Fitness junkies take on The Erg Ultra
CrossFit Jozi clears the decks for their inaugural functional fitness event.
In the early hours of Saturday, 60 athletes, who made up 23 teams in total, arrived at CrossFit Jozi, at the Meadowdale Value Centre, ready to take on the inaugural The Erg Ultra.
Additional teams also arranged to take on the challenge at Northcliff CrossFit, CrossFit Firebolt and CrossFit Mossel Bay.
This endurance event featured a daunting 350km of skiing, rowing and cycling indoors on Concept2 machines.
Athletes took on the challenge, broken up into three segments, namely, 50km on the skiing machine, 100km rowing and 200km on the bike.
All distances had to be completed within a 24-hour period.
The clock started at 3am sharp with most teams opting to begin their attempt with the 50km distance set on the SkiErg machine before moving onto the RowErg and BikeErg.
Throughout the day teams chose to rotate through equal time or distance intervals on each machine, prepared to grind away for the next 24 hours.
As dawn cracked, teams had settled into a dependable rhythm, taking turns to work, eat, change, rest, recover and then do it all again.
Though it was difficult at first to tell who was in the lead as the teams were tackling the challenges, at about 7pm, two teams had reared their heads.
Team Bad Decisions and team This Is Going To Hurt seemed set to occupy the first and second positions as they hammered towards completing their race.
“Team Bad Decisions planned to finish quickly on the BikeErg shortening their working intervals to stay fresh, and even climbing out of the saddle to keep the flywheel spinning with vigour, whilst team This Is Going To Hurt needed to make their way home on the rowing machine,” said Carl Alfonso, media representative for CrossFit Jozi.
Tall, lean and hungry to finish strong these two teams made short work of their final few kilometres.
In the end, Bad Decisions, the all-male team representing B4C Fit Factory took the win in a time of 16 hours, 25 minutes and 7 seconds, setting a worthy target for next year’s event.
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Team NCC from Northcliff CrossFit finished in the second fastest time, 16 hours, 39 minutes and 43 seconds.
“Eight of the 23 teams at CrossFit Jozi, made up of three members each, managed to complete the distance in less than 18 hours,” said Alfonso.
“The first pair to complete the race was Luke Kirk and Jonathan Hudson in 18 hours, 33 minutes and 50 seconds.
“The only individual entry for The Erg Ultra 2019 came from Rousseau Hager, who after a valiant effort, retired at 20 hours and 28 minutes with less than 95km to go.”
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