During last night’s athlete dinner, Dave Castro started his speech by saying, “This year will be the most challenging physically and mentally that you guys will ever encounter at the CrossFit Games. This 10-year anniversary is going to push you guys to limits you will never know you could go or you have never taken yourself to these limits.”
Castro followed by saying that there is a good chance that the athletes might be scared at times and will “question why you’re here”. It is interesting that his choice of words about withdrawing from the competition would be to get back on the bus. Could Castro just have hinted that there is an unknown event away from the StubHub Center that will mentally and physically test the athletes? Given that we still don’t know anything about Wednesday, it’s a high probability.
So what details did Castro reveal at the dinner?
Ocean Swim
All 80 athletes will compete in a 500-meter ocean swim at the same time, in one heat. No surprises, just a 500-meter swim. But for the timing, still TBD.
Squat Clean Pyramid
Just like the Squat Snatch Pyramid at Regionals, the athletes will race through 30 reps of 10-8-6-4-2 squat cleans with increasing loads. The men’s bars will be 245-265-285-305-325 and the women’s bars will be 165-180-195-205-215. Each of the first four bars will have a rolling 2-minute time cap with a 3-minute (11-minute total event) time cap for the last bar. The timing, yet, still TBD.
Murph
So the six weight vests in Castro’s Instagram post didn’t (just) apply to teams. The individuals will face Murph once again. This time, however, the pull-ups, push-ups and air squats will be broken up into five rounds of 20, 40 & 60 reps, respectively. The same 5.11 Tactical body armor vests will be used again. Oh, and when will they do Murph? TBD.
And with that, Castro ended his speech. There were no new pieces of equipment previewed, no schedule of events, nothing. This year is shaping up to truly be preparing for the unknown.
