By Sean Blyth.

The Camberley Ice Breaker.

Lloyd Millichap came into the sport of X Training as a relative unknown in late 2006 at The Hampshire X Training Challenge - then he was dipping his toe into the water to see if he could challenge himself and push himself physically and mentally to complete a sporting challenge that consisted totally of elements that he trained in - the gym. He is a personal trainer after all and motivating, training and inspiring his clients is something that Lloyd is very good at. Having completed his first challenge, it is safe to say he was hooked. And the rest they say is history.

Move on three years and the culmination of a lot of hard work and perseverance has meant that not only can Lloyd hold his head high and say that he is just eleven seconds off becoming an Elite Gym Athlete, but also one of his clients, Olivier Jacquet (below) results are three minutes faster then when he first started and nearly in the Advanced section of X Training. Amazing results. There are few personal trainers that can say similar things when it comes to Gym Based Sports.

WGC was the first to implement the phrase 'Gym Athlete' into X Training. Others soon followed suit. The Gym Athlete Leader Board and the event The Ultimate Gym Athlete was developed to bring a new outlook into the sport of X training. It has just recently had the foresight to associate other terminology associated to the sport - the Gym Eagle - a Gym Athlete that trains for the sport of X Training, but competes against other gym members from other gyms based on results of the WGC leader boards. All of these actions are to set to distinguish quite clear differences in the way the sport is set up on WGC and Equal Fitness Racing (EFR) is its primary role for differentiating between other sports.

The Camberley Ice Breaker is two lane racing. Members of gyms who submit a pre determined time and race each other down a course of eight very tough challenges. What makes this event quite unique, was that instead of using a gym studio, a brand new state of the art sports complex was provided by Collingwood College in Camberley Surrey and it didn't disappoint in providing an arena that was born to initiate this fantastic sport into sport hall type arenas.

Did it disappoint in any way ? No, is a resounding responce from those that took part. It being very airy and spacious gave the gym athlete plenty of room to maneuver and the judges a great view of the event as it progressed down the course. Incidentally, the WGC format of one judge and one time keeper worked a treat for the second time, as each judge had completed the course or had extensive knowledge about X Training as a sport. And let's remember one other very important part of this puzzle, X training is very much about individual achievement - there is no marching bands, no crowd hysteria, no huge sponsorship. This sport is about putting you through your most physically challenging sporting achievement you will ever do and have the times published on a web site that is made of 100% members of gyms, of any fitness level, who just want a chance to challenge themselves, train for an event and get results in fitness.

Well done to Lloyd Millichap, Personal Trainer at Camberley Fitness First and thank you to Collingwood College and Fitness First for for providing a venue and equipment for the very worthy charity the DEC (Registered Charity No: 1062638) in raising funds for the Haiti Appeal. An announcement will be made soon as to how much money we raised.

Male Advanced Winner - Richard Vint