Sawtooth Training Tips by Chris Marhefka (B3 Gym)

Last week I dropped into B3 Gym in Gainesville, Florida to meet with owner and head trainer Chris Marhefka to get some training tips for completing my personal arch-nemesis obstacle, Sawtooth.

In the video, Chris shows me how I can use pull ups, dead hangs, one handed hangs, fat grip progressions, and other training techniques to conquer Sawtooth and other upper body strength oriented obstacles.

Oh! And I should mention that I hit a dead hang PR in this video (1:21). Haha!

Chris Marhefka is the founder of B3 Gym in Gainesville, FL and co-founder of Eat the 80, a healthy meal delivery service in Florida. He has worked with more than 2,000 clients and has 10+ years experience as a personal trainer, CrossFit instructor, and nutrition and lifestyle coach. He holds a Certified Personal Trainer certification from the American College of Sports Medicine and is a CrossFit L1 and L2 certificate holder.

I Will Conquer Sawtooth in 2019.

One of my deepest secrets is that I can’t complete Sawtooth. That’s right, the founder of Savage Race can’t complete one of his own trademark obstacles. I’ve had eight years to do it, and every time I try, I end up falling in the drink.

A few months ago, I decided that 2019 would be the year that this would change. I know that conquering Sawtooth will require hard work and dedication. The two biggest factors keeping me from successfully completing Sawtooth are 1) I am overweight, and 2) my upper body is not strong enough. Both of these issues will need to be addressed to enable me to accomplish my goal of defeating Sawtooth.

Being overweight makes obstacle course racing a lot harder. The way I think about it is that for every extra 10 pounds of fat on my body, I might as well be wearing a weighted backpack filled with 10 pound plates. To address this issue, I’ve been eating clean for the past few months. I follow a Paleo-ish diet, and I’ve experimented with intermittent fasting and ketosis too. I’ve found that if I limit my carbs to 50-100 grams per day, I can steadily lose weight, and it really doesn’t require a lot of effort or will power. Another tactic that works well for me is to challenge my friends to weight loss and fitness challenges. Savage Co-founder Lloyd Parker and I both lost about 30 pounds in three months participating in one of these challenges. So I’m down 30 pounds, and have about 15 to go. I think I’m on track in the weight loss department.

To address the strength issue, I’ve been hitting the gym to get stronger. I have a great garage gym at my house that makes it easy for me to get the work in. Even more important, is good programming, so I hired a remote coach, Sean McGovern to create an individualized training plan for me and to hold me accountable. Following Sean’s plan, which is specifically tailored to help me reach my goals, I’ve been breaking PRs in the gym that I haven’t come close to in eight years. So I think that I’m on track in the strength department, too. If you think that having a remote coach could be a good fit for you, I highly recommend you contact Sean.

WEATHER UPDATE CENTER

Apology to Florida Savages

Dear Florida Savages,

I owe you an apology. The photo gallery we released after the Florida Spring ’18 event was not satisfactory. Many of you had very few tagged photos, if any at all, and there was no way for you to simply browse the photo zones by time of day. We expected the system we presented to be a major upgrade, but it didn’t work as well as we hoped.

Today, we released a new gallery (same photos on a new platform) that will allow you to search for your photos by facial recognition, and search each obstacle zone by time of day. The facial recognition software and time stamp search by photo zone should help you find more photos, but if all else fails, you can browse the entire gallery, picture by picture.

Click here to search for your photos using facial recognition and/or time of day search

What we are going to do moving forward to make your photo experience better:

At Savage Race, we want to take care of our customers better than any other race series. The fact that we botched the photos in Florida this year has been a source of emotional distress for me and other SRHQ team members. Moving forward, we plan to use the new platform with facial recognition search capability. This new platform allows us to take a new approach to capturing your photos. Because the new system allows you to search by facial recognition, our photographers can shoot for faces, instead of shooting for bibs. The best part of that is that it opens up our photographers to capture photos at many obstacles that we could not cover in the past. For example, bibs are almost never visible while you are in Shriveled Richard, but with facial recognition, we can capture lots of great photos there, and you will be able to find them. Unfortunately, in Florida we shot for bibs, not for faces, so the photo experience still won’t be optimal this time around, even with the new platform. In the future I am hopeful that your galleries will turn out much, much better.

In Georgia this past weekend, we had terrific photo results using the new platform, with our photographers shooting for faces instead of bibs. We also had the photos uploaded and ready to go by Sunday morning! Wow! We are hoping that we can continue to consistently deliver at all events with excellent photos, just like we did in Georgia last weekend.

In summary, I am sorry about the Florida photo mess, and I promise to improve. I hope that you are able to find more photos of yourself using the new platform. Our mission to take care of our customers better than any other race series never ends.

Respectfully,

Sam Abbitt
Savage Race

SavagePRO Georgia 2018 Podium Medals Update

Dear Georgia SavagePROs,

I have some good news and some bad news for you. Which do you want first? Ok I will start with the bad news.

The Bad News:

Due to shipping issues, we will not have SavagePRO podium medals for this event. If you podium this weekend, we will NOT have the gold, silver, or bronze medals to give you at the award ceremony.

 The Good News:

If you podium on Saturday, we are doing a few things to make up for the fact that we won’t have your SavagePRO podium medal on time. 1) We will mail out all of the SavagePRO podium medals after we receive them. We don’t have a solid timeline on this yet, but expect 3-4 weeks. 2) Since we really, really, really don’t want you to be angry with us, we will hand you a fully comped voucher to any future SavagePRO event, which will never expire. You will collect this at the award ceremony in lieu of your medal.

What were the shipping issues? Why won’t you have the medals?

We ordered the medals in early January, and our shipment arrived on time at a California port on March 2^nd. Unfortunately, that’s when our cargo was stopped by US Customs officials for an extensive exam. According to the limited information they shared with us, agents moved our container to a new warehouse where they could perform a piece-by-piece exam of our shipment, which consisted of about 30,000 medals. The exam ended this week, and our order is scheduled to be officially released next week sometime. US Customs won’t really tell us much about why our cargo was picked for this month-long exam, but it was, and there was no way to expedite it. This is the first time in our eight year history that any of our shipments have been subject to an exam like this.

Apology:

I am very sorry that we will not have the podium medals for this event. Despite the reasons, Savage Race takes full accountability for not having your medals on time. If you win, we hope that you will accept our offer of mailed medals, and comp passes for future SavagePRO vouchers as a reasonable substitute and forgive us.

Sincerely,

Sam Abbitt

Savage Race Co-founder & CEO

Contact:

If you have additional questions, hit us up at our contact center.

Other FAQ:

We WILL have standard finisher T-shirts and medals for you and everyone in the open waves as usual.

We WILL have axes for 1^st place overall male and female as usual.

How We’re Always Striving to Improve Savage Race Based on YOUR Feedback

Hey Savages! Today we’d like to give you an inside look at how we’re committed to continually improving your experience at Savage Race.

You already know we have the best obstacles, and that our race is the perfect distance. But did you know that we have an internal focus on always making Savage Race better?

We work hard to connect with you, our growing Savage community, and then put on an amazing event that you just can’t stop talking about. Then, we review a number of metrics to measure the success of each event. We consider what worked well and what we could do better next time. After that we make adjustments (sometimes big ones!) and repeat the process.

The end result is a better Savage experience each time you come out to one of our events, and we’re darned proud of that.

Read More…

Support Hurricane Relief Efforts by Purchasing Your Limited Edition Savage Race T-Shirt

Savage Race isn’t just about getting muddy and conquering obstacles. We’re not just about accomplishing goals and overcoming fears. And we’re not just about fun and fitness and making memories of a lifetime.

No, Savage Race is about so much more than that.

What makes Savage Race so great is YOU and your support of one another before, during, and after the race.

Savage Race is about community.

Read More…

How to make sure you get great action photos at Savage Race

Savage Race offers free race photos for all runners. Read these tips to make sure you get amazing action photos at any Savage Race!

How to make sure you get good photos at Savage Race

1. Make sure you know where all photographers will be on the course! The official photographers will all wear bright yellow vests. You will receive an email before the event that details all of the photographer locations.

2. Always wear your race bib facing forwards, and make sure it is clean and visible.

3. Seek out the photographers and make sure they take your photo!

4. Write your bib number on your body using a body marking pen. (optional)

How to retrieve your photos

We take tens of thousands of participant photos at each event, so it takes several days for our staff to review and tag them all. Some of your photos might be immediately available after the event, but it is unlikely that all of your photos will be ready until Thursday.

There are two ways to download and share your photos. Option 1 is faster, and requires that you give an app share access to your Facebook account. Option 2 does not involve Facebook at all, but the photos will not be available as soon.

Option 1 – Pic2Go

• This is the fastest way to access your photos
• Photos appear and post to your Facebook page during the week as they are tagged by our team
• This option requires a Facebook account
• You must give the app permission to auto-post your photos to a Facebook audience: Public, Friends, Only Me, or select specific friends
• If you select “Only Me”, you can delete photos you don’t want to share prior to publishing. After reviewing, click “Change to Shared Album” to publish your album
• A link to use the Pic2Go platform to auto-share your race photos on Facebook will be sent to you after the event

Option 2 – High Resolution Downloads

• This option does not require a Facebook account
• Photos will only be available in the high-resolution download center after all tagging is complete
• This option will be ready on Wednesday or Thursday following the race
• A link to the high resolution download center will be sent to you after the event

How does photo tagging work?

We are able to tag pictures of you using a three part process: automatic bar code tagging, manual bib number tagging, and RFID tagging. These three methods are explained below.

• Bar code tagging is an automatic process that tags your photos when the bar code printed on your race bib is visible. About half of the photos are tagged automatically using this system. More on how this works
• Manual bib number tagging is a team of people scrolling through all of the photos and tagging them with the bib numbers they can see on their screen.
• RFID tagging sends a time stamp each time a participant crosses over an RFID mat on the course. We have mats at all photo locations. These time stamps help our manual taggers find more photos for you.

Interview: Savage Race CEO Sam Abbitt Discusses OCR, New Obstacles, and the Future of the Sport

Back in December, CEO Sam Abbitt spoke to Paul Jones over at New England Spahtens on the exciting launch of Savage Race Boston!  Sam and Paul discuss the success of Savage Race and the excitement of the upcoming 2017 race season with new obstacles, new medals, and the continuation of the Savage Syndicate program.  Click below and enjoy the podcast.

The New England Spahtens are an OCR community group based in New England providing an online source for race information, race reviews, and more. Check them out at www.newenglandspahtens.com.

Best Savage Race Photos of 2016

As we look back on 2016, it turned out to be quite a year! Check out some of our favorite photos from the past year below. Did you make the cut?

There’s exciting news for 2017. We’re adding two NEW locations!  Charlotte, NC and Boston, MA are both open and waves are filling up fast.

2017 is gearing up to be the best of the best! We have NEW finisher medals, NEW Syndicate medals and pins, and brand spankin’ NEW obstacles. We unveiled Twin Peaks and Hangarang as prototypes last year and both had rave reviews.  We have more obstacles in the works. Stay tuned!

Read More…

Inside the Obstacle: Hangarang