EUGENE, Ore. (KMTR) -- A first time, one-of-a-kind workout at the Valley River Center Christmas Eve morning for some… but it wasn’t the last-minute shoppers.
The Eugene Crossfit workout center put together the first ever “Reindeer 5K” run behind the mall on Saturday, December 24th, 2011.
About 40 people took part in the morning workout, splitting into two teams. The reindeer part comes in with what each team was running with: two giant metal “crawlers,” or metal sleds carrying one person at a time.
Each team took the sleds on a three mile run along the Willamette River bike path and across a few footbridges.
Weight wise, each team was towing about 50 to 100 pounds per sled.
Eugene Crossfit’s owner Jeremy Stecker says he put together the event to encourage having fun in the midst of a tough workout.
“We're a coaching center, we want people to stick with their fitness, so we're always thinking of fun events to do,” said Stecker.
“Also, we're trying to train for real life, we're trying to train to get good at things and we want to do something just incase the reindeer get sick, to train you, so that you can step in and pull the sled,” said Stecker.
The winning team rolled its sled in with a time of 49 minutes and 40 seconds, just 35 seconds faster than the second place team.
Eugene Crossfit says its hoping to make this an annual event.
