Southside Throwdown

Alright! So a little late, but wanted to recap the throwdown/friendly competition at our gym two weekends ago none-the-less.. So here goes. Our gym, JoCo CrossFit, came up with a plan to have a friendly competition with a local southside crossfit gym..southsiders stick together! Their gym, Sworn, opened up not too long ago and it's fairly close by, so I think our owner figured some friendly camraderie and competition to welcome them and get to know some of them would be a good thing.. and I agree! The whole day, all the workouts, the whole thing was a blast. I've only been to one other crossfit competition, which was Regionals, so I think the bar was set pretty high as far as my expectations go.. and they did NOT disappoint (not that I ever thought they might). All other competitions I might attend in the future have big shoes to fill, for sure. Kind of like with triathlon, once you've been to a high quality race put on by Ironman and now Rev 3, it's hard for the smaller races to live up to that. But anyway, the gym was cleaned and ready for some working out. So many fellow JoCo members opted to volunteer instead of compete which was really amazing of them.. to give up their day to help out..and they were awesome. Run like a tight ship, for sure. (wait.. is there such a thing as a 'tight ship'? did I mix euphomisms or something? Did I just make up the word 'euphomism'.. moving on). We started off with a fast and dirty 6 minute workout at the Farmer's Market.. and this would be my lowest ranking of the whole day.. I don't have any excuses, the other gals just moved quicker than I did. It was a triplet of ascending reps.. 3's the 1st round, 6's, 9's, etc.. with burpees jumping on to a weight (I think this is where I was slow), then kettle bell swings (relatively light at 36#), and abmats (sit-ups). I tried to move quickly.. but I must have looked slow because a fellow crossfitter reminded me "Sara, this is a sprint".. yes, yes.. this IS my sprint.. but, thanks. Anyway, I never looked at the rankings through the day..it WAS a friendly, fun competition, yes? But glancing through the list the following monday, I see I ranked 4th on this one. Well. Moving on. The next workout was one that folks seemed to think I might do alright at.. a run! a 2.5mi run. That may not seem like much to..well..anyone that runs.. But for crossfitters who prefer their run distances to be listed in meters or feet, 2.5mi was some folks' everest.. which is the great part about crossfit and competitions! Everyone has things they might be 'better' at, but everyone also will get a chance to test their limits on challenges that are a little less comfortable to them. I suppose I did my job on the run. Turns out I got 1st in that one! I even beat the boys, which never hurts. Maybe (spoiler alert) that run gave me the confidence to push my run in the upcoming sprint tri I had.. I don't know. But it was fun and went well. Next workout was a clean and jerk ladder and this was, by far, the most fun to compete in and to watch everyone else! You could really cheer everyone else on and it got exciting to see people push hard at the end of the ladder, whether it was a new PR (some got their first cleans and or jerks at a new weight during the competition!) or pushing hard to get the most lifts done at the heaviest weight (if you could clean and jerk the heaviest weight, you wanted to get as many reps as you could in that last minute..did that make any sense?)I wound up tied for 2nd in this one with a couple other gals. I got through the ladder and then managed 6 clean and jerks at 125# in the last minute.. I was aiming for 5 or more, so.. Done! The last workout was kind of Fran-esque with a twist.. It was 21,15,9 of wallballs and pull-ups, but the twist was you had to do 50 double unders after each round (so 21 wallballs, 21 pull-ups, 50 double unders.. then 15..etc.)All went OK for me, except I couldn't quite make it through the 50 double unders without getting tripped up a bit in each round.. Nothing too terrible, luckily, but not flawless.. So I came in 2nd in that one, too. The added bonus of placing in the top 2 females from our gym was that we were then going to have an extra, final workout with the top 2 males/2 females from each gym competing on a team in one last throwdown. It was a chipper with 50 calorie row, 40 overhead squats (65#), 30 toes to bar, 20 over the box jumps, then 10 wall climbs (start in a push up position with your feet touching the wall (chest to the ground), then push up and walk your feet up the wall until you are in a handstand against the wall, then walk back down.. repeat). Marcie (my partner) and I split the work 50/50 and got through it pretty quickly, passed it on to our guys and they did their work (I think also split 50/50). JoCo team wound up winning that contest, so we took home the prize for this throwdown.. but I don't think it was about that at all. It was a great day, lots of fun, really well put-together and executed by those working and volunteering, and a nice way to meet some more crossfitters in the area. So everybody wins! My favorite part was having my boys come cheer me on. Mason was mostly interested in playing with the other kids that were there, but Matt and Miles were there watching and Miles was clapping and smiling..especially through the clean/jerk ladder! It's always fun having them around and I think Matt got a little more of an idea of what it is I do at the gym all the time. He only got to see a little bit of regionals and he's always supportive, regardless of his understanding of what I do, but it's nice to get to show him what I enjoy. Good Stuff!