100 Mile Movie

As Mariessa mentioned in her post Tuesday, many of us in the gym enjoy other sports outside of CrossFit. In fact, this is highly encouraged as you may have read the line Regularly learn and play new sports in “World Class Fitness in 100 Words”.

If your sport of choice is long-distance running, you might wonder — do the short duration bouts of CrossFit enhance or harm performance in endurance events? When I attended my Level 1 cert, I had the privilege of meeting Greg Amundson. He is well known from many of the main site videos, as his involvement with CrossFit reaches back several years. At the cert, we were told how Greg was challenged to run 100 miles in 24 hours using only the main site WODs as his training. In his words:

The thought of running 100 miles never occurred to me before I met Melissa Mackenzie, an expert in endurance running and training. During a CrossFit Level 1 Certification in San Diego last November, Melissa, the co-owner of CrossFit Newport Beach, challenged me to run 100 miles in 24 hours. After all, CrossFit has always made the claim that short-distance anaerobic workouts transfer to long, slow-distance aerobic events. This has been proven by athletes such as world-renowned rock climbing expert Rob Miller, who routinely breaks mountain climbing records on CrossFit training alone. Attempting to run 100 miles on CrossFit training alone seemed like the kind of challenge I could sink my teeth into.

At the link above there is a CrossFit Journal article documenting his experience. There are also video interviews with Greg and others involved.

So rest assured, endurance athletes can find much to gain from CrossFit. There is a certification as well as WOD programming geared towards these pursuits. Some of the pioneers of this adaptation are CrossFit Endurance’s Brian Mackenzie and Carl Borg. They are leading a revolution within the endurance community and will be competing in this year’s Angeles Crest 100 Mile Endurance Run using CrossFit workouts and nutrition, eschewing the “carbo load”, energy bars and heavy mileage most runners accept as dogma. Find out more about the documentary of their efforts at 100milemovie.com.

Avelyne brought to my attention that CrossFit was mentioned in the Daily Breeze today! We even get a nod at the end of the article.

WOD – 5.14.09

21-15-9

• Box Jumps (24″/20″)
• KB Swings (1.5 pood/1 pood)
• SDHP (75/55)

Cash Out: 3×5 One-leg Romanian DL with DBs