NOT MEDICAL OR TRAINING ADVICE

Educational demo only. Use at your own risk. Not affiliated with any race organizer. Obstacles on a real course vary and are optional. Bypass anything that feels unsafe. Talk to a clinician before cold immersion, breath-hold practice, chemical irritants, or electric obstacles if you have heart disease, uncontrolled blood pressure, seizure history, serious asthma, prior heat illness, pregnancy, or implanted metal.

Research log · Aug 11, 2026

Sources

Primary URLs, open questions, and how the parallel agents worked.

Method

How this field guide was built

Five research agents ran in parallel on Aug 11, 2026, plus a summarizer that consolidated findings into one canonical content spec for the site build.

  1. Obstacles: 20 common OCR types (walls, mud, ice, grip, height, finish shock) with coaching tiers
  2. Course order: farm-venue terrain plus typical mud-race pacing, labeled ESTIMATE
  3. Training: grip/mobility benchmarks, cold-shock physiology, NATA heat/fluid guidance, late-August northern Illinois climate
  4. Prediction: staples vs rotating pieces, confidence-rated lineup
  5. Conflict audit: spec conflicts, open questions, designer delivery checklist

The summarizer merged those five streams into _research/00-content-spec.md for the HTML build.

Facts that conflicted (cargo A-frame 30′ vs 40′, underwater cage 48′ vs 60′, etc.) are shown as ranges in the walkthrough. Gaps stayed in the open questions log instead of getting smoothed over.

Training & safety literature

Selected references

  • ACSM Guidelines (grip, flexibility timing)
  • NATA Fluid Replacement for the Physically Active (McDermott et al., 2017); NATA / inter-association heat illness materials
  • American Red Cross Scientific Advisory Council: against hyperventilation before underwater swimming
  • Australian Institute of Sport Breath-Hold Training Position Statement
  • Datta & Tipton (2006) cold-water respiratory responses; Tipton et al. cold-shock habituation
  • McGill, Childs, Liebenson (1999) torso endurance
  • WeatherSpark northern Illinois August climate normals
Open questions

Logged Aug 11, 2026

  1. Full named obstacle list and numbered map
  2. Exact obstacle count (20 vs 22-28) and which Med items survive
  3. Irritant-tunnel local permit status
  4. Trapeze rings installed vs alternate height piece
  5. 5K / 15K split geometry
  6. Multi-lap waves: which obstacles stay open all day
  7. Duplication (second wall set, dual mud sections)
  8. Any 2026 debut not in the public 20-obstacle set
  9. Weather contingency for shock / live-wire (lightning) and mud trenches (flood)
  10. Spectator routing from race village to photo obstacles

Update hook

When the organizer publishes the numbered map, swap the ESTIMATE order on the course page and mark High/Med hits on the predict page. Sources stay dated so readers know what was known when.

Talk about a research demo like this Course walkthrough