By Pete Williams
James Bellamy overhead lunging
When Eric Stratman started a Tough Mudder training program at his TNL Tampa CrossFit gym last summer, he figured he’d draw a steady crowd to his every-other-Saturday program.
That happened, of course, and we were more than prepared for Tough Mudder, which does not come back to the Tampa Bay area (Fort Meade, actually) until Dec. 1. The 75-minute routines we worked our way up to late in the program might have been tougher than the actual race.
Stratman already is drawing crowds getting ready for other races, such as next month’s Mud Crusade, and we were among the 40 or so athletes who gathered at TNL on Saturday.
Here’s what the workout looked like:
400 meter run
15 tire flips
400 meter run
25 walking lunges with a weight plate held overhead (45 pounds for men, 25 for women)
400 meter run
25 box jumps (on tires)
400 meter run
15 pull-ups
400 meter run
Side tire tosses (100 yards)
800 meter run
That’s a lot more running than the average CrossFit WOD (workout of the day) but that’s to better mimic an actual obstacle race. Most trainees on hand Saturday completed one circuit – at an average of 25 minutes – though a few kept going for an hour. The (free) program continues every other Saturday (March 31 next) at 10 a.m.
