Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Crossfit at The Arnold Sports Festival 2011

Where to begin with all the amazing events of this past weekend?  I guess I'll start from the top and see where it leads me.

Thursday evening Rodrigo and I made the trip over to C-bus so we'd be in town and ready to go for Friday.  Friday was mostly an expo for all the sponsored athletes to showcase crossfit.  They were to begin their expo at noon according to the email we had received, the email also informed us that registered athletes would be able to jump into the workouts along side the sponsored athletes, which was a treat to hear.  On the trip over, I told Rodrigo, that I would only jump into one of the Friday workouts if it was Elizabeth (21-15-9 reps of Squat Cleans@135lbs and ring dips).  We discussed how much fun we thought the weekend was going to be and enjoyed a smooth ride over to Columbus.  Once we arrived, we made a quick trip to the grocery store and stocked up on food for the weekend and then stayed at my buddy Jon's place and made a late dinner.

Friday morning, we got around and made our way back downtown to get to the expo and see the spectacle.  Once we walked into the grand ballroom, we saw that they had just finished a workout.  Huh, they started well before the time that was relayed to us in our email.  It was almost 11:00, an hour before the first workout was to begin.  We missed watching them do their choice of Cindy or Mary.  Both 20minute amrap workouts.  Having arrived we saw the posted list of workouts for the day:
Wod 1 - Cindy or Mary
Wod 2 - Fran completed by sponsored athletes only (registered athletes would do this on Saturday)
Wod 3 - Elizabeth!  Boom, Instantly excited because I know that I'm going to be able to compete with the best of them on this.
Wod 4 - King Kong with a twist.  This was also a sight to see, King Kong is a workout with huge weights getting tossed around.  It is 3 rounds for time of 1 Deadlift at 455lbs 2 muscle ups (gymnastics move) 3 squat cleans at 255lbs and 4 hand-stand push ups.  The twist was they also added a 12 foot wall climb after the HSPU and also a 6 foot wall jump at the beginning of the workout before each deadlift.

Watching the Fran was pretty exciting as most of the guys finished right around 2:20 some a couple seconds before that mark and the bulk of them a couple seconds behind that mark.  One scary point to Fran was Dan Bailey falling off the pull up bar with 1 rep left and basically Nestea Plunging on the floor.  It looked bad, but luckily he was ok, just a little sore.  Dan still PR'd the workout!  Amazing.

Finally after Fran it was time to warm up and get down with the get down for Elizabeth.  During my warm up I felt pretty good and made some small talk with a few of the guys, and talked with Matt Chan for quite a bit.  Matt is an amazing athlete and all around cool dude.  I spent many more times over the course of the weekend talking with Matt and learning of his training schedule and just shooting the breeze as well.  Once it was time to fall in for Elizabeth, I chose a spot in the back of the room so I could watch everyone else and see where I was in the workout.  It was mainly people who were registered for the weekend in this event, with the addition of Mikko Salo (2009 CrossFit Games Winner) Dave Libson, and Matt Chan.
I locked into the first set of 21 squat cleans at a great pace and was the first athlete on the rings and breezed through the dips as well.  1st back to the bar for 15.  In the set of 15 Jason Khalipa (2008 CrossFit Games Champion) took notice of me and started watching me from about 4 feet away.  This kept me motivated to stay on the bar and continue to forge ahead.  I was no longer paying attention to anyone else, but I could hear Nick Urankar yelling from the crowd that I was leading everyone.  Again, first athlete to the rings... The second round of ring dips was more difficult, but I was the first back to the bar for the set of 9.  The final round became a struggle and things got very difficult to maintain my pace. About 5 or 6 reps in Mikko ended up passing me and went on to a 4:02 finish.  I was still on pace with Dave Libson onto the rings and had to break the round up into 2s and 3s.  I believe Dave finished right before me at around 4:16 ish and I came in 3rd at 4:19.  My PR before this attempt was 4:49 I believe.  So a :30 PR was pretty amazing!  On my final set of ring dips I had Dan Bailey on my left and Jason Khalipa on my right cheering me on.  Once I finished, Jason was going off the chain about my performance.  This was a surreal feeling, to have a Games Champ telling me "that was awesome, You're Legit" was amazing.  I cheered on the rest of the guys and then walked back to my area to get a recovery shake.

Once Rodrigo had finished, he walked back through the warm up area where the sponsored guys were hanging out to hear Khalipa telling everyone about my workout and that it was an awesome performance.  Rodrigo told me this, and I was pretty taken back.  I couldn't believe that I had those guys talking about me!  Usually, WE are the one's who are amazed by THEIR performances, not the other way around.  It really hit home that it really happened when Dave Libson stopped me as I was walking through to the warm up area and told me good job and he heard I killed it.  I was a little dumb founded to be honest.

Next up was King Kong and it was really cool to see the guys cruise through it like it was nothing.  The 255lb squat clean is what would get me in that workout.  I need to get stronger at my olympic lifts.  They made the weight look easy and pretty effortless. After King Kong, we took off for the evening and went out to dinner then back to Jon's house to relax and get some Zzz's before a long day on Saturday.

Saturday began with Fran (21-15-9 of Thrusters and Pull ups).  My PR going into the weekend was 2:47 and I really wanted to hit 2:30 on this attempt.  I locked in pretty good from the get go and moved solidly through the workout.  Hit everything unbroken, and when the dust had cleared finished at 2:28:92.  A :19 PR!  Really, 2 huge PRs in 2 days?  I need to have 4 former CrossFit Games Champs watching me more often. (Past Champs attending were:  Jason Khalipa, Mikko Salo, Graham Holmberg, and Katy Matter Heninger).

We were then paired up for the rest of the weekend and the next two workouts on Saturday were pretty fun.  1st they recreated the final events of the 2010 games and I did the 7min amrap of 30 toes 2 bar and 21 ground to overhead with 95lbs.  Tore pretty bad on the toes 2 bar and finished 2 complete rounds.  We finished the day with a team Grace, 90 total reps for time with 2 bars moving at a time.  I did approx. half the reps and we finished in 4:02 a decent time, but far off the winning teams time.

At some point either between the 2nd and 3rd workout on Saturday or possibly after the 3rd Rodrigo and I were sitting down chatting when Miranda and Carey were walking around looking to interview someone for the CrossFit Journal.  I happened to flash a smile and over they came (not really in that order, but hey, they did come over).  We had a pretty good interview with Rodrigo and my views differing.  I must say that if they cut any of the interview out it will be my comments because Rodrigo's statements will definitely make people laugh and comment more than mine.  It was pretty cool, and I look forward to seeing it online, at least I'm crossing my fingers for it to happen!

Saturday night, Reebok sponsored a private after party that was a lot of fun with all the athletes gathering and mingling.  I spoke with quite a few guys and met some new people at the party.  Good times all around and also got a pretty cool Reebok Crossfit Pint Glass.  How's that for promotion?  Giving me a beer glass that literally says 3-2-1 GO on it!  Sweet, now I can drink for time!  After the party we went back to Jon's and crashed.

My team Sunday: Vince, Josh Everett, and myself
Sunday I woke up feeling pretty good.  Not too sore and was interested to find out what was to happen in terms of workouts and my team.  I got notification on Saturday night that one of my teammates wasn't going to be back on Sunday, so I was hoping to get a sponsored athlete thrown in with my team.  As luck would have it, Josh Everett was tapped to join us.  I was absolutely thrilled to have Josh as a teammate.  He is a great guy, and is a crazy competitor.  Our first workout of the day was a Heavy Medball (100lbs) sprint relay.  Basically the object was a 5minute AMRAP of picking up the medball sprint about 40 meters with it, throw it over a 6foot wall and follow the ball over the wall, pick it back up and return it to the start line.  We moved through the workout at a great pace and finished 24 trips.  Good enough for 2nd place and a spot in the next workout.  We moved from 12th to 8th after this workout.

The second workout of Sunday was an Axle bar deadlift and run.  The axle bar had to be lifted with an overhand grip and was very taxing to the grip.  Josh and I did the lifting on this workout as our 3rd competitor Vince could only manage 1 time of deadlifting the bar and struggled with it.  We completed 144 reps in 10 minutes and took 4th in the event.  This was a good enough placing to move us up 5 more places to a tie for 3rd.  After this workout I was feeling it, my lower back was screaming and my grip was pretty well shot.

The final workout of the weekend ended up being another fun Strongman type event.  With 2 men working at a time we had to:
Complete 40 burpees, load a Yoke with 750 total lbs (must be done in 2 trips) stop midway and do 60 KB swings, and at the stopping point complete 30 Wall Climbs.  The sequence had to be done twice since all 750lbs couldn't be loaded and carried at once, it was by far too much weight.  We moved pretty good through this workout and after the dust had cleared we finished 3rd in the event.  Our 3rd place finish in the event was good enough to give us a 4th place overall finish!  Having Josh definitely made this happen and I'm very thankful for his willingness to jump into all the workouts for the day.

I really didn't know what to expect going into the weekend and really I had planned on it just being a fun weekend.  I got WAY more than I bargained for out of the weekend and it's by far and away the best competition experience I've had.  There are videos and photos available on my FB Page.

If you made it this far into the post you deserve a medal!

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