All of the throws were new to me. We practiced for a few hours a few days before the event. One of CrossFit's selling points is that it will prepare you for anything, including the unknown. I'm pretty danged confident that my level of fitness has prepared me for the unknowable. I believe it showed this weekend. I felt like I did very well considering the level of un preparedness I had. I really enjoyed testing myself and seeing what I was capable of for such an event.
This was the hammer throw. It was very awkward. You spin the hammer over your head like the picture above. When you feel that there is enough momentum all you have to do is let go. As long as it's behind you!
When I asked Scott what to do for this event, he said "Remember when you were a kid and you threw rocks all over the place?""Yeah.""Make sure you do it just like that.""Oh, ok, got it."
One of the best things about The Highland Games is that all the events are pretty self explanatory. This one is called weight over bar. I was pretty good at this one, I use my hips a lot in CrossFit with kettle bell swings, snatches, and cleans. The tricky one was the weight for distance. I was astounded by how much effort I would put into it for it to not go very far.
Last but not at all the least was the Caber toss. This was the one event that I was the most nervous about. Where do you get a 20 foot pole to practice with for crying out loud! My goal was to get it off the ground and on to my shoulder like the picture above. I succeeded in that goal for all 3 attempts although I did fail to throw it on the 3rd one.
All in all I had a great time and now that I own my own kilt, I will be competing next year as well. Our CrossFit Flagstaff team is fired up for next years event and I assure you dear readers, we will train for it next year!
