Veejay is going functional fitness? Damn. First Deka-fit of the season. I think we may be locked in for a spot at Worlds!

I was very much looking forward to this event. Not because I though I would light the world on fire or anything, but it would be my first time in this arena after actually starting to train for it. My running has been coming along but it’s still lacking pretty heavily overall. But I had actually been putting in work on improving my stations. I’ve been working with my guy Rich Ryan from Reinforced Running this year and he’s been steering my transition into this style of racing. Hyrox and Deka-Fit are the two premiere forms of fitness racing in the world right now. Hyrox is a little harder to just jump into, so we’re gonna go Deka to start.

If you don’t already know, Deka-Fit is a race that consists of 10 functional fitness stations intermixed with 5k of running. Nothing individually is all that difficult, but the combo is quite something. It’s high intensity, fast-paced racing that tests a different kind of fitness. You need to be able to manage your effort across many disciplines and still lay down blistering pace on the runs. A related sport to OCR but definitely not the same. Compromised running has been a term that has been thrown around in OCR for a long time but it was an idea that many of the successful elite learned to ignore. Instead of getting better at running after an obstacle compromised you, just train so that the obstacle doesn’t compromise you. So I for a number of years I’ve been doing pretty standard running workouts, nothing that would improve my ability to get hit and keep on going. So my first Deka-Fit last year was a rude awakening. If you want to be successful you need to focus on the task at hand.

After putting in some work on actually being good at something other than running, It was time to put it to the test. I wanted to have a good experience and run a sub 31 minute time. I figured that would solidify a spot for me at the World Champs in December. So Deka-Fit Anaheim was a great option for me. It was early in the year and I always like coming to SoCal to see family and friends. We booked a hotel a short walk from the venue so I started my warmup in the lobby of the hotel, jogged it right over to the convention center. Some of the fastest in the sport were supposed to show up but it appeared a change of plans had kept them from racing. I felt confident that I would win this race but this was all about finishing time. I’m still not familiar enough with the sport to know splits and what good times are for the runs or the stations, I just wanted to manage my effort and stay consistent throughout. I got a good warm-up in and toed the line.

When the gun went off I went to the front. Traffic is a real concern in the Deka arena. You don’t want to get boxed out and...Read Full Article Here