Fisherman´s Friend StrongmanRun maybe the mother of European obstacle course races (OCR) with Nürburgring as one of the biggest and most famous StrongmanRun locations. Since a couple of years, you can also start at Fühlinger See in Cologne, a beautiful recreation area, which is also famous for its crazy summer festivals.

At Fühlinger See you can run the Original (20 km), Strong-10 (10 km) and the Funrun (6 km) distances around the beautiful lake. I decided to run the 10 km, as this is my favourite workout distance. After Warmup and Start, the race began with several kilometres of running, scattered crawling and swimming obstacles.

I ran the first 4 to 5 km with the women’s winner of the Funrun, Katrin Förster. She started the next race directly after her award ceremony. She ran the 10 km just to relax, that’s the only reason why I could keep up to her pace for a while. Her advice for the first swimming obstacle: keep your legs straight and only swim with your arms. If you use your legs, you will get tangled up in the net under water. Thank you Katrin, for the useful advice! We made it together. Hooraa! I expected a shock by the water temperature, but it was actually quite nice and easy. Not to cold, more like a comforting refreshment from running. Unfortunately, my shows felt heavy as bricks afterwards, soaked full with water.

After several more crawling obstacles, I reached a smoked filled tunnel with rocking loud music. This fun obstacle was obviously sponsored by Teufel. The Sportograf at the obstacle also einjoyed the challenging task of taking photos in the smoke filled darkness, making several flashes necessary for the job.

After about 8 km I finally came back to the Start/Finish area with most of the fun obstacles and applauding spectators. There was sooooo much foam in one obstacle that it covered me completely at half way through it. Luckily the water slide came directly afterwards, making a shower after the race superfluous.

One of the few climbing obstacles was this see container lifted by two massive mobile cranes. That was super thrilling, but I would definitely wish for more climbing and layback obstacle in this race.

The race course around the Fühlinger See is almost flat, resulting in very little vertical meters to climb. This makes the race perfect for fun runners, friends, families and ambitious sprinters. You can enjoy the party at the Start/Finish area and the warmup ceremony for motivation.  At the event area you get everything that you need for your race, also a glass of Kölsch! If you like running and swimming, you will enjoy every distance of the Fisherman´s Friend StrongmanRun Cologne.

See you at the next race,

Jan