In 2011, the masters got muscle-ups.
In 2015, they jumped from the rings to the rig, adding bar muscle-ups to their repertoire as the individuals had done in 2013. But they’ve never joined the individuals in the water—until now.
“I’m glad all that money I’ve been paying Dave Castro has paid off now, because I’ve been requesting that for six years,” joked two-time masters athlete and former triathlete Glenn Waters after winning the event for the Masters Men 50-54 Division with a time of 31:44.08.
In Run Swim Run, masters athletes of all divisions had to run 1.5 miles from the Alliant Energy Center to the shore of Lake Monona, a mid-size drainage lake boasting balmy 75-degree waters and an average depth of 27 feet. After a 500-m swim around a series of buoys, athletes ran another 1.5 miles back to where they began.
It was the exact same workload the individual athletes 20 or more years their junior had done earlier today.
“I think there are a lot of guys that would like to do even more of (the same load as the individual competition), but that’s fine. We’ll start small, which is awesome,” Waters continued.
Three-time masters athlete Nicolette Dunstone—who hadn’t done so much as a cannonball since age 12—never expected to see a swim event for the masters divisions, and she was none too happy when Run Swim Run was released.
“I’m terrified of the swim in the lake,” she said before the event. “If it was in the pool for the first year and then evolved to the lake I would have been much happier, but that’s just me. Maybe I’m just soft.” (Despite her fears, Dunstone went on to take eighth in the 55-59 Division, finishing in 40:47.86.)
Not everyone was caught with their goggles askew, however. Four-time masters athlete Cheryl Brost has been waiting for the other fin to drop ever since Director of the Games Dave Castro hinted at a masters swim at the 2015 Reebok CrossFit Games.
“He said we weren’t doing swim that year but he could see it coming down the road,” she recalled.
A three-time former individual Games athlete, Brost is no stranger to open water. And while the lake lacked the strong current and rollicking waves of the Pacific Ocean, it came at a stringy, slimy price: seaweed.
“It went around my neck. It was on my arms—I felt like I was getting strangled,” she said after taking ninth in the event with a time of 38:38.10.
Before the Games, Susan Clarke, back-to-back winner of the 55-59 Division in 2014 and 2015, had a similar premonition that a swim event was due soon.
“But my fear side didn’t allow me to start practicing until they actually posted it,” she said, laughing as she cooled off in the shade after taking third in 38:08.22.
She’s feared open water since childhood, she said. So naturally, the first thing she did after the event announcement was dive into the Pacific Ocean.
“It’s good to face your fears,” she said, noting that practicing in the unruly sea made the lake swim easier in comparison.
The masters weren’t the only ones to dip their toes in the water for the first time in Games history: Today, the teenagers took on the same load as the masters and individuals before them—and were eager to prove their fitness was up to the task.
“I would like to see how my time compares to (the individual women),” said Haley Adams, who took 14th at the Atlantic Regional this year. At 16, she's the youngest Regional individual to compete in the Open era.
Though she said she’d looked forward to the run more than the swim—Adams ran cross-country for three years—she said she swims twice a week all year in a lake near her home. Her experience paid off with an event win, and her time of 32:38.83 would have been less than two minutes off the individual women’s 10th-best time, which went to Kara Webb at 31:11.33.
Like Adams, Angelo DiCicco, the 2015 Boys 14-15 champion and last year’s third-place 16-17 finisher, was eager to test himself on even ground with the individuals.
“I knew for the first year or two that (the teenage competition) wouldn’t be as strenuous as the individuals', and now I think this year they kind of caught on,” he said. “We can do most of the stuff the individuals do. I guess we finally get to show it.”
Though nearly three decades divide the teenager from athletes like Brost, their philosophies are not so different.
“It’s pretty cool; it kind of says there’s no boundaries or limits on our age and what we’re capable of,” Brost said.
“It really does show the capability of our age group,” Waters agreed (he completed the work in just one-and-a-half minutes more than Garret Fisher, who took 10th in the men’s individual competition).
“And hopefully we can show our colleagues and maybe some younger athletes what’s doable later in life.”
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