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IF you think you have the grit and toughness to handle a three mile obstacle course, Bahamian style, well the Chickcharney Challenge may be just what you’re looking for.

Four guys, The Chickcharney Chirren, as they have dubbed themselves, pioneers of the local obstacle course run, are set to launch the second installment of the event slated for March 6 beginning at 9am. Chickcharney Chirren chief executive officer Chester Robards says that the event is all about fitness, health and wellness and experiencing the outdoors. Part of the proceeds from the event go to support the Bahamas National Council for Disability (BNCD).

“Basically it is an obstacle course run. I started it because I always had an interest in obstacle course runs. I wasn’t able to do one until 2013. I went over to Miami did a 12 miler with about 20 obstacles and fell in love. You get to test different areas of your physical strength and also mental toughness,” says Robards.

“Once you do it you feel incredibly accomplished, not just for that day but with the training leading up to it and the training you continue to do to keep mentally strong. There are people in the US who are obsessed with this kind of thing. They do three, four, five a year but nothing like that exists here. Last year we brought the first kind of organized obstacle course run that was open to everyone,” he added.

“We did two challenges last year and then we did a smaller event called the Chickcharney Relays in November which was a 4×4 actual relay with obstacles which is a smaller play on the challenge. The challenge is usually about three plus miles worth of obstacles. Last year we had 10 obstacles, this year we’re aiming for close to 15 or more.”

The Challenge is again set to be held at Clifton Heritage Park. “It’s an amazing location. They have been good to us and people love the park. If you haven’t been out there you’ll feel like you’re in a different county almost. It’s beautiful, the location is perfect for an obstacle course run. You have the different terrain, the beach, the track road, the bush, the gravel and the dirty muddy track. It has got hills and it’s got cliffs. We utilize the entire park on the Sunday for our challenge,” says Robards.

“We have ground obstacles where you have to crawl on your stomach, to high obstacles where you have to climb and rope, situations where you have to through waste deep water and we introduced last year in our second event a swinging obstacle and we are going to have a lot more of those coming up this year in addition to what we had last year,” says Robards.

Robards says that the response following the inaugural event was “incredible”. “Obviously we are very overzealous about how many people we wanted to see show up at the first event. People weren’t sure what it was but afterwards the afterwards the response was incredible.”

“We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We time the event but it’s not a timed race per se. We encourage people not to look at it as a race but to challenge themselves,” states Robards. As for the future of the event he says he envisions it growing even bigger and better.