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VIDEO: Crossfit Games includes run-swim-run event

Athletes were tested in a 1.5-mile run, 500-m. swim and 1.5-miles run.

Yesterday, the 2017 Crossfit Games kicked off in Madison, Wisconsin. The international cross-training competition features a series of endurance, speed, weight-lifting and gymnastics events over the course of a weekend, with the overall male and female winners being crowed “The Fittest on Earth”.

Each year, the Crossfit Games includes one endurance event which usually takes place on the first day. This is usually a combination of running and swimming, but this year the Games included a run-swim-run event and then a cyclocross event after.

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Swim-run events have boomed in popularity in the multisport world right now, with the rise of series like Otillo in Europe (Canada also has its own swim-run series hosted by Canaqua Sports). The run-swim-run event at the Crossfit Games consisted of a 1.5-mile run, 500-metre swim and another 1.5-mile run. There was a time limit of 60 minutes for the event, and the top male and female times were 28:45.29 (Canada’s Brent Fikowski) and 28.45.65 (Austrlia’s Tia-Clair Toomey), respectively. The slowest man took 44 minutes to compete the course and the slowest woman took 41 minutes.

In the event’s live coverage, commentators observed that many athletes used a variety of stokes for the 500-metre swim. They also remarked that many athletes in the field “did not have a swim background” and that those who did had a “serious advantage over the rest of the field.”

You can watch the full event below:

Chris Hinshaw, an endurance coach for top Crossfit athletes and former professional triathlete himself (with two overall  second place finishes at the Ironman World Championships in triathlon’s early days), weighs in on the Games’ endurance events below: