GEN Petraeus, widely known for his interest in physical fitness, announced the Iron Major competition for CGSC students in November 2005. The General says he created the event to highlight the importance of fitness beyond that required to pass the APFT, what he called "very high levels of physical fitness." Competitors in the inaugural 23 May 2006 event faced with a gauntlet of pull-ups, "laces to bar," dummy and rucksack carry, a 50-meter crabwalk and a 4.6 mile run. In the laces to bar exercise, competitors hang from the pull up bar and bring their feet to the bar as many times as they can in two minutes. They are required to resume a dead hang between repetitions. In the dummy and rucksack carry, the athletes sprint 70 meters carrying a dummy on their back (165 pounds for males, 105 pounds for females) and then sprint back with a 50-pound rucksack. The competition is also part of CGSC's Exercise Eagle Owl.
Exercise EAGLE OWL is a two-week United States and United Kingdom combined staff exercise conducted at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., twice annually. The exercise combines about 200 United Kingdom majors from the Intermediate Staff and Command Course (Land) with their U.S. counterparts from the Intermediate Level Education course. A highlight for Eagle Owl is Sports Day where US and British teams are pitted against each other in baseball, soccer, flicker ball, and the Iron Major competition.
Last year during Eagle Owl the British Team totally dominated the US teams in of all things...the Iron Major Competition! Posts on IMCF blog from several recent IMCF competitiors…
…fantastic effort at the competition today. I counted five CrossFitters - that is five of the eight US participants. Great work. It was hot, it was nasty, but strong effort from everyone. Expect to see crabwalks in some WODs!
…what an interesting day. If it weren't for the CrossFit loyals Iron Major couldn't have happened today. Congrats to Chris, Phil, Pat, Max, and "the guy I didn't know" for busting your butts today. The six of us certainly showed some good American Grit against the entire British contingent. I would be remiss if I didn't thank our cheering section as well...three spouses against a 100 Brits...they still sounded really good!
As you can clearly discern from the blogs above IMCF was neither organized nor represented well. On Friday morning’s WOD alone there were at least 30 athletes (only a handful of them were spouses)! With the momentum we have generated this year there is no reason why the Brits should win.
Who: You! (4 men/1 woman per team)
What: Compete in 4 events for individual and team points
When: March 10th, Thursday, 1300hrs
Where: Fort Leavenworth Airfield
Why: Avenge last year's embarrassing thrashing by the Brits!
For more information contact Brandon at brandon.iker@us.army.mil
IMCF's C.L. Walker during last year's competition.