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I vacationed in Costa Rica and it totally kicked ass. Don’t read this post unless you want your head to explode from jealousy.

Here’s the logistical bullcrap. I found tickets that flew through Miami on American Airlines for just under $400. A bunch of my pals flew Jetblue, which does a direct out of MCO, for like $500+ each. This is not a bad way to go. It’s about a 3 hour flight from Miami to San Jose. Once in San Jose, we took a shuttle from the airport to Jaco (1 hour 15 minutes), which is a coolass beach town on the Pacific side. Jaco is fairly built up and tourist friendly; everyone speaks English and there’s plenty of restaurants, bars, and clubs. It’s very easy to navigate for gringos. In fact, there was a disconcerting number of gringos and especially folks from Texas and Florida. My comment was, “You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a gringo in this place.” So, if you’re looking for a remote location where you’re the only non-Tico, Jaco is NOT the ideal choice.

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Think GoRuck Challenge is just for the guys? Lauren O’Leary is hear to tell you otherwise. Nicknamed “Scrappy” for her toughness, Lauren recently completed GRC Boston. Standing at 5’0 and weighing 115#, Lauren had mostly globo gym, distance running, and recent CrossFit experience prior to signing up for GRC. Lauren was the only female athlete to participate in Class 029 and she nailed it with flying colors. Keep in mind, these guys and gals are rucking 30-40 lbs for 10-13 hours and doing hours of bear crawls, pushups, and carrying heavy “coupons.”

In this interview, we talk about her decision to sign up for the Challenge, what her experience was like, and her past and present training. Lauren is a member of CrossFit Fenway and is planning on attending GoRuck NYC on 9/11.

Ladies, sign up and earn your Tough patches. Video interview after the jump…

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Here’s a description of MetroDash from their site:

“…We combined 30 elements into one insane obstacle course that will surely push your physical and mental limits…The Metro Dash course is set up in an area the size of an NFL football field. Competitors will sprint a total of about 600 meters while climbing, crawling, jumping, swinging, and scaling their way through 30 challenging obstacles. The fastest time wins.”

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Here’s a quick training post for those guys and gals preparing to rock out a GoRuck Challenge. In one of my past posts I recommended strengthening hips, knees, and legs in preparation for handling the loads of GoRuck, which is a crapload of running with a weighted pack. If you’ve never run with weight on your back before, you’re in for a surprise, because the weight does weird things to your body. Expect extra stress on your joints, your stride going to hell, and quicker muscular fatigue.

Here are two workouts you can try together or separately that will go a long ways towards forging those Robocop legs you’ll need.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvgj02fanO4[/youtube]

I just turned 36. I get busted on a lot by my athlete pals for being old, but to be honest I don’t feel old. I say that, at the risk of coming off as athletically snooty, because I’m in the best shape of my life. But when you’re staring at the backside of your 30’s, these are the things you think about.

Jump backwards 15 years… (more…)

Tough Mudder is the king of the mud runs, let’s get that out there right off the bat. I’ve done three other obstacle course races: Warrior Dash and Rugged Maniac, both in Central Florida, and Super Spartan Race in Miami. All three were fun and had their merits. Super Spartan was especially badass and a real athletic challenge as my group traversed 10 miles with most of them on technical mountain bike trail at an aggressive pace. So, I thought I had a good idea of how tough Tough Mudder would be.

Wrong. Tough Mudder was legit, and it may be the hardest one of these races out there. My pal Brian has done Tough Guy in England (which Tough Mudder is reportedly modeled on), and he thought Tough Mudder was a bit tougher, while Tough Guy was colder and wetter. Pick your poison, but I like the idea of only having to fly across the country for an obstacle course, or go as far as my backyard like I’ll be doing for Tough Mudder Tampa, as opposed to overseas. Brian has also done an Iron Man and he made a comment about comparing Tough Mudder to Iron Man, which I’ll talk about below.

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I did a kickass 5-day trip through Southern California as part of Memorial Day holiday that culminated in the Tough Mudder SoCal event. Tough Mudder was truly epic and I’ll give a full review in my next post.

In the meantime, I checked out two CrossFit gyms and got my WOD on prior to Tough Mudder. I love visiting other gyms to see what the setup is, what the athletes and instructors are like, and what the vibe in general is. I wasn’t disappointed.

First, there was CrossFit Invictus in downtown San Diego. I drove there straight from the airport and did the 6:30 pm WOD. They have a very cool space and great instructors. The instructors and athletes couldn’t have been more welcoming. We went through an extensive warmup that included dynamic stretch exercises and some mobility work with bands, all very welcome after spending the day on airplanes.

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Over the weekend I had the pleasure of interviewing Todd Garrett, a recent veteran of the San Diego GoRuck Challenge, class 033. Todd is 46 years old and lives in Los Angeles. He’s normally a marathon runner and can do a 3:40-3:50 marathon while training 30 – 35 miles per week. I connected with Todd after he found my initial GoRuck review and inquired about training and the overall difficulty level of the Challenge.

I often get emails from guys who are wondering the same thing, so I’m hoping this interview will shed some light on the endeavor and encourage more guys and gals to sack up and drink the GoRuck kool-aid. I remember I was in the same position…I was curious and wanted the hardcore experience, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to handle the physical punishment of carrying weight a marathon distance, so I dilly dallied for a while before finally being talked into signing up.

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Building on my post about periodizing CrossFit, I want to explore an idea for adding heartrate training into the sport. Just to give a bit of background, I’ve been a professional rowing coach for many years at various levels (high school to elite), and specific aerobic training is critical to our performance. I’d like to see if heart rate training can be a benefit to CrossFit.

NOTE: Glassman on the definition of fitness and training, where he rips on heart rate training…full videos if you have a Journal account. John McBrien also addresses this on a conceptual level in this Journal video: CrossFit Endurance, Intro to Programming.

To kick this off, we need a quick primer on the energy systems and how they apply to training. There are three energy systems: aerobic, anaerobic, and ATP-CP. Common knowledge, right? But, what you may or may not know is that the energy systems break down into smaller bands–by bands I’m referring to % of heart rate max (HRM)–and each of these bands can and should be trained. Most importantly, all three of the energy systems are intertwined and need to be trained in specific ways in order to get the most benefit.

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