AN ALLOA-BASED events company held a “massively successful” family obstacle course race at Knockhill a few weeks ago.
Brass Monkey Events hosted its family oriented MacTuff Kids race, formerly McTough, on July 30 in brilliant conditions.
The rain poured down the night before the event, creating perfectly muddy conditions for the around 3K race, but the sun came out in all its glory on the day, which saw just over 540 parents and children taking part.
According to one of the organisers, Alex Potter, the event was in high demand and it sold out a month before it started.
The aim was to encourage people to get active with their kids and introduce them to the joys of obstacle course racing (OCR), a sport which has been growing in the UK and around the world in the past decade.
Parents and children had to complete the 17 obstacles of the event together - there was a muddy crawl, a tyre tunnel, huge kegs and walls to climb, more mud and water, a cargo net and a welcome splash into the foam pool ahead of the finish line.
Brass Monkey has previously staged McTough Guy in the winter, the 15K adult event based on the original Tough Guy race in Wolverhampton and the team asked: Why should the adults have all the fun?
So, they decided to create a race kids can take part in and Alex said the event was “just brilliant from start to finish”, adding: “The first wave was at 10.30am, but we encouraged to come along for 10.30am and we did a huge-big Icelandic chant.
“The ethos behind (the event) was really to get families to do something together. No child could do this event without an adult and vice-versa.”
Alex said there were smiles on everyone's faces; the event allowed families to get active and “get dirty and wet and just have a ball, but along the way get pretty active and pretty out of breath together”.
He wanted to say a big thanks to all the marshals, the people who took part, his team with whom he keeps organising the events and Waitrose for donating “a mountain” of bananas for everyone who finished.
The team and Alex are already working on the next MacTuff Kids event in October, which this time will have a superhero theme, with participants encouraged to dress up as their favourite characters before completing the challenging course. Due to limited spaces available, this event has already sold out.
Beyond that, the team is looking forwards to staging their main event, rebranded to MacTuff, in January, which is once again promised to be a fiendish challenge in the biting Scottish winter.
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