Hey guys, well here it is. Another master-piece from Edgar Yudkevich. Some of his videos really suck, and some are absolutely amazing. (He made the “What is CrossFit Marin” video, which is like our official commercial that is featured on our home page.) This one floored me. Awesome work, Edgar!
This video features Shane Daniels, former CFM parkour coach turned stunt-man and professional traceur. You’ll may recognize him from the “What is CrossFit Marin” video. He is coaching Gloria and Jill on shoulder rolls and does a wicked wall flip on the green screen in the big studio. This was our run in the American Ninja Warrior preliminaries. There were about 250-300 contestants who competed on the first day. Only 30 made it to the second day. I was in 25th right after my run, but then about 7 guys posted faster times than me and I ended 32nd. I was rather conscientious about regaining my climber’s grip strength and control going into the competition, but instead my undoing was my knee injury. It affected me on the wall run and I was paying more attention to my knee than to my wall run technique. Missing the first one snapped me back into focus, but I lost a few valuable seconds that would have kept me in the winner’s circle. It’s painful to even think about it. I think I’ve found my new sport. I like Sasuke more than anything I’ve ever tried. Damn Japanese! Wow. I want to thank G-4 and the production company that ran the show for putting on such a spectacular and well-run event at Venice Beach. I have some footage of the finalists as well as the Japanese Sasuke All-Stars playing, goofing-off and training on day two. (I was invited back officially as the 2nd alternate, but everyone showed up. Is it bad if I thought of turning off my friend Shane’s alarm the next moring and slashing his tires but didn’t actually do it? If Shane and Adam hadn’t shown up, that would have put me in the finals. =P Maybe I should have just tied them both up and left them at Shane’s apartment until Monday. )
No, seriously, I don’t want anything more than for Shane-Dog to win the whole thing this year. That would be the sweetest dream! More on Sasuke and American Ninja Warrior next week. In the meantime, here’s the actual footage:
Those runs make the course look a little easier than it is. Here is a more typical cross-section of runs:
Here’s another guy that had a successful run and was on the “bubble”, or in 30th place and Shane was actually the guy who finally bumped him off. I was after Shane, and my time would have beat his as well. Shane was at about 55 seconds while mine was at about 1:10. If I had hit the wall run on the first attempt I would have probably been at about 58 or so. I’m posting these because this was my position at the end of the day. I’m almost certain to get some air time on G-4 since I was one of the last contestants to get bumped off.
Here is when he returns in day 2. I like this guys attitude, he’s great. Go taekwonmoh !
Here’s Makoto Nagano’s run. He won the whole thing on Ninja Warrior 17. There are pros & con’s to being short.
Here are links to some of the other blog-posts regarding Ascent (Shane’s Alias) and Sasuke:
Shane & I at Ninja Fest on April 2009:
http://www.crossfitmarin.com/blog/?p=2641
Here’s Luci Steel’s American Ninja Challenge 2? tryout video:
http://www.crossfitmarin.com/blog/?p=1461
And if you scroll back to last week, you can find the most comprehensive blog posts on Sasuke to date with a little bit of history as well as a bunch of videos and our own American Ninja Challenge 2010 tryout videos: