Students climbed, sprinted and solved puzzles at this week’s Grit ‘N Wit obstacle course event.
On Monday, students joined together in either teams of two or four to face the course, sponsored by the Campus Activities Board (CAB). The event consisted of 20 obstacles, both physical and mental, around a three-mile loop on campus, according to Cody Didas, CAB president.
“The idea originally came from Abby Cohen and Rob DeFazio,” said Didas, a senior finance major. “They thought it would be a solid event that many groups of people on campus would want to get involved in and liked the spin that Grit ‘N Wit put on Tough Mudders and traditional 5k races.”
Eighty people participated in the event, according to Cohen, associate director of intramurals, club sports and student engagement.
One participant, sophomore international studies and Spanish double major Haylei John, said she participates in a lot of competitive races, but she’s never done one with both physical and mental aspects.
“Grit N Wit was even better than I had hoped, because it made me realize that I’m capable of a lot more than I had realized,” said John. “It’s not every day that I get to climb and jump over walls taller than me.”
John added the wide range of obstacles kept her guessing throughout the course.
“One minute I’d be sprinting and climbing, then the next I’d be working on a puzzle with my partner,” she said. “It kept the course interesting.”
Another participant and CAB member, junior Riley Eike, said the event was much different than she expected.
“I expected there to be more obstacles, just because I saw two different maps that the company had planned out for the course of the race,” said Eike. “It was more exhausting than I expected. This is probably because I hadn’t trained for it or worked out in a while, but I was lacking in the running parts of the event.”
Although she had a tough time running, Eike, a journalism and mass communication major, said having a partner, Paul Lavelle, through the course helped a lot.
“Whenever I was stuck on a wit obstacle, he had the answer and vise versa,” she said. “We also spotted each other on the grit obstacles.”
Eike said the top four teams received prizes, medals, key chains or bottle openers, from the Grit ‘N Wit company.
kolbee14@bonaventure.edu
