Just two days after sharing that all individual, age-group and adaptive athletes will be doing a version of the benchmark, Helen, a second event has been announced. Last night, a Cross-Country 5K run was announced on the CrossFit Games Instagram account with details on the website.
All divisions, including teams, will take on the 5K run at some point (with lower-extremity athletes doing a 5K SkiErg) during their competition.Â
Before we get to the Thomas Zimmer Championship Course, let’s take a look at what we know about the event first…
EVENT DETAILS WE KNOW
For the age group and adaptive athletes, the 5K will be Event 6 on Wednesday, Day 2 of their three day competition. There is a 30-minute time cap for all adaptive athletes and age group divisions 14-54 years old. There is not a time cap for the 55+ age group divisions.
Then on Friday, all 38 teams will take on the 5K run. With no time cap, the team must run together and hold onto a rope the entire run.
For the individuals, the 5K does not show up until Saturday and is the 7th event for the elite individual athletes. With it being on Saturday, however, it means that not all individual athletes will lace up their running shoes for this event. The field of 40 will be cut to 30 athletes Friday night.
Additionally, with it being Event 7, it likely means that there will be six events between Thursday and Friday before the first round of cuts.
As seen above in the third slide of the CrossFit Games post, the 5K fills in the monostructural component of the CrossFit Venn diagram, leaving Gymnastics and Weightlifting still “unfilled”. Could we see two more single modality events on Saturday to fill out the Venn diagram?
THOMAS ZIMMER CHAMPIONSHIP COURSE
As for the location, our best guess is that it could be held off-site at the Thomas Zimmer Championship Course. The University of Wisconsin hosts the Badger Open Cross-Country race at the Zimmer Championship Course, a “world-class course offering challenging and exciting terrain for runners and elevated viewing for spectators”. According to uwbadgers.com, the course is built to accommodate races ranging from 4,000-meters to 10,000-meters.
The Thomas Zimmer Championship Course is located approximately 10 miles west of Alliant Energy Center and a 16 minute drive away.Â
As for the course itself, we were able to find a map of the 5k race route…
The course features a 2.5k outer loop and a 1k inner loop. Both include rolling hills and valleys while the outer loop runs through a section of dense woods. Check out a tour of the course from the Wisconsin Badgers YouTube page.
REACTIONS
The reaction to the 5K announcement was well received by athletes and fans alike in the comments section.
Endurance coach Chris Hinshaw commented, “Running the 5000m distance is a true test of overall athletic fitness. It requires a unique combination of physiological factors such as aerobic capacity, lactate threshold, running economy, and psychological factors like motivation and perceived exertion.”
Former CrossFit Games athlete Kristi O’Connell shared she “has some serious FOMO.”
Other comments ranged from excitement to predicting who might do well on such an event.
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