First CrossFit Comp Recap

First CrossFit Comp Recap

I started out unbroken on my thrusters, and I think I broke up the C2B’s once on the first round, and started running the first 400m. I was right behind the girl next to my lane for the entire run. I was tempted to run faster and beat her, but why when this was only the first round. A girl in the lane a few lanes over from me passed both me and the girl in front of me. Darn. Oh well. I got back to my thrusters and changed the weight out, taking my time. 

This was my “rest.” This was different from how I had practiced because I had always had someone changing out my weight for me in practice. I had no idea I would have to change it out myself, but oh well. I cranked out my 15 thrusters unbroken, and got back to the pull-up bar. I think I had to take two breaks on this one, and then I was back to the run. Again, I was behind the girl in the lane next to me, and about halfway through the run, the girl a few lanes over passed us both. Back to the thrusters, I changed out my weights one last time, and started on the thrusters. This time I broke them up 11, 10. Back to the pull-up bar. It’s hard to explain why these are so hard because jumping C2B pull-ups sounds like the easiest thing in the whole world, but they are not. At least not then they’re paired with thrusters and running. Everything burned by this point. My lungs burned, my arms burned, and my legs burned. I felt like if I did one more pull-up there was no way I would get my chest to the bar, so I took many many breaks on this round. My judge was awesome and kept cheering me on and telling me I was almost finished. That was cool. I could hear the girl in the lane next to me cranking out her jumping pull-ups like a rockstar, but I felt like my tank was just puttered out. I don’t know how long I was on that pull-up bar, but it must have been a pretty long time. I finally got off the bar and started my final run, pretty far behind the girl in the lane next to mine. Before long, the girl a few lanes over from me passed me as well. Honestly, I didn’t feel the urge to run harder and catch up with them. I felt so awfully tired that the only thing I could think about was just getting passed that finish line and being done. I guess you could say I wasn’t having fun anymore (that’s for you, Aunt Sandy 😉).

FINALLY, I clobbered over the finish line and laid out on the grass “in typical CrossFit fashion.” I heard my time called out-13:41. My best time during practice had been 13:06, and since I had to change out the weights, I was pretty happy with that. When I finally had the strength and energy to get up, I gave the two girls near me high fives and told them great job, and went to talk with my friends who were there. This is when I found out that, ahem, unfortunately, a few of the girls were using very poor form, and as one of my friends put it, I was “the only who wasn’t doing no reps.” Unfortunately, though, those no reps weren’t being called, and there was nothing I could do about that. I had done my best and that was that. I had like two hours to kill before I needed to start warming up for my next event, and that sounded like an eternity, but by the time we talked about the event, went up to eat, and talked some more, it was time for me to get ready. Time sure flies when you’re having fun!

Event 2:

1RM Clean

Defining the term:

In CrossFit, a clean refers to either a power clean or a squat clean. a power clean is where a barbell starts from the ground, and you pull the bar up and catch it in front rack position. A squat clean is essentially the same thing, except that you catch the bar in a front squat position. Doing a squat clean means that you don’t have to pull the bar up as high, and you rely more on the legs for the lift than the upper body. I opted to squat clean for this event for that reason.

I started warming up for my next event: a 1 rep max clean with 3 attempts. This warm-up time is one of my favorite memories from the day. I had three guys with me: Levi, Paul, and Kevin. Paul was coaching me on exactly how to approach the lift, and Levi and Kevin were snagging plates and loading the bar up for me. In typical fashion, the girls were all sitting and watching 😂 I don’t know how to describe how or why this was so special to me, but I guess it felt so good that they all wanted to be part of it. You know, they weren’t sitting around not paying attention, they were so present and in it with me, even to the point of loading the bar for me during my warm-up, it just made me feel very loved and special.

So we all went down to watch the first heat of girls, and good thing because it wasn’t nearly as early as I thought it was. We only got there in time to see the very last lift, and then I was up. My previous personal record (PR) in cleans was my squat clean at 140 which is five pounds higher than my power clean PR which is 135. Because of this, I had chosen to squat clean since we could choose whether to power clean or squat clean. Plus at this point, squat cleaning feels a lot more natural to me than power cleaning if I’m going for a max lift.

During my warm-up I had built up to 135, so I decided to open with that. Even though I had already squat cleaned 135 during my warm up, it was still 96% of my PR, and that made me nervous! I probably would have been nervous no matter how much I was going to lift, though. Before I did my lift, I looked over at the girl next to me (we had the same lanes all day, so this was the same girl who was next to me in Event 1), and saw what I thought was a whole lot more weight on her bar than what I had. I thought she had 155 on her bar, and that almost got to my head, but I told myself not to think about it and just lift what I knew I could lift. Since there are 3 attempts in this event, the first lift is to “get something on the board.” The announcer was preparing each athlete for the lift by first calling out “10 seconds. 3, 2, 1, go.” When he said “go” that meant the athlete had 10 seconds to get a successful lift, no matter how many times he tried it (but there was only time for 2 attempts in the 10 second period). It got around to me, and I heard the announcer say, “10 seconds. 3, 2, 1, go.” My first attempt at 135: nailed it. Easy. 😎 Again, the it got back around to my turn and I heard the announcer, “10 seconds. 3, 2, 1, go.”

My second attempt at 145: NAILED IT! I was so happy to have made a PR! It was my turn one last time, and I heard the announcer say, “10 seconds. 3, 2, 1, go.” I had put 150 pounds on the bar I wasn’t even nervous about this one—I pulled the barbell up, caught it in a squat, sank down to a lower squat (way too low…) contracted my muscles as hard as I could to stand it back up, and got stuck!  I dropped the weight, and quickly got back to the bar for one more attempt within my 10 second window, but failed that lift as well. Doggone it, maybe if I’d had more adrenalin going, I would’ve gotten that sucker up! It didn’t matter to me, though, I was on cloud 9! I walked back upstairs to the warmup area pumped and on top of the world! I knew I had done well in the event, but more than that, I had beat myself physically and mentally.

During my feeling of euphoria, Chelsea asked where I was seated in the competition. I hadn’t looked at all that day cuz idk, why, but I looked after that, and I saw I was in 9th place of 13. This got me really upset and I felt like how could I be in 9th place when I knew I had done really well in the 1RM clean! What was the point of having trained so freaking hard, and be trying so hard, just to be sitting in 9th place!! Upon looking further into it, I realized the scores hadn’t been entered yet. I had gotten 9th place in the very first event, and that was it. So while this didn’t make me feel on top of the world exactly (I didn’t realize I had done quite that poorly in the first event), I was able to bounce back from the initial feeling I had that I wouldn’t possibly be able to do well, or place.

Event 3:
Rope Burn

AMRAP x 7:00 of

10 GHD sit-ups to parallel

1 18’ rope climb

Defining the terms:

AMRAP x 7:00: AMRAP stands for “as many reps as possible.” So in a 7:00 window, I would try to get as many rounds and reps as I can (10 GHD sit-ups and 1 rope climb = 1 round).

GHD sit-up: GHD stands for “glute and hamstring developer.” It’s a machine that you sit on. It has two places to hold your feet, so you secure your feet, and “fall” back until your hands touch the ground, then come up-that’s one rep. The scaled version is to do that to parallel, so you just “fall” back until your body is at a parallel angle, and then come up.

Rope climb: A rope climb is just that: a rope that you climb up. The typical standard is that you climb 15′ up (always designated by a piece of tape), but these rope climbs were 3′ higher, at 18′.



I had only 30 minutes after the end of event 2, until I started Event 3. I was stoked and nervous about this event. Stoked because I LOVE rope climbs, and I’d seen the other girls struggling on them, so I thought I could do fairly well in the event (this event was a “floater” meaning when each athlete signed in that morning, we could pick a time that we wanted to complete this event. It also meant that we were able to watch the other athletes doing the event throughout the day). But I was also extremely nervous about this event. I had been experiencing excruciating elbow pain that was exacerbated by rope climbs. I had been working on the peg board earlier in the week as well, which had flared it up, so I’d spent the past several days trying to get the pain at bay, and keep it from hurting during competition as long as possible. I didn’t know what would happen after this event, and if my arm was going to be hurting excruciatingly for the final event, but if that happened, my plan was to just suck it up! That morning when I picked my time for the floater, I strategically picked the absolute latest time I could, in case my elbow flared up, I wanted to be as close to being finished for the day as I possibly could be.

When it was finally time for the event, I got up there, poured my heart into the rope climbs and GHD sit-ups, and when it was over, I about keeled over and died. Everything hurt. I thought I was going to throw up, my biceps were destroyed, my elbow was aching, my hip flexors burned from the GHD sit-ups, and my soleus of all things was cramping up! I guess you could say I was a mess lol. Looking back, I feel like I maybe could have pushed a little bit harder if my mindset had been better. A few minutes into the event, my mindset changed from “I can’t wait to get to those rope climbs!” To “oh my goodness, I do not remember it being this hard. I don’t know how I’ll do another rope climb. Why do these GHD sit-ups hurt so dang bad? When is this going to be over” I think if I hadn’t given into those negative thoughts I would have been able to crank out a few more sit-ups at the very end.

I had an hour until my final event and I didn’t think that was going to be long enough  I felt AWFUL. I hadn’t slept well the night before, and the lack of sleep was starting to seriously drain me (I told you that would come into play later). I felt sleepy and I wanted to just be done and go home. In my rest time, I actually closed my eyes and hit the twilight zone. I didn’t know if this would hurt more than it would help, but at the moment I felt so weak it’s all I felt like I could do. Initially coming into the competition, I’d felt confident that I wouldn’t have a problem with having four workouts in one day, and thought that could be an advantage I would have over the other girls, since I typically have quite a bit of volume in my day to day training.

But when the feeling of exhaustion hit me so severely, those confident feelings I’d had at one point began to leave and I was left feeling like I didn’t know how in the world I would be able to even complete the final event, let alone do well in it! I’d been so anxious the whole day, that I’d hardly been able to eat anything, and that may have also been what was eating at me (see what I did there ). I don’t know how much time passed, but I eventually started getting some energy, ate some grapes, and started talking with my fans (LOL), which started energizing me slightly. Before I knew it, it was time to warmup again. I still did not see any girls warming up for any of the events that day, save the 1RM clean.

But I didn’t care, I went and did a few things to practice the movements and get used to the weights before heading downstairs to watch the first heat one last time. Those girls were crushing it. They ended up finishing several minutes better than my best run through. I looked at the leaderboard, and saw I had gotten 3rd place in the 1RM clean, and 2nd place in the rope burn, which had me sitting in 4th place, one point behind the girl in 3rd going into the final event. I didn’t even know if it was possible for me to podium because even if I did really well and beat the that girl in this final event, it might still not give me enough points to get ahead of her. So all I could do was focus on giving my BEST and leaving EVERYTHING out there.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Soli Deo Gloria,

Charity