Grrrreeeetings!
Well, I promised an update from this past weekend so I wanted to make good on that promise. Sunday, Rob and I competed in our very first Crossfit Competition! Other than the Open that we do every year, and whatever in-house competitions our home gym pulls together, we have never actually gone somewhere with a purpose of being competitive 🙂 But our gym was sending several teams to the event, and I really wanted an opportunity to be part of that atmosphere, and to put myself outside my comfort zone. I’ve been crossfitting for just over 2 years, and it’s had such a positive impact on my life. So I wanted to shake it up and get a change of scenery see if all this hard work each week would pay off. So, Rob and I plus our two good friends David and Mandy, decided to band together. We named ourselves “Beers and Barebells” and spent several weeks doing extra little practice sessions at our gym so we could be ready. Some of the pictures I posted in my previous post detailed those practices!
The competition was put together by Forge Fitness, and is named “Mayhem on the Mountain”, taking place in Oak Mountain State Park in Birmingham, AL. The event was two days, individuals being Saturday and Teams being Sunday. You could go Rx or scaled, and they released the workouts prior to the event, so you could strategize, practice, and second guess your decision for signing up 🙂
The four workouts are below. Our team decided to go scaled. We wanted to focus more on having fun than killing ourselves. It turned out to be a brutal day even with our scaled workouts so I am glad we went the route we did. We were the only co-ed group from our whole gym!
For Landshark, David and I were the swimmers and Rob and Mandy were the runners. For Hook and Blinded, David and Mandy lifted and Rob and I rowed. And in tandem, Rob and I were partners chasing David and Mandy through the movements. And Ripple was just fun, nothing special about it. Just fast moving and a lot of partner coordination. I admit, I loved our special practice sessions. They were fun, fairly laid back, and an interesting change of pace!
Since the competition began bright and early Sunday morning, most everyone went down the night before to stay in a hotel. We woke up (mostly) rested, and eager to start our day. When we got to the site, we had to check in, and then set up shop near our other teammates!
Proud of our tent building skills!
Stud in the red shirt is Mandy’s hubby Josh. They bought a canopy for our group to enjoy!! Luckily we were in the tree line but the canopy helped keep us protected from stray sunlight and falling sap/pine cones. The landscape was beautiful. We were right on the water!
This is us, right after the athlete briefing. Crossfit Huntsville had special shirts/tanks made for the event, so we could easily spot ourselves amongst the crowd. It sure was cool walking around seeing the sea of bright blue/green shirts and knowing it was your posse. I love this picture; the rays of sunlight cascading down on us make me realize that God is with us, give us the desires of our heart, and wants us to enjoy ourselves! He makes everything so.
The pictures from the day are a bit scattered, and there are some workouts where no one got any pictures of us because everyone was slotted in different heat times all over the place. But that’s okay! It was really amazing to have a big cheering section. Some of our athletes that weren’t competing came down just to cheer, watch, and take pictures. It really made a world of difference.
This was our first workout, Ripple. You can see Mandy and I in the background reppin out kettle bell swings while the boys did box jumps! Mandy has picture perfect form! David has picture perfect quads.
These next pictures are from “Tandem” This was by far the hardest workout (in my opinion). It was our second WOD, and it felt terrible. Come to find out, it was also the WOD we did the worst on, HA! I knew it felt bad. After this, I went back to our base camp, sat down in my chair and said “Whose idea was all of this anyway?” Everyone pointed at me. I honestly wasn’t sure how I would finish the day! I was zapped, hot, not hungry but needing to eat food, and feeling nervous that we still had two workouts left that would require a lot of engine. I loved our judge for this workout though! He was super encouraging and threw a lot of pointers at us, especially during the Atlas Stone lifts. There is a special picture of me and him at the end of this post.
Luckily, the heats were spaced an hour apart so there was a good amount of recovery time built in where you could cool off and get your wits back. After Tandem, we had Hook and Blinded. Unfortunately, no pictures from this event 😦 Mandy and David scored 4th out of our whole class with their lifts though! Rob and I were about middle of the pack for the row. Luckily, everything up until this point we had performed better on than in practice, so we felt happy with how we were fairing.
Last came Landshark. Admittedly, I was very nervous about the swim and was looking forward to simply making it back to shore, let alone finishing the rest of the workout after that! I had practiced quite a bit, but there is something much different about open water swims vs. lapping it at the natatorium where your feet can touch at any point. Then there’s that whole…swim as fast as you can swim because you’re basically in a race type pressure!
It’s funny what happens in competition. It’s almost like an out of body experience really. Your mind goes into this hyper concentration and your awareness for certain things falls away. I can remember waiting for the countdown, and I remember taking my first leap into the water, but the only thing I remember after that was rounding the buoy, and then finally making it to a point where my feet could touch and I could run the rest of the way out. In typical David fashion, he was FIRST back to the shoreline and I could hear him cheering at me. It was a great feeling when we were both out and made our way back to the mat to finish the rest of the workout.
This is us right after Landshark, extremely tired and happy to officially be done! We placed first in our heat time for this workout! 
After everything was scored, we placed 8th overall out of 19 co-ed scaled teams! I was really proud of us. The most important thing (t0 me) is how much fun we really had together. We each gave our best efforts and came away with excitement to do it again next year!
Finally enjoying the “beers” part of our name 🙂
Rob, David, Mandy: I couldn’t have asked for better teammates! You spent the day laughing, smiling, and staying positive and you most definitely put your money where your mouth was! Thanks for the memories 🙂 Can’t wait for the next one!
As you can imagine, Rob and I stopped at Chipotle on the way home to re-fuel! My appetite was jacked through the roof once we finished our last workout! Sorry to anyone that happened to be near us in that Chipotle…we were gross and probably looked like pigs at a trough eating.
Also special shout out to my bestie Kim! It was really something else watching her compete in her own Rx team of power-girls. She is an incredible athlete and I will forever be chasing her around, hoping to catch up.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the best parts of the day was the cheering and encouragement our teams received from our fellow athletes and friends who made the trip down to support us. To look around all day and see and hear them really made such a difference! One of the people I saw most out of the corner of my eye, was my good friend Marisa, owner and operator of Performance Deluxe. (click that!)
Marisa is in incredibly gifted action photographer and bloomed her business from her love of Crossfit and her knack for being able to capture intensely energetic photographs and then spin them into something explosive with her editing/finishing techniques.
You can find her work here: https://www.facebook.com/performancedeluxe?fref=ts&ref=br_tf
And also here: https://instagram.com/performancedeluxe/
Marisa was omnipresent that day! She spent the entire time crouched, stooped, laid out, bent over, and hanging from heights with a huge camera stuck to her face, eagerly snapping away at all of us. Tell you what, nothing makes you feel more bad ass than having a professional photographer’s lens pointed at you while you gruel through a workout.
Here is a sneak peak of her work: Me and favorite Judge!
If anyone in the Tennessee Valley area wants uniquely set up and brilliantly executed photographs taken of them during training sessions, athletic events, or just running through a field of wildflowers (or tame flowers!), contact her. You will be blow away! Marisa, thank you for sharing your gift with the rest of us.
The Wayfaring Friend 