Review: Survivalrun Genderingen

9k Recreational

In short: The run is a good way for A-members to score a relative easy point and for T-members the run is a nice way to challenge themselves.

One and a half month after working our asses off at Dinxperlo, it was time to visit the region once more and show our worth in the nearby Gendringen. With more than a van full of All Terrainers joining the 9k run, we all started solidarily in the same starting group. However, the group consisting of people varying from experienced A-members to enthousiastic new members still with A-group aspirations, quickly split into a few groups of people running for either fun, a license point or even a fast time.
Remembering the tough run of Dinxperlo, I anxiously kept pace with a group of people from A that were slightly better than me, telling them to simply leave me in the case I was slowing them down, as all I wanted to do was finishing the run. Since others also wanted to finish the run with their wristband we settled on a relatively slow pace.
After leaving the athletics track, we came across a few combination obstacles, which were not especially difficult because of the many resting points. One obstacle that I kinda liked was the monkeybar pyramid, which was a lot less steep compared to its Stormrun counterpart, which made it less of a bottleneck. Of course there also were a few monkeyhangs, one of which underneath a bridge.
In between all the obstacles there was a lot of running through Gelders’ farmlands which was nice and relaxing.
Of course, the traditional bow shooting with a punishment round for the less accurate was also included with thereafter a refreshing post (with warm water, bleh!). There, they told us that we were not that far from the finish anymore. Since we had been making it through the run with relative ease up until that point, we were afraid of what still had to come. Yet, after a few more monkeyhangs and some not too technical combis we found ourselves back at the athletics track were the run started of a couple of hours ago.
The final combi had a few elements that could be difficult if you didn’t have much power left in your arms, such as the pole traverse. However, after that the hardest part seemed finding where exactly the finish was (a small missable gap between the fences).
I don’t know why we expected Gendringen to be of the same difficulty as Dinxperlo, but for the people of the A group it turned out to be a walk in the park (we actually ran through a park). Although for some All Terrainers the run was a bit more of a challenge, I think for most of us it was a nice way to get another licence point. I think some of the combis could have been a bit more technical but I still did enjoy the run and would definitely recommend it.

~Pim

14k MSR

Gendringen is one of the oldest survivalrun in the Netherlands, and they always go back to their roots and put the ‘survival’ in survivalrun. This means manipulating the weather so it rains, changing the month to February so it’s cold and putting in obstacles that you have to power through. Gendringen is a more difficult run, but primarily because it’s in February. If you don’t mind the shitty weather and cold hands the run is around a A1 difficulty level. Gendringen is a pretty basic run, but they also have some cool different obstacles sometimes. This time they had a fun beam climbing obstacle where you monkeyhanged four diagonal beams and they had a raft on the water that you had to balance your way across. However they also make bad choices with their obstacles, like having kayaking and woodcutting right after each other was kind of unfortunate. It cooled me down a lot, especially the part where I had to walk a kilometer with a log that I cut in two myself.

It’s a fun run, but if I have to choose I wouldn’t pick it over other survivalruns and I’m not just saying that because I missed the archery part again.

~Laurence