Crossfit Open

We all know of the clusterf*&k that was the beginning of the online crossfit open (if you missed it, check out Drywall's blog for a nice summation of what went down). This mind blowing experience then led to the geniuses over at HQ extending the deadline for WOD #1, which lets be honest, has no physical benefit whatsoever besides making you want to vomit. Great.

But, while i mock the brain trust that programs this foolishness, I have not been as excited or experienced a more competitive, encouraging atmosphere than last saturday at the Crossfit Chicago box. dShea, dbone, tyler, and myself gave it go at 2pm with others from LP and some non-affiliates. let me provide you with a quick summation of events:

2pm, heat 1 (check out ramsey's videos):

dshea

dan got placed in heat 1 while tyler, dbone, and myself got placed in heat 2. dan decided having four espressos prior to "go time" was a grandiose idea. we all sat around like nervous little school girls debating how we were going to tackle this beast. all i kept saying was it is only 10 minutes, we do this everyday. derek, on the other hand, not nervous at all stated he was going to crush 1 of these 6 WODs...as you shall see below, i dont think it was WOD #1. back to dshea, he began strong with fast as hell DUs (first time with speed rope) and then some quality snatches. around round 3, though, he began to get tired and there was dbone encouraging/yelling at him to breathe and pick up the bar with short breaks (this will be ironic in the next paragraph). round 4 began and there was dshea telling his judge to find him a bucket because he wanted to vomit. staying classy CFconstruct. from there, its history. all-in-all, dshea was the guinea pig for our group and he smoked it...maybe next time, just layoff the espresso to avoid the vomit. kid's DUs were quick as hell.

heat 2

twubs, ty, dbone...all next to each other in respective lanes.

after a bit of stretching, making sure i could lift the damn weight and getting the typical shit-eating grin from Rudy which i believe means, "i know you are screwed, you know you are screwed...this should be quite entertaining", the LP box got a lovely surprise...dbone decided he did not like his current attire and was going to go shirtless. and i quote, " it is going to get jiggly up in here"...followed by bryce chanting, "chubby derek, chubby derek"...chubby is a relative term in crossfit, i.e. if you have >4% body fat. tyler during the grand majority was quite stoic. but i digress, with jonny running a tight ship, the gun sounded and we were off. (from here on out, i can only speak for myself). DUs were strong, and I snatched the first round. DUs strong again, but snatches got heavy in a hurry. proceeded to clean and jerks...money. saw Billy S do this and decided that man is fast as hell, it cannot be that bad. at about this point, everytime i got to DUs, I would catch dbone out the corner of my eye...resting. i was like WTF!, he is crushing this, he even has time to have an ongoing convo with Rudy...continuing on to round three...knocked it out. not that bad...then...the wheels fell off...once the 10 minutes were up and i was doing the "bacon sizzle" on the ground, i proceeded to hear derek laughing again!? he though it was an 8 min amrap, then i found out that derek drank the kool-aid on rudy's theory, "work fast, long rest"...he took this to the fullest.

to get mushy for second, after each heat, everyone came around to those competing to give them a pound/high-five and tell them nice work. like i stated before, awesome atmosphere. anyways...i stayed for the final 3 heats to watch some doods crush it, i.e. nate, kurt, bryce, erin, the usual suspects. ridiculous.

so, while this post has been biblical in length, i just wanted to make the point that...why arent more people doing this (ladies...)!? especially, those who have crossfitted for at least 6 months and the fact that now derek has signed up Construct as an affiliate so we can do the workouts in our box. I know im not making the games, and i know there will be certain workouts where the Rx is too heavy and ill struggle to get one rep. who cares, the competitive atmosphere is amazing. im not using it to get better at certain exercises, because it wont make you better, it is the work you put in prior that shall make you better at the movement.

(i guess this makes up for everyones' writer's block for the about the next 3 weeks)