Feelings of our ambassador Veronika Benešová from the BATTLE THE BEACH 2024 race

On the last weekend of August, a large team race took place in the north of Germany, which had an international cast of athletes and a high level (as in previous years). Each pair of athletes had to fight for participation in the competition in the qualification that took place in May. Despite the fact that all performance categories of the race (scaled, intermediate, rx) were heavily occupied and it was not entirely easy to qualify for the final competition, several teams from the Czech Republic made it.

The competition itself takes place entirely on the beach of the Baltic Sea in the city of Rostock. Yes, on the beach, that means crossfit in the sand. I think that when someone says that you should prepare for the unexpected at crossfit events, it is a hundred times more true here. Just existing and walking in sand can be uncomfortable for a lot of people, let alone doing weightlifting in it, hanging from a trapeze in sand calluses, or jumping rope. And I'm not even talking about the fact that a person is met there by a strange big heavy thing to get from point A to point B.

On the first day, all the athletes started at the lighthouse, still on the concrete, with a workout that included intervals of short sections of running and expressions from the crates. The run got shorter as the rounds progressed, but the weight on the barbell increased. Despite the bad weather that occurred towards the end of the day, everything went smoothly and I rate it as a nice test of speed and strength endurance.
The next day, four workouts were waiting for the athletes. Apparently, the organizers had planned a swimming workout, but due to the recent tragic event, they decided to change it up and put a "water run" instead of swimming. I personally like swimming workouts, so I was sorry, but whoever wanted to swim could do so in deeper water. As part of this non-swimming test, I dragged (in the sand of course) in the zercher position a bob which weighed (for rx) around 200 kg and it is one of the heaviest things I have ever done. Other events were more crossfit - they included a lot of bars, wall-walks in the sand, devil presses and weightlifting, which of course was with a fatbar. Here I must point out that the organizers decided that the women in the highest category did not need to reduce the weight of the dumbbells and gave them exactly the same as the men. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe it was on purpose, we'll never know, but the girls are strong and managed!

On the last day we arrived at the beach in a state as if we had been run over by a steamroller. However, everyone still had one workout and the best ones advanced to the finals. The organizers changed the sixth workout twice, due to the (non)importation of worms. In the end it consisted of pulling the sledges together by a rope, behind each other on straps and Englishmen. I personally see this as a small shortcoming of the competition, the workouts are given until the day before, they change, there are not many standards defined anywhere except for the video they release with it... however, objectively I can say that the judges are strict and fair and with exceptions it was really fair . The 5 best teams from the lower categories and the 10 best teams from Rx advanced to the finals.

The final workout was very complex – skierg, double unders, bar muscle-ups, running through water and flipping a bob.

In the intermediate category, the girls from CF Madman performed best among the Czech teams and took home silver medals, followed by the girls from Prague in fourth place. In the Rx category, the Czechguns in the unusual composition of Tom Hejna and Martin Feiferlík could do the final workout, where Martin replaced the injured Peter Špaček. The last Czech team in the final was ours (brňačky Verča Benešovská and Denča Provazníková), with ambitions for a medal position (3rd place when entering the final). But unfortunately, we blew away the podium with this wod and finished in the unpopular 4th place, but even that is a great result in the bloated Rx category, which we could only dream of a year ago.

Results of teams from the Czech Republic:
Rx MM: Czech guns (Tomáš Hejna, Martin Feiferlík) 10th place
Rx FM: Anatomy Avengers vol.2 (Eliška Pechmanová, Markus Bošek - GTPS Plzeň) 12th place
Rx FF: VigorBobinky< /strong> (Veronika Benešovská - CrossfitDestiny, Denisa Provazníková - CrossfitMadMan) 4th place
Intermediate MM: Crossfathers(Jiří Honka, Adam Šísek - GTPS Pilsen) 16th place, ShoulderStrivers (Martin Nohejl, Jakub Trik GTPS Pilsen) 33rd place
Intermediate FM: JGYM (Daniel Birca, Petra Jusková - JGYM) 21st place, < strong>Mcrossgym (Lukáš Sipka, Klára Kopecká) 25th place, StToNg DRAGONS (Martin Kácha, Zuzana Wagnerová) 34th place
Intermediate FF: MadCzechass (Gabriela Adamová, Magdalena Krejčíková - CrossfitMadMan) 2nd place, Buchty (Denisa Pešková - Crossfitstrahov, Iva Kavulová POD) 4th place, Dying but fine (Eva Serbová, Klára Kantová) < strong>9th place
Scaled MM: WildBoarCrushers CZ (Daniel Vyoral - Crossfit Zlín, Vladimír Steinbauer - CrossfitDestiny) 15th place

In conclusion, I would like to say that I am very happy that so many Czech teams and athletes go to foreign competitions. Just the fact that everyone mentioned above made it to the competition indicates a certain quality of these competitors, thanks to which the entire crossfit in the Czech Republic is moving forward. Everyone can be very proud of their results and I think we all showed a good performance on the beach.

Who would be looking for completely different competitions in crossfit next year and an even bigger exit from the comfort zone than usual, I can certainly only recommend! If you don't like sand, don't go there.

Verča Benešovská

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