Local residents tested their fitness levels and their endurance during the Force Fitness Challenge at the Fresh Air Fitness site on Saturday.
The competition was held as part of the activities for the Rafferty Rumble in Estevan. Fifteen two-person teams entered the inaugural event.
Debby Knight with Fresh Air Fitness said there were four different events. The first event was to pass an object back and forth as many time as possible. In the first four minutes, it was a medicine ball that weighed 50 pounds for women and 70 pounds for the men that was passed across a wall.
In the final two minutes, they flipped a tire back and forth.
The second event was a tire drag in which they dragged a tire back and forth across a distance for four minutes. Then they went to the monkey bars and hanged for as long as they could.
The third event was the one that Knight said was the most demanding. It started out with a 100-metre farmer carry, in which competitors had to carry weighted bars. Then they had to run to a spot where they had to do 100 lunges, 100 squats and 50 burpees, all synchronized.
Then they had to do another 100-metre farmer carry.
“Some of them were going on pure will. They left it all out there. It was amazing to see,” said Knight.
In the final event, teams took a gurney made of wood and ran through the park trails. Along the trails, there were four checkpoints where they picked up sand weights, which they placed on the gurney.
Then they carried the weighted gurney to a puzzleboard, which they had to memorize, then take the gurney to the finish line, and use the sand weights to replicate the image they saw.
“They did amazing. There’s some tough people out there. Every person who tried that event today gave it their all, and then some,” said Knight.
Teams were awarded points based on how well they did in each event.
Agnes Garrioch and Jessica Pele finished first in the women’s division, followed by Casey DeRosier and Jamie Lees in second and Lesley Dukart and Jennifer Gervais in third.
Aaron Wijes and Andreas Laud were first in the men’s competition, with Ron Wyonch and Fred Sheldon in second and Brad Tinant and Adam Currie in third.
The events were devised in consultation between Knight and Peggy Rohatyn of Fresh Air Fitness, and Jennifer Olfert and Tasha Tinant, who have competed in events similar to this elsewhere.
Next week’s edition of the Mercury will have more on this story.
