Twenty-five obstacles, a discount code, and a dedicated kids’ course all land on a Dade City cattle ranch the same Saturday this November. Savage Race — the obstacle-course series that built its name as the scrappier rival to Spartan Race — brings its Florida Fall event to Little Everglades Ranch on Nov. 14.
Savage Race started in 2011 when founders Sam Abbitt and Lloyd Parker ran a single event with about 1,700 finishers. It’s grown into a national series that competes directly with Spartan Race (founded 2007, later sponsored by Reebok) for the same obstacle-racing crowd. Savage’s pitch has always leaned on tougher, muddier, water-heavy obstacles over Spartan’s mountaintop scenery — a real rivalry in the obstacle-course-racing world, not just marketing copy.
Dade City’s race splits into two main distances: the full Savage Race (5-7 miles, 25-plus obstacles) and the shorter Savage Blitz (3 miles, 15-plus obstacles). The competitive Savage PRO heat and the full Savage Race both start at 8am for men and 8:15am for women; Blitz runners pick a start window during registration, with exact wave times finalized about a week out. Anyone who wants to do both in one day can add the Savage Syndicate pass and walk away with a third medal for completing the double.
Kids get their own course. Savage Jr runs two age brackets — a third-mile course with smaller obstacles for ages 8 and under, and a full mile with bigger obstacles for 9-to-12-year-olds — starting at 11am. Registration runs $45 online or $55 at the gate, including a medal, a shirt and two spectator passes.
Regular registration runs $139 for the full race and $129 for the Blitz, though a 25%-off promo code (HAUNT25) was live on the event page as of this writing, bringing those down to $104.25 and $96.75. Spectators pay $15 per adult for access to the whole course and festival area; kids 12 and under get in free. Parking runs $20 regular, $30 for VIP or RV/bus, $10 for motorcycles.
This isn’t a spectator sport in the usual sense, but the festival area and the kids’ course make it a reasonable family outing even for people with no interest in getting muddy themselves. Every finisher gets a medal, a shirt and on-course action photos, with chip timing throughout.
Good to know: Little Everglades Ranch, 17951 Hamilton Rd, Dade City, FL 33523. Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026, starting 8am.
Register at savagerace.com. Also happening in Dade City that same weekend: the Civil War Reenactment at Pioneer Florida Museum.
Photo courtesy Savage Race.