Epic Bridge Run IX Recap

We have started another year and as we have for the past 8 years we kicked it off by heading down to the Golden Gate Bridge and participating in the Epic Bridge Run. This year’s theme was looking forward to this summer. It is an Olympic Year and we wanted to start off the year with activities related to The Olympics.

We started off the day with an Olympic Weightlifting Meet. Participants had 15 minutes to warm up, then perform 3 attempts for a max clean and jerk. There was an optional scale to a deadlift for those any participants with limitations, or without Olympic Weightlifting experience. Chris B. won this event with a 100kg clean and jerk. Following the Weightlifting meet we moved to an old school Olympic Event, the broad jump. Participants had two attempts to achieve their best distance in a standing broad jump. We had a tie for first place at 7′ 6″ between Michael Y. and Mark R.

Once the broad jump was completed participants started a run to the south side of the bridge and down to the beach. Julian A. and Leslie C. were first to arrive at the south end with a time of 18:52. Once athletes arrived they then proceeded to compete in the shot put. Yes, we used official shot puts and had a great time trying to throw them. Chris B. won this event handedly with a distance of 28ft. (to put this in perspective the world record stands at 23.12M so we clearly don’t know what we are doing there). After the shot put came gymnastics. The gymnastics event for the day was max distance hand walking. The winner of this event was Michael Y. with a distance of 35 inches. I guess I know what we need to spend some time on in the gym.

After the hand walk came the only team portion of the day. We split the athletes into teams of two. Then we played volleyball, well a variation of it anyway. Hooverball is a game invented by Herbert Hoover based on a game played by sailors in the navy on ships to help keep in shape on long deployments. It is a variation on volleyball played with a medicine ball. We played with teams of two tossing the ball back and forth across the net. Games were to 7 points. We had a great time and the epic moment of Hooverball was when Amy D. in full commitment to her team dove for the ball. She caught it, but given her position at the time of the catch the ball pulled her down face first into the mud.

After the game started a second run to the north end of the bridge. Lesley C. was again first with an almost identical time to her southbound run with 19:00. To cap the day off we add CrossFit to our Olympics and did tabata squats. Winner of this event was Julian A. with 163 squats.

Another year is done, and another Epic Bridge Run is in the books. I look forward to next year and seeing you all at The Cave.