Sandy Cronin, 79, Lined Up for DEKA in Fort Lauderdale Beside 12-Year-Olds

• Fort Lauderdale’s DEKA FIT event at the Broward County Convention Center drew 1,477 competitors, with ages running from 12 to 79.
• Fifty-eight percent of the field was racing DEKA for the first time, and women made up 54% of all competitors.
• The course is ten functional stations with a 500-meter run before each one, which adds up to a 5-kilometer challenge.

A 79-Year-Old and Two 12-Year-Olds Shared the Same Start Line

Sandy Cronin is 79. Olivia Legagneur and Zoey McGhee are 12. On September 12, all three stood in the same arena in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and took on the same DEKA FIT course at the Broward County Convention Center. DEKA, the fitness racing brand created by the team behind Spartan, named the trio in its event recap as the oldest and youngest competitors in a field of 1,477.

The recap lists the three by name and age only, so the record does not say how each of them trained or what they felt at the finish. What it does say is that nobody needed a special course, a separate scoring system or a lighter test to take part. A 12-year-old and a 79-year-old raced the same ten zones, and the average age across the building was 39.

That spread speaks to anyone standing on the edge of the sport and wondering whether they belong. A race that draws a seventh grader, a retiree and a typical 39-year-old gym member on one weekend is telling newcomers something useful: the entry bar is a training plan and a registration, and nothing more exotic than that.

What 1,477 Racers Looked Like in Fort Lauderdale

DEKA reported 2,281 people through the doors of the Broward County Convention Center, counting spectators, families and supporters. Of those, 1,477 were competitors in DEKA FIT. Women made up 54% of the field, and 58% of the athletes were racing in a DEKA event for the first time.

Teams carried much of the weekend. Some 630 athletes raced in two-person teams and 147 in four-person teams, so 777 of the 1,477 competitors shared their course with a partner or a squad. For a first-timer, that split is a practical option: a gym friend can take half the stations, and the shared effort takes some of the pressure off a debut.

The field was overwhelmingly local. Florida residents accounted for 80% of it, though competitors traveled from nine countries. The building is familiar to the sport, too. The Broward County Convention Center hosted the 2025 DEKA World Championship, and its return for a standard FIT weekend shows how the brand uses the same arena for elite championships and for everyday racers.

Yancy Culp, a DEKA co-founder, said what stood out to him in Fort Lauderdale was the “sheer range of people” who showed up to test themselves. He pointed to first-timers racing next to experienced athletes, women making up more than half of the field, and competitors from 12 to 79 tackling one challenge. DEKA built the format, he said, to be measurable and demanding but open to anyone curious about what they can do.

What a DEKA FIT Course Asks of a First-Timer

DEKA FIT combines ten functional fitness zones, and a 500-meter run comes before each one. Add it up and the course is a 5-kilometer challenge. The stations DEKA describes across its events include rowing, SkiErg, loaded lunges, farmer’s carries, sled push and pull, wall overs and burpees. Rowing and SkiErg are machine stations. Farmer’s carries mean walking with a heavy handle in each hand. Wall overs ask the athlete to climb a wall-height obstacle, and burpees need no description for anyone who has sat through a high school gym class.

Athletes can race solo, in a two-person team or in a four-person team. Every finisher earns a DEKA Mark, a result tied to a course that is identical at every event worldwide, so a time from Fort Lauderdale can be compared with one from Boston or Manchester. In Boston in July, DEKA reported that 78% of competitors were new to the sport and that ages ran from 11 to 76, which suggests Fort Lauderdale’s profile is the norm and not a one-off.

DEKA also runs a DEKA MILE format, which places 160 meters of running or walking before each of the ten zones. That cuts the total distance to about a mile and lowers the barrier for someone whose running base is still a work in progress. DEKA sells the whole system through an affiliate model, with more than 1,000 gyms worldwide and more than 1,500 events across 12 countries, which means a newcomer can usually find a coach-led training session before committing to a race entry.

The 37 Who Raced It Five Times

Fort Lauderdale also hosted DEKA FIT Ultra, an endurance option in which competitors run the DEKA FIT course five times. That totals 50 functional fitness zones and 25 kilometers of running. Thirty-seven athletes took it on. Michael Powell recorded the fastest men’s time at 3 hours, 38 minutes and 29 seconds, and Serena Simeoli led the women’s field in 3 hours, 58 minutes and 14 seconds.

Powell’s time works out to roughly 8 minutes and 44 seconds per kilometer with every station included, or about 14 minutes per mile. Numbers like that give a beginner a sense of scale. The Ultra is the extreme end of the DEKA menu, and most people in the building raced a single lap with a run and a station ticking by every few minutes.

What It Means for Florida Gyms and New Racers

A field that is 80% Florida and 58% first-time is a pipeline. Every gym that sent a handful of members to Broward County is now holding a group of people who finished a race, earned a Mark and have a reason to come back and beat it. The same pattern showed up in Boston, where competitors came from almost 200 gyms across Greater Boston and beyond.

For readers deciding on a first race, DEKA lists 2026 DEKA FIT events in New York and Philadelphia on its Spartan race pages, and a nearby affiliate gym can explain the stations and run a practice lap. The Fort Lauderdale numbers give a fair answer to the usual worry. Most people in that arena were new, about half were women, and the age range covered more than six decades. Sandy Cronin, at 79, and two seventh graders all got a place on the same start line.