Buffalo Resident Travels To Wheeling For Tough As Nails
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WHEELING -- Buffalo resident Eric Wisniewski traveled more than four hours to compete in the Tough as Nails Urban Challenge presented by The Health Plan on Sunday.
Wisniewski said he has been aware of the competition for a while now, but it has never just lined up with with an open opportunity. This year, he decided it was finally time to give it a try.
"I’ve known about it for years. It just never really worked into my schedule. And then this year I was like, let’s just make it work," Wisniewski said.
He added that he typically competes in more trail-based events and has done ultramarathons, but is an obstacle course racer at heart.
"I started into the whole world of obstacle courses back in 2010, with the Warrior Dash. I saw an online ad of a guy jumping over fire, and I clicked on it, and the rest is history," Wisniewski said.
He added that on Saturday he competed in Mud on the Mountain at Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, so he was a little nervous about competing in two events back to back.
"I’m just looking to finish today after yesterday’s race," he said. "I’ve never been down in this area, so I’m just looking forward to looking around and seeing what West Virginia has down here in Wheeling."
On Sunday, Wisniewski wore a United OCR shirt. He said the organization is an obstacle course collective consisting of different courses across the country to help ensure events do not overlap so participants who travel to compete do not have scheduling conflicts.
"This started years ago with the OCR [Obstacle Course Racing] World Championships, bringing the events together to showcase their obstacles at these events and stuff like that," Wisniewski said. "It’s important for the races to work together, because too many times the races overlap each other, and then the numbers drop. This sport is already kind of a niche sport, so it’s not super popular, so when you have races that are on top of each other, it just hurts everybody’s race. So they try to unite the races, work together, not step on each other’s toes."