dots are actual obstacles. I didn't add yellow dots for the obstacles that were just climbing a hill.
Kirt and I got in line and started a little early with the 1000 wave, oops. There were maybe 15-20 other people ranging from younger to older, men and women. We had a group of 10 or so guys wearing the same t-shirt and pants who we found out were from a local SWAT team.
Started up the first slope. First obstacle was a 10-15m low crawl underneath a grid of boards. Jogged a short distance and got in line for a 15ft cargo net climb. Waited maybe a couple min before we could get on it. I had a little trouble getting a good grip to roll over the top but other than that it wasn't a big deal. After another short distance were a couple 8ft walls you had to climb over. They had a small ledge in it for people to use but it was quicker for Kirt and I to just muscle-up over them. At the top of the slope was a rope swing. You had to jump up and grab onto the rope, swing across a 10ft space, and land on a waist high ledge on your feet. Pretty easy as long as you grabbed high up the rope. Jogged halfway down the slope and another wall, this time maybe chest high. Pretty easy to jump and push up and over it.
At the base of the hill, we made the turn and started up the second slope. The first obstacle was just a large mound of dirt to run up and over. Then it was supposed to be one of the harder obstacles called The Dirty Name. Its three horizontal logs, one at knee height, the next at head height, and the last above finger tip height. There is maybe 2-3 feet separating each. You're supposed to jump from one to the next. Minutes before we got to it, someone had fallen off the highest log, landed on his wrist, bone popped out, and then he was knocked unconscious after hitting his head on a sandbag. They closed the obstacle for the rest of the day. Ran around it and then had another couple walls that were 8ft tall to climb over. I think there was another obstacle after that before we turned around at the top of the hill but I can't remember it. Then running back down the hill, there was a 25m stretch of mud to run through, with one of the instructors spraying everyone with a cold fire hose. Made the turn at the bottom of the hill and started the third slope.
The third slope started with a smaller version of the Dirty Name. Thankfully there wasn't a line for this one. It only had two logs, one at waist height and one a little above head height. Seemed a bit safer and more manageable so I gave it a try. Stood on the lower log and jumped to the higher, but landed too high on my chest, so even with my arms grabbing on top, there wouldn't have been any way to pull myself up. Didn't help that both logs were slick from water and mud. Dropped off onto my feet. Tried again but with a bigger jump trying to land more on my stomach. Ow. Landed on my stomach with my arms over the log. Had to kip a little before I could get on top and then roll over and drop off the other side. Did not feel awesome landing on a log on my midsection twice. Ran a short distance up the hill to get into a big line for a 50m underground tunnel crawl. It was looking like a 30-45min wait, so we opted to bear crawl 50m instead of waiting. Another short run, then we immediately started another tunnel crawl, but in a tunnel big enough to bear crawl through. Much longer though, probably more than 75m long. A little weird being in total darkness but you just keep moving and eventually you crawl out of it. Another short run, then back in line for the monkey bars obstacle. Waited maybe 20min before we got to try it. It was a 15m stretch of monkey bars with a foot or two of water underneath. You had to jump 3-4ft across the water to get to the first bar, so people were having issues with that. Kirt and I made it look easy though. All the way across with no problems, and pretty quickly too.
Short jog around the first water station and then the start of the fourth hill. Maybe 200m up the hill we got into a huge line, long enough where we couldn't really see what the obstacle was. Waited probably 50min before we got to the front. It was two pyramids of logs, each maybe 6ft high, and maybe 15m from each other. There was a thick rope tied around the top of each log. The idea being that you climb up the pyramid, climb onto the rope, pull yourself across the rope to the other pyramid, climb onto the pyramid and jump off. Except that in practice, they were letting 4 or 5 people on the same rope, and there wasn't enough tension in it, so you would get to the middle and literally be crawling on the ground. Kirt got all the way across but when he transitioned off the rope and onto the log, the rope shook and I dropped off 6in onto the ground. So basically a 50min wait to fall off a rope after 30 seconds. Back to tackling the slope. No running up this one, very long and pretty steep. Calves started to feel it. Finally got to the top, quick water station and then an obstacle. Quick line, maybe 1 or 2min. The obstacle was a series of five letter "X's" made of 4x4 beams. You had to get over them by jumping and pulling yourself up. A little awkward but not all that hard. It was at the top of the hill, so we made the turn and jogged down the next slope.
Jogging down a very steep slope is very hard by the way. Very taxing on your quads and because it wasn't designed to be run on bare, there were lots of rocks and holes, so we were constantly bouncing. Really think my trail running background helped here as I didn't have any issues. Made it down the slope, then turned left through a treeline and yay, another gigantic hill to climb. This one nearly as long and just as steep as the previous. Got to the top of it and found another obstacle. This one had the biggest line yet though. The obstacle started with a 15-20ft rope climb, you then had to transition from the rope to the horizontal log that the rope was tied to, from there you had to scoot onto and down another log that was attached perpendicular and running at a slight down angle, from there you then had to climb onto a horizontal metal ladder running at a slight down angle, and then jump down maybe 10 feet onto a padded mat. Couple things. They only had two safety mats, one near the ropes at the beginning, and the other at the end. Neither of which would really help any if you fell from the highest and most dangerous points on the obstacle. I got in line and Kirt walked to the front to check it out up close. When he came back, he said we were looking at a 1.5 to 2 hour wait. The guys just getting to the obstacle had started in the 0830 wave. Nope, not going to wait 2 hours. We heard randomly from someone that it was a 50 burpee penalty to skip it, fine, I'll do 50 burpees for not waiting 2 hours. Also noticed Dad was there, he had taken a couple ski lifts up and saw us. We did the burpees, said hey to Dad then made the turn and headed back down the slope.
We jogged down the slope, and got maybe 3/4 of the way down before we got to another obstacle. This would be awful. Probably 100m of low crawling underneath barbed wire, on gravel/dirt, on a steep downhill. It was agonizing. I was mainly using legs, so my legs were torched. Kirt mainly used arms, so his upper body was smoked. He tore his shirt, I nearly tore my race bib off my shorts. Arms and legs scraped up. We were slowed down when a girl in front of us got her hair caught in the wire. Luckily one of her friends we nearby, crawled over and helped get it untangled. Did not look fun. I had a couple barbs poke into my head and back but otherwise I was fine. Crawled out, jogged maybe 50m down the hill and around the corner to the base of the final slope, which followed underneath a chair lift.
At the base of this last hill, there was an instructor standing there in front of 2 large peg-boards with a bunch of small American flags sticking out. He called a big group of us together and gave us a speech about how this next hill was the "Memorial Climb" and how we were supposed to each carry one of the flags from the bottom to the top and think about the men and women who have been KIA in OEF/OIF. He brought up that only a few weeks before, a Green Beret that several of the GoRuck instructors knew had been killed in Afghanistan. So we all grabbed a flag and headed up. It was the steepest hill of the course. Even though it was maybe only 800m long, it felt much longer. Kirt and I set a good pace, we'd pause for a quick breather every 50m or so. The incline was steep enough that if I stopped moving, I would start to slide back down the hill (this is with new aggressive trail running shoes on, which don't ever slide). We got maybe 3/4 of the way up when we got to a cluster of people. Going around them we noticed they were grouped around a guy who was probably over 60 years old and a good 100lbs overweight, sitting down looking like he was about to have a heart attack. Got to the top of the hill, placed the flags we were carrying into another peg-board, then had another instructor call us together. He said the next "obstacle" was the "Mogadishu Mile." We were supposed to stick together as a team and head down the gravel road. The name comes from the last part of the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia in Oct 1993. Two Blackhawk helicopters were shot down during an operation to extract several high ranking Somali warlords. A group of Rangers and Delta operators that went to secure one of the crash sites then had to run a mile through Mogadishu carrying their wounded and dead teammates all while being engaged by the thousands of militia in the city. GoRuck's version of this was for us to walk down a gravel road for a mile. Yep. That was it.
Got to the bottom of the gravel road, which wound its way down the mountain, and found another obstacle. This was a balance beam obstacle. It had maybe a 30min line which didn't seem so bad after seeing a close to 2hr line earlier. While waiting in line, one of the GoRuck instructors was walking up and down the line and mentioned to us that obstacles in Nasty were harder than what he had to do in the Nasty Nick course at Ft Bragg. Hm, good to know. So we get up to the front. The obstacle is getting across 3 telephone pole logs. Each log has a slight up-angle, so you get progressively higher off the ground. You start maybe a foot off the ground and finish 6 feet off the ground. Not high, but if you have crappy balance this will screw with you. The logs were not secured in place, so there was a system of people wedging the logs in place so they wouldn't rock while someone walked across them. Kirt and I got across then jogged 200m to the next obstacle.
Next obstacle was a couple of high walls that you had to climb over. These were at an angle coming at you, so it made it tough for some people. But Kirt and I didn't have any issue just doing a muscle up over them. Maybe a 100m jog to the next obstacle.
Next obstacle was The Weaver. This was a series of horizontal 4x4 posts creating a pyramid, starting waist height and going up to probably 20ft off the ground. The object is to go over the first post, then under the next, then over, under, and so on. I got up the pyramid, got to the top, then realized I had no earthly idea how you safely do over/under doing down the slope. I decided I did not want to learn on the fly and possibly drop 20ft onto dirt so I just scooted down the top on my butt and jumped off. Another 100m job to the next obstacle.
This was the Confidence Climb. Probably 30-40 feet straight up a wooden ladder, go over the top, then come back down. Oh by the way, it had been raining for the last hour, so everything was wet. And it had a 15-20min line. Kirt and I decided to skip this one.
Then the last obstacle. This had probably a 45min-1hr line. You started by climbing a 15ft rope. Then transition to a platform. Then walk across horizontal 4x4 beams spaced 2ft apart (with no safety net underneath, just a long drop). After 10m of that, you climb a wooden ladder another 15ft, climb over the top, then climb onto a cargo net and descend to the bottom. Kirt and I skipped this one too. And then you had maybe a 600-800m run to the finish line. The End.
Problems I had with the race:
-The massive lines.
-They made their obstacles harder than the original obstacles they were based on.
-The order of the obstacles was terrible. Lets have 3 of the hardest obstacles all in a row at the very end! Great idea!
-Little to no considerations for safety.
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