Lansing gym sends two athletes to Spartan DEKA

Last month, 35-year-old Sawyer Brown and 30-year-old Emily Morlock traveled from Lansing to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to prove that they were among the best in the world. The sport was the Spartan DEKA Race, a 10-stage obstacle race designed to test the entire body’s fitness.

On Nov. 19 and 20, the top 12 qualifiers in each age group of each division were selected to go to Atlantic City for the DEKA World Championships. Qualifiers had to compete in a race at a gym approved by Spartan earlier in the year, and the top times worldwide from those qualifiers got the chance to compete in Atlantic City.

It was Journey Fitness, a gym off Catherwood Road in Lansing, that sent not just one, but two athletes to New Jersey.

There are three types of Spartan DEKA races. Each consists of 10 exercise stations, or “zones.” Competitors must complete the exercise at one of those stations in the fastest time and then run a certain distance, based on the category in which they’re competing, to the next station.

Spartan DEKA Fit is a category that features 5 kilometers of running total between the 10 stations. DEKA Mile is 1 mile of cardio between stations, and DEKA Strong is completing the 10 stations without cardio between them.

The stations can be body-bending workouts. They include 30 lunges with weights, a 500-meter row on a ergometer, a 100-meter farmer’s carry with dumbbells and more.

Brown qualified for the World Championships in all three events in the 35-38-year-old age group. He finished in the top eight in all three events.

The Newark Valley native said that competing in a world championship athletic event at age 35 would have been impossible to imagine when he was 22 years old.

During his early 20s, Brown said he pushed the envelope at the bar, not in the gym. Going out, partying and not taking care of himself saw his weight balloon to between 250 and 260 pounds.

It was an injury that he suffered while doing a simple task that made him realize he needed to change his habits.

“I was going down to tie my shoe, and I threw out my back,” he said. “I’m thinking, ‘I’m 22 years old, what am I doing with my life? I’m going to throw out my back tying my shoe?’ That’s what sparked it.”

Brown said he tried and failed to get in shape multiple times before finally committing to a workout routine for a month. After that month, he started to see physical differences in his appearance.

From there, a new mindset was born. Now, Brown, who is 6-foot-1, keeps his weight between 180 and 190 pounds.

“I’ve made it my life; ever since I made that change, I’ve devoted myself to health and fitness,” he said. “I was an extremist in the spectrum of being a partier, but I took that extremist mentality and shifted it over to a more positive one. I just have the energy of wanting to push the limit, and I was doing that during my party days. Now, I’ve shifted it over to something that’s more useful and healthy to me.”

That lifestyle came at a cost. The friends whom he would meet at bars or parties didn’t see a lot of value in being his friend anymore. They stopped calling, but Brown kept running.

“I was all alone for years after I decided to change. I was out running trails all by myself. I was in my home-gym that I had built, by myself. I had nobody at my back during those times,” he said. “It was a hard time, but it ended up paying off, because now I have those people in my life that pursue the same sort of things, and it’s uplifting, as opposed to the friends I had before who didn’t care about me, but the party and the temporary good time.”

Those people have become his friends at Journey Fitness.

“It’s a really tight-knit group of people, and it’s a style of training I don’t think most people are used to,” he said. “It’s a group style training, and it’s all about functionality and exercises you can take to your everyday life. We don’t use machines; we don’t have your typical treadmill or anything like that — your body is the machine.”

In 2012, Brown started competing in Spartan Race-sponsored events. The company puts on a series of different obstacle races, in addition to DEKA.

In 2018, he was cast on the ABC reality show Castaways. The survival show is a contest where 12 people are stationed on a series of islands in Indonesia. After the show, Brown started working for Spartan Races nationally to recruit more athletes and for Journey Fitness as a trainer — that’s when he met Morlock.

Morlock qualified for the World Championships in the DEKA Strong category in the 30-34-year-old division at a qualifying event in Corning in April. She finished eighth at the World Championships.

Morlock is from Ionia, Michigan, and attended Albion College in Michigan, where she ran track and field as well as cross country.

When she was 12 years old, Morlock started competing in athletics, which she credits to her father. She said he introduced her to the sport of running and was always encouraging her to get outside.

It didn’t matter if it was hiking or skiing in the cold Michigan winters or going for a long training ride on her bicycle. The point was to get her outside.

“It really comes from him because he really introduced me to fitness,” she said. “Just being outside and encouraging movement, he felt his best when he could move and be outside.”

Morlock was ailed by a broken ankle when she was 14 years old, which started the decline of her running career, she said. By the time she left Michigan for Ithaca six-and-a-half years ago, she said her body was breaking down.

Although her knees had become less resilient to the pressure of running on the road, the competitive fire inside her was still alive.

“I’m a very passionate fitness enthusiast,” she said. “To be honest, running takes a toll on the body, so I did turn to functional fitness instead, and that’s when I found Journey Fitness, and they’ve helped me become the athlete I am today.”

In 2018, a friend from work gave her a two-week pass to Journey Fitness. As soon as she walked in, Morlock noted, the competitive desire she’d had since the end of her running career was fulfilled.

“I went to a class and I was hooked immediately,” she said. “It’s circuit training, so you’re at a station for 30 seconds and then you move on to another station. It’s a full-body workout. There’s weights, balance, coordination movements, and each week has a different theme. Sometimes it’s more strength and sometimes it’s more cardio.”

Morlock started competing in races shortly after joining the gym. Not only the gym community, but the competition community has become a place where she has felt accepted.

It’s also a place where she can see people transform their bodies and become better versions of themselves.

“I’m very passionate about the things we do and compete in,” she said. “It’s for everyone. What’s cool about the event is that anyone can do it. I’m cheering on my 60-plus-year-old friends at the event, which is super cool to me. They inspire me. I inspire them. That’s what the event is all about.”

Morlock and Brown said they weren’t completely satisfied with their performances at the World Championships last month. Their attitudes and desires won’t let them be satisfied until they can bring a World Championship to Tompkins County.

Both said they intend to make it happen in 2023.

“It’s my focus every single day. I train every day for the one next year because I don’t want to be in eighth place again,” Brown said. “I know I have more to give than that.”

Lansing at Large appears every Wednesday in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@VizellaMedia.com.