UoW's Fittest Student

Really excited about push ups

Well, not sure if I mentioned it earlier, but I entered into UoW's Fittest Student Competition. Two weeks ago (which was just 3 days after I ran the half marathon in Sydney) we had the final challenge...and I won! I was somewhat reluctant to enter and to go through with it, but I'm really glad I did. I won a $500 gift card to Rebel Sport, which is pretty much as good as it gets, and a year membership to the gym, which is pretty useless for me. I spent the gift card today and it was so much fun!! I felt like a fat kid in a candy store, I was literally giddy with excitement. I ended up buying a foam roller, a drawstring backpack, an official Australian Rugby World Cup jersey and some really nice work out clothes. It was startling how easy it was to spend that much money! I think I am going to sell the gym membership and use the money to travel.

So, here's how it went: there were two rounds of challenges. The first round was run in 4 heats, with anywhere from 2-5 guys and girls in each heat. To move on to the finals you had to win your heat. There were 3 tasks in the first challenge. The first one was squats with a medicine ball and sprints. The second one was a circuit of push-ups, squats, rowing, and double-under jump roping. That circuit was done twice through and the goal was to do as many at each station as we could in a minute. The third task was the beep test, which was incredibly difficult to do after the first two. All of this took around half an hour and was held on the basketball court in the gym at uni. It ended up being really fun (minus the brutal work out) because a big group of my friends came and cheered me on.

Dumbbell hold

The final round was held on one of the lawns in the middle of campus. It was very public! They introduced all of the finalists and then ran the challenge in front of everyone. Again, it was really fun because a bunch of my friends came to cheer and they played loud music and made a bit of a hootenanny out of it. This time there were only two tasks. The first one was squats with a dumbbell, Russian twists (an ab exercise), and step-ups. We had to do 20 of each and whoever finished the quickest got to pick which station they started at for the second task. I finished at a close second. The second task was another circuit: holding dumbbells parallel to the ground, sideways hurdle jumps, rowing, double-under jump rope, and push ups. This time we only had to go once around the circuit. It ended up working perfectly that I got second because the girl that finished first chose to do push ups first and then had to hold the dumbbells parallel right after. I did the dumbbells first. Each time we dropped our arms below parallel we were deducted 5 points. I was the only one who didn't get deducted because I was the only one who didn't have to do push ups right before! Woohoo!

The photos are from the final competition. There are lots more on the urac (the gym at uni) website here if you want to look! http://www.urac.com.au/picturegallery.html