Breaking a sweat: Four Halifax CrossFit athletes heading to world’s largest fitness festival

A group of CrossFit athletes from Halifax will soon be heading to an international competition to test their fitness against some of the world's best.

Wodapalooza, which is known as the largest fitness festival in the world, kicks off Jan. 23 in Miami.

“CrossFit is functional movements that is always constantly varied performed at a high intensity, so CrossFit itself is training people for life, but we’re doing the sport side, we’re kind of training to be the fittest for this certain event,” athlete Trenton Gove said.

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Hannah Cameron is among those training at CrossFit Ironstone in north-end Halifax before heading to Florida.

“This is going to be my first time and I’m really excited because it’s my first international competition as well, so I’m really excited to go up against higher-skilled athletes and also some really cool high-scale workouts as well,” she said.

Cameron is on a team of three for an Rx exhibition at Wodapalooza with fellow athletes Sarah MacAskill and Stephanie Peters.

“We met each other (at Ironstone) a few years ago and we’ve done some competitions together, but this will really be a really great chance for us to have a higher skill level competition and see what we can do out there,” Cameron said.

CrossFit athlete Trenton Gove is pictured. (Mike Lamb/CTV Atlantic)

Gove meanwhile will be on the men’s elite team.

“There’s four different divisions in Miami; there’s elite, Rx, intermediate and skilled, so we’ll be hitting the elite team of three and I’m pretty excited for it,” he said.

“This is my third time doing Wodapalooza, first year doing elite, which makes it a little bit more exciting going up against the professional elite athletes.”

Gove added he especially loves the community aspect of CrossFit.

“Everybody gets together no matter the fitness level and kind of throw down, no matter which part of life you’re from, you come in for that hour or two, do your best in the workout and just cheer each other on.”

The team is currently running an online campaign fundraising for their journey to the competition.

“Just because we are hard-working, fulltime professionals and it is quite a cost to go to an international competition, so all the support is so greatly appreciated, and we thank everyone for donating,” Cameron said.

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