“Race of Heroes” – 2024: a guide for those who want to test their strength on the obstacle course

Office workers, bloggers, doctors, top managers, teachers, students – about 3,500 people of various professions will gather in Alabin on August 10 to swim in the mud, defeat handwalks and conquer “Everest”. You should not think that they are crazy, their goal is to participate in the “Race of Heroes”.

“Race of Heroes” is the flagship project of the “League of Heroes” team. This sporting event of the country is awaited every season by both outdoor enthusiasts and professional athletes.

What is it?

“Race of Heroes” is a race with obstacles over rough terrain. Its distance is about 10 km on average, where about 30 different obstacles await the participants. Climb over tires, wade through ditches with water, jump from a six-meter tower, swim in the mud, overcome hand-rails of different complexity – this is only a small part of the tests on the track. Getting out of your comfort zone is guaranteed!

The race allows you not only to test your physical strength and endurance, but also to test your reaction to non-standard situations, face your fears and work as a team.

Participants run in groups of 10 people, which, according to the rules of the project, must start and finish in full. The race provides real team building: to overcome some obstacles, runners must help each other, and to finish at the same time, the pace of the run must be determined by the least prepared member of the group. Teams are usually made up of friends or fellow athletes. For those who want to make new acquaintances, the organizers have come up with a “place on a team” format, where platoons are formed from participants unfamiliar with each other.

Team participation is not the only format of the race. For those who want to set records, the organizers came up with a mass start – here everyone runs for himself. In addition, the strongest participants can compete with each other in the championship format, and organizations can hold an extreme corporate event for their employees.

How did it all start?

It all started in 2013, when project founder Ksenia Shoigu and her friend Gleb Yun decided to diversify their daily running workouts with obstacle courses. They built their routes in such a way that they had to climb over logs, cross streams and overcome other natural obstacles.

Ksenia and Gleb found this format of training fascinating, and they decided that it might interest other sports enthusiasts. At that time, 11 years ago, there were only 300 such people, and this season the project plans to involve 50 thousand people all over the country.

The first “Race of Heroes” was more of an experiment than something serious. Nevertheless, the sports community immediately liked the format: a year later, the number of participants increased 15 times.

In 2015, the race began to conquer Russia: the race was held in seven cities, and a year later – in 17. In 2016, the first winter “Race of Heroes” was held – the pilot project was successful and is still being implemented. A year later, the number of participants across the country grew to 20 thousand people, and the project itself reached the international level – the race was held in Germany and Azerbaijan. And in Russia, in the same year 2017, the first Superfinal of the “Race of Heroes” Championship took place.

In 2018, the project began to take over the media space: it became an event around which the plot of one of the highest-grossing movies of the year, “I’m Getting Thinner”, is based. A few years later, the “Race of Heroes” shone in the TV series “Trigger”.

In 2019, thanks to the development of the project and the high interest in such a sport among the audience, a new official discipline – obstacle course racing – was introduced in the country.

During the pandemic, the “Race of Heroes”, unlike many mass events, was not canceled – it was held with a smaller scale, but with compliance with all sanitary norms.

Since 2021, the project has reached a new level: every year it grows and develops, new cities join it, and the number of participants breaks records. For example, in 2024, three new cities joined the race – Omsk, Volgograd and Voronezh – expanding the geography of the project to 15 Russian cities.

Who can run?

“Race of Heroes” has become one of the most anticipated events in the sports world. It is loved by everyone – regardless of age, social status and profession: top managers, office workers, students, housewives, professional athletes and even celebrities. In different years, model Oksana Samoilova, rapper ST, comedian Mikhail Galustyan, TV presenter Alla Mikheeva, soccer players Vyacheslav Malafeev and Evgeny Aldonin, blogger Nikolay Sobolev, actor Alexander Sokolovsky and many others participated in the project. In 2024, in preparation for the filming of the “Race of Heroes” ran a team of sci-fi blockbuster “The Ninth Planet” – Actors Yuri Borisov, Konstantin Beloshapka, Danil Steklov, Maxim Emelyanov, Semyon Litvinov, as well as director Nikolai Rybnikov and cameraman Alexander Dmitriev.

Despite the apparent complexity of the distance, the race can be run by anyone who is at least a little familiar with the sport. Of course, like any other race, it should never be run “from the couch”, i.e. without preparation.

How to prepare?

We advise you to start preparing a few months before the race. Your training should include more than just running: there are a lot of strength and endurance tests on the course, so we recommend that you pay attention to the strength component as well.

Handicaps are usually particularly challenging for participants – there are about 10 of them on the course, and each of them has its own peculiarities. Therefore, we advise you to include pull-ups and grip development in your training program.

You can test the obstacles of the race before the start at Hero League Training, which is held by the organizer of the project in more than 20 cities of Russia. In Moscow, training sessions are held in Neskuchny Garden, Victory Park and at the Avangard stadium on Enthusiastov Highway. Here you will not only be able to train and pump up your technique, but also to learn some useful flyhacks. After Hero League Training you will no longer find the maneuvers insurmountable: you will realize that arm strength is not the main thing in this challenge and you will learn how to pass them even if you can’t do pull-ups.

Do I need a certificate?

To be allowed to participate, you need to undergo a medical examination: do an ECG, visit a therapist, ENT, neurologist and ophthalmologist. This way you will make sure that you have no contraindications to the race, and you will be sure that after the race you will not have negative consequences for your health. As a rule, this examination does not take much time and you can undergo it at the nearest clinic.

What will the course be like?

From year to year, the organizers try to diversify the course, in addition, depending on the season and weather conditions, the route and set of tests vary slightly.

The Alabinsk obstacle course in this summer’s version includes a distance of 8 km and 30 trials. Participants will overcome numerous ditches and obstacles made of water and mud. To pass some of them, you will have to crawl under a net or barbed wire. In addition, participants will have to face their fears one-on-one: for example, to pass the obstacle “aperture of tires”, it is necessary to crawl through a narrow space in which a person is squeezed between car tires. The organizers of the event have also prepared traditional maneuvers of different complexity: “inclined rings”, “double rotation”, “ladder” and others. The final test will be a rope climb up an eight-meter steep mountain – “Everest”.

Where will the “Race of Heroes” be held?

This year “Race of Heroes” will be held in 15 cities of Russia. The event has already taken place in Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Novosibirsk – Alabino near Moscow is coming up, but you can still buy a slot for the race in other cities:

• August 10 – in Chelyabinsk;
• August 17 – in Vladivostok;
• August 24 – in Tula and Mendeleevsk;
• August 31 – in Yekaterinburg;
• September 7 – in Omsk, Voronezh and Ufa;
• September 24 – in Volgograd.

What will participation give?

Every day we go to the office, do household chores, take our children to school, and train in the gym. Most often there is little extreme in our everyday life.

“Race of Heroes” is the safest way to not only get adrenaline, but also to indulge your inner child. Think back to when you were a kid, jumping in puddles and running through mud. How did that make you feel? Now you have a chance to experience the same emotions as an adult.

In addition, the extreme format of the obstacle race gives you the opportunity to get to know yourself better – on the course you will meet situations that do not exist in your everyday life. And also you will be able to get reacquainted with the people with whom you will run in the same team.

And, of course, after the course you will feel great pride and absolute happiness because you were not afraid to challenge yourself.

You can register for the “Race of Heroes” and find all the information about the start in your city on the website.