A CrossFit Christmas

What could you want more for a CrossFit Christmas?  New shoes? Your own 20/24/30 box? Lifetime supply of Kill Cliff (had to throw that in there for Justin)?  Guaranteed vacation time and an all-expense paid trip to the 2012 Games?  No, silly man!  CrossFit Christmas = a good throwdown against some of the top CrossFitters in the state with your new gym! 

Haley The CFMC Mascot

I had the early Christmas present of the merging of CrossFit Tuscaloosa and my new home, CrossFit Music City for the CrossFit Rampage Christmas Throwdown.  What a weekend!  Sarabeth came up from Tuscaloosa Friday night, so we had to partake in our competition ritual of dinner at either Longhorn Steakhouse or Logan’s Roadhouse.  As always - “Just bring us the meat and sweet potatoes!” And then early Saturday morning it was ON! 

In the usual competition fashion, the weather was freezing cold so as to induce Fran cough just from warming up.  I had the brilliant idea of warming up still in my warm cozy Ugg mudboots – try doing double unders in those!  By the end of the day, I had them pretty well mastered.  Next challenge will be double unders with cement blocks on your feet, because that’s what those boots feel like compared to some Frees.  Rebecca and Sarabeth both tackled the first women’s heat of WOD 2, killing their lungs with a chipper, while Bryn stayed warm and cozy inside maxing out his snatch.  Luckily (?) I was the only one of our group in Heat 2, which meant plenty of cheering from our awesome group from CFMC.  You would think your lungs can’t catch fire when it’s so cold outside  -- your thoughts would be utterly wrong.   With me still on my back dying, Chastity and Heather flew through the 3^rd heat.  

Good husbands cheer you on at competition even if just watching kills them

 - Rebecca & Trevor

A few words on these two women.  Heather has been doing CrossFit for 3 years.  She is wicked strong, and every time I see her wod I think of Annie Thorisdottir, wondering “Why does she seem like everything is so effortless?”  As Stacy has witnessed on a daily basis, I make these horrendous homicidal angry-girl faces when I’m lifting heavy.  Heather looks like she’s watching a serene rainbow over a frickin’ white sandy beach.  I thought this being her first competition, I’d finally see the aggressive “I’m going to KILL this WOD” face.  No…. it’s just another day of unicorns and puppies for her.  Chastity on the other hand, just finished our On Ramp program.  This means, she’s been CrossFitting for a grand total of 3 weeks.  You would think, oh we’ll just cheer her on and make sure she finishes each wod.  Try again ghostwriter.  More like, let’s cheer her on as she whips everyone’s butt.  To be fair, this girl is FIT.  A longtime gymnast, cheerleading coach, and fitness figure competitor -- don’t mess with this girl just because she’s sweet, bubbly, blonde and is named Chastity.  This just means you don’t realize she’s kicked your butt until she’s smiling over your corpse. 

Heather Bassett

Chastity Loper

 After the girls had finished our max snatches, and Bryn and Brandon had suffered through the Chilly Chipper, it was time to tackled Rowing Helen.  For those of you who don’t know, Helen is usually 3 rounds of 400 m run, 21 KB swings, and 12 pullups.  LOVE IT!  I can run.  I love KB swings.  And I want to get good at pullups.  But let’s take out the element I’m good at, and replace it with rowing, which I used to be good at and now sufficiently stink at.  Let’s fry my grip some more, so that while I struggle with pullups, now I can just look at the bar and pray that my grip will hold long enough for me to not fall on my ass.  And then, let’s set at 12-min time cap.  My fastest Helen with running is 12:05.  While my pullups are better, sub-12 probably isn’t going to happen.  I had been thinking about this ALL week.  Primarily because for the better part of 10 days, Rebecca had kept on me about trying Rowing Helen at the gym before this competition.  We are of two completely different mindsets – she likes to get a feel for a competition wod so she can figure out the pace and know what to expect.  I, on the other hand, think it’s going to suck no matter what, so why suffer through it more than once?  She’s also a substantially more experienced competitor than I, so maybe I should have listened.  But I didn’t, and any delusions of sub-12 flew out the window when watching Bryn and Brandon race through the wod, we realized several of the men were not finishing in sub-12.  Eek!   Lessons from Rowing Helen – 1) the men at our gym are badasses; 2) Sarabeth will always leave people with their jaw on the ground when she butterflies her pullups like she weighs less than 5 oz., 3) Chastity will do the same once she learns how to kip/butterfly – because the girl just went ahead and did strict pullups the whole wod, and 4) we’re all starting a 6-wk pullup program immediately following the holidays. 

WOD 4 = Opal is a happy girl. Squat Cleans + Double Unders.  7 minutes of work doing two things I LOVE.  All day I looked forward to this wod.  I even considered doing it in my mudboots when I still couldn’t feel my feet after defrosting them in the car on top of the heater.  I could hug whoever at Rampage came up with this wod.  It gave our team a chance to see how their double unders have improved after doing about 3 wks of 8 rounds of 30 sec on/90 sec off double under drill several times per week.  And it gave Chastity and myself a chance to learn whether we could handle 95#.  Even with this being the 4^th wod and being tired, everyone rocked it.  

Brandon Koechlin

Me, Renee, & Sarabeth - Love CrossFit Tuscaloosa

Proof that Chastity is human

CrossFit Music City competitors

Chastity & me trying to stay warm

End story….

Except that lo and behold, Brandon and Sarabeth made it into the Top 5, which means….

Final Fantasy WOD (aka Last Man Standing)

Min 1 – 8 Deadlifts (315/205), 3/2 muscle ups

Min 2 – 8 Back Squat (225/145), 5 HSPU

Min 3 – 8 KB Swings (2/1.5 pd), 8 Lateral over-the-bar burpees

Repeat until all but 1 are dead.

This wod can be summed up by the best quote of the day.  Upon hearing what the final group had to do “I’ve never been so glad to be mediocre.” 

Results:

Men – Brandon 5^th, Bryn 24^th

Women – Sarabeth 1^st, Me 14^th, Rebecca 15^th, Chastity 16^th, Heather 17^th

So congrats!  And a special thank you to Trevor, Bill, Shaunna, Rhonda, and Elizabeth from CrossFit Music City for coming out to cheer us on.  Renee, from CrossFit Tuscaloosa/CrossFit Murfreesboro for coming and keeping me warm.  CrossFit Rampage for putting on an awesome event.

Josie & Sarabeth with their "We're awesome" trophies

Sarabeth and her CrossFit Mom

All quotes from my future ex-husband are great