Great Barrington, Massachusetts www.crossfitgreatbarrington.com

So this time my travels brought me back east to Massachusetts where I went to CrossFit Great Barrington.

As I walked from the parking lot to the gym I could already hear a lot of yelling and motivation then as I walked in it was a smaller class since it was later in the morning but Mike Bissaillon, the owner, was just as excited with the small class as he is with larger classes. Watching and talking with Mike you could tell he was very keyed up about what he did and CrossFit.

Before the WOD for my class started I talked with Mike for a little and it’s always fun hearing how people were exposed to CrossFit, some get exposed through friends, sports, just luck etc... I asked Mike how he was exposed to CrossFit and he attended a KettleBell Competition……I had no idea there were KettleBell Competitions, so Mike noticed that a lot of people doing the best at these competitions were CrossFit athletes. Since Mike was a personal trainer before CrossFit, he was always looking for the latest and greatest methods to get himself and his clients in the best shape. So when he looked up CrossFit after being exposed to them at the KettleBell Competitions he was hooked and it was a natural progression for him to move from personal training to CrossFit. Funny how so many people that come from so many different backgrounds come to the same conclusion about CrossFit after their first exposure to it.

This week I caught their gym on CrossFit Games Week. They were doing the WODs from the 2010 CrossFit Games and today’s WOD was:

Seven rounds for time of:

205 pound Clean, 3 reps

4 Ring handstand push-ups

Now when I watched this WOD during the games I thought the power cleans looked easiest but the ring hand stand pushups looked ridiculous and where everyone lost time. I am advanced but wasn’t ready to do this WOD with ring handstand push-ups so I scaled this wod to regular Handstand Push-ups on 45 pound plates and 1 ab mat for my head to hit for each rep. Since I scaled the ring handstand pushups I thought I’d destroy this WOD and go faster than the top games athletes like Graham Holmberg who completed it in 4:26 or Chris Spealler (who weighs 140ish) that did it in 4:27. Sure I’m not a top ranked world class CrossFit athlete competitor like those guys but I am an advanced CrossFit practitioner and since I scaled the WOD I should blow through it like a champ.

Now I’m strong and still this weight was humbling. I originally figured this would be an easier quick wod but what happened was I went through the first 2 rounds pretty fast but by round 3 the weight got EXTREMELY heavy. I was missing reps and had to take breaks in between power cleans. I had no idea this would be my slow area. When I watched the games, the athletes made the 205 pound power cleans seem like a nuisance time kill exercise that was easy and in their way as they went to the difficult part of the WOD. This was the complete opposite for me. The handstand push-ups I was able to blow through but had to break up and rest the 205 pound power cleans. They were heavyyyyyy, so another humbling, yet fun, WOD that kicked my butt which I completed in a much much MUCH slower time than the games athletes who did it with ring handstand push-ups.

Mike and crew were a lot of fun and have a great place, I felt bad I was going to miss their going away WOD/BBQ they were having later that night for one of their college kids heading to school. If I’m in the area again I’ll definitely stop by. I had a Great time. http://www.crossfitgreatbarrington.com/

Hello Statue of Liberty

Hello Statue of Liberty

You're welcome

No story just a picture of two really good looking guys for your viewing pleasure.

YOU'RE WELCOME!!!

Fun weekend floatin the river and one minor hiccup

What a fun weekend. A group from CrossFit Bellevue decided to put a group of people from the gym to float the river. It was a fun group of gym members and friends of friends.

It was a nice relaxing float, everyone was having a great time and relaxing. About the third hour into the trip we come to the spot where people are climbing logs and jumping into the river. It looks pretty safe, tons of drunks are doing it so two sober people should have no problem.

I go the first time and come out unharmed So i'm about to jump a second time and decide to coax Erin to get up and do it too. Erin at first says no but I start ribbing her that tons of chicks are doing it and there are drunks everywhere doing it so since she's sober, she'll be fine.

Normally this isn't something she normally does but it's my job to help her past her comfort zone, after a little bit of talking her into it she decides to jump in. We are on the log and Erin looks at me and goes "this is pretty irresponsible" I go naaaaaaaaaa it's fun. She's climbing out onto the log and as she's there a group of drunken people lose control of their rafts and float right under where she's at, so she can't jump otherwise she'll land right on them. Erin starts to lose balance and instead of jumping in on top of them she jumps closer to shore and hits a very shallow area, lands straight leg and breaks her knee(Tibial Plateau Fracture). Just a fluke and crappy timing for what was still a great day.

I was asked by other friends if I felt guilty for talking Erin into jumping off the log but the truth is I've been talking her into doing stuff she never wanted to initially do since I met her. 1. marrying me 2. doing CrossFit 3. Last minute trip to Italy and other traveling 4. getting tattoos etc.... there are lots more and they all worked out great, so Erin didn't get mad at me for talking her into it, we both agreed it was just a fluke.................I'll still think twice before talking her into doing nutty stuff where she can possibly get hurt, however i'll still jump off the nearest object and ride the baddest bull, WHAT'S UP!!!! :-)

Besides it's not a party unless someone gets arrested or breaks something :)

Trip Back to Alaska and paid a visit to Revolution Sports Training, Crossfit Alaska

Yay!!!!! I got to go back to Anchorage, Alaska this weekend for a wedding, and I was able to squeeze in two visits to Revolution Sports Training, Crossfit Alaska.

I had a busy busy weekend with being in the wedding so I was only able to go there during the days since my evenings were jam packed.

I flew in Friday and Landed at 10am, my third phone call was to the gym to see what times they had available.

Their Friday WOD:

“Going towards the Light”

10 Pushups, 20 sit-ups, 30 double unders

20 pushups, 30 sit-ups, 40 double unders

&.As many rounds in 20 min as possible

I wound up completing

Pushups Sit-ups Double Unders

10 20 30

20 30 40

30 40 50

40 50 60

50 60 70

34(time ran out)

Grand Total

184 pushups 200 sit-ups and 250 Double Unders.

Very fun WOD, this is one I plan on doing again in 3-6 months to see if I made any improvement. I hit failure a bunch of times in pushups so I can make up time and reps there. Sit-ups I stayed pretty steady and didn’t need to break them up much. I made up time on double unders, I can knock these out pretty quick and link a lot together. Towards the later rounds I did trip up more than I have liked so I could still see significant time improvements here too.

So ultimately, I was happy with how I did. I’m not going to lie, going into the gym my goal wasn’t to destroy the wod, get the top time then do some air humping while screaming out how awesome I am. I save that for back home. My goal was to “not suck” and perform in or near the top group of people. I know cf Alaska hasn’t seen me at their gym since I moved last year and I wanted to make a good showing. This is just an outstanding gym with a lot of hard core crossfitters and elite athletes training there, so even though I’m 37, the competitive ego maniac in me wanted to make sure I earned my Crossfit street credit with them, dammit.

After the WOD I had to go get ready for the wedding rehearsal dinner then the bachelor party. CF Alaska holds an Advanced Crossfit Class once a week on Saturdays at noon, so I told everyone at the gym that I’ll be in for this class no matter what time I finish the night.

So I went out for the bachelor party and we had our nails done, got a facial and consumed a lot of milk and cookies. It was a fun night. You know you’ve had too much milk and cookies when you’re outside a “Chuck E Cheese” at 3:30am and a stranger leaving “Chuck E Cheese” brushes the glitter off your shoulder that must have gotten on you from Chuck E Cheese bumping against you, then the stranger offers you a swig from their flask of milk and you say ok…..Always a bad decision.

I finally get to sleep at 4am-ish, now anytime I consume too much milk and cookies my body punishes me where instead of sleeping it off, I’ll wake up really early so I’m awake for the pain. I wound up waking up at 730am, I actually felt pretty good but that was because I was still feeling the happy effects of the milk and cookies…….as the morning went on it turned from happy Ron to this is the most pain I’ve had since got sick and blew an eye vessel from consuming too much milk and cookies.

I laid there watching t.v. wishing I could go to sleep and debating whether or not to go to the gym. I told Clay and Tony I’d make it in plus I hadn’t seen Sith yet and I really wanted to meet up with him and workout. Ok here is another thing I’m not proud of, while laying there debating on if I should go to the gym or not I tried to find reasons to dislike Tony, Clay and Sith. I thought if I could think of things they did that were mean and bad to me, I’d start to dislike them and then I wouldn’t feel guilty for skipping the gym and breaking my word. It’s dirty but I wasn’t in the right frame to make rational decisions. Unfortunately or fortunately, I couldn’t think of something so at 11am I decided to get up, take a shower and head to the gym.

Now Clay doesn’t like to announce what the wod is for the CF Advanced class until a few minutes before it starts. He announces his regular cf classes the day before but his advanced class gets something special. So I’m there hoping…..HOPING his advanced class will have muscle ups and heavy weights. I wanted to do higher technical skills and heavy weights with less reps than a lot exercises where I’m going up and down a lot.

This is what Clay broke to the crew:

“3’s a Crowd”

3 minutes to accumulate 30 seconds in a free standing hand stand.

If you go over 30 seconds then divide by 2 is the stager at the start of the WOD.

Then Perform:

Jackie – 1,000 Meter row, fifty 45 pound thrusters, 30 pull-ups

Diane – 21-15-9 Deadlift 225 pounds and Hand Stand Pushups

Grace – 30 reps Clean and Jerk 135 pounds.

You can do them in any order but must complete it in 30 minutes.

I struggled which one to start with. I dislike rowing the most of all the exercises but thought if I burned that wod hard I’d puke and be worthless for everything else. I didn’t know if I could do a HSPU in my condition, doing anything upside down could be really bad for me. I wound up deciding to do Diane first, my thought was let’s see if I can do a handstand pushups and get them over with right away then see if gravity will help whatever is left in my stomach rush out violently.

I had a 1 minute and thirty second lag before I could start the wod because of how long it took me to get the 30 second hand stand. And funny as soon as they said 3…2..1…GO for everyone else, I ran right to the bathroom and puked before my first movement. YAY me, this is going to go great. I got back just in time for me to start. The deadlifts felt really light, it could have been because I was so focused on the pain in my head and holding in the dry heaving feeling. I burned through Diane in a decent time for my condition, I don’t know how my technique was or if I had full range of motion but I really didn’t care. After I completed my last 9 HSPU I did run outside for a quick dry heave, I really wished I had something in me to come out, dry heaving hurts.

I moved on to Grace, I knocked out 10 reps in a row, I could have done more but the up and down motion was hitting my head pretty hard so I had to break them up 5 at a time after that until the gremlins stopped jack hammering in my head. Once this was done I looked at the rower and started swearing to myself. Why did I save the row for last? STUPID STUPID STUPID. Now on a normal day I’d hit a wod like Jackie and be mad if I rowed slower than a 1:50 500 meter splits for my row time(I’m not the greatest but I’m not the worst rower), todayyyyyyy I was hoping for 2 minutes or faster but wound up being happy with my 2:15 splits :-) hey it was over and that was the best part. Looking at 50 thrusters after the row and at the end of a long WOD with feeling like I did was horrible. I would normally knock all 50 of the light thrusters in a row out butttttt I have no idea how I broke these up, I know I lost count when I was in my 30’s so I honestly did somewhere in the 40’s to 50-ish thrusters. Then I moved onto the pull-ups, time was running out so I was only able to get 10 before the 30 minute cap was over. It’s a long grinding wod I would normally like for a Saturday. I don’t wish I did better, I was just happy I showed up and survived.

It was good to be back at the Alaska gym, had a great time seeing the people from before and the new he and she-studs they are developing.

Oh p.s. Way to go Sith, he was Ripped and killing the WOD!!!! I’ve known Sith for years and we partied in Vancouver B.C. together. Back then his main form of exercising was battle break dancing and playing volleyball vs. elementary school kids. He looked like a modern day bruce lee but just a different nationality with a big cheesy smile on his face………However I'm sure Sith will still battle dance against you in a second. Clay and Tony need to come up with a special WOD for Sith with a mix of CrossFit and Break Dancing, then post the video so we can enjoy :-)

p.s.s. Sorry If I wasn't very talkative Saturday but when I feel that way there is not an ounce of wit, conversation or funny in my body. All personality is gone until I'm recovered

A special Crossfit Moment brought to you today by Heavy Squat Clean Thrusters

WOD: Five rounds of 5-squat cleant thruster, 10 Chest to bar pull-ups.

weights: men 135 women 95

My time: 8:58

This Crossfit moment is brought to you today by “heavy squat clean thrusters”.

Yesterday’s WOD is one of the many reasons why Crossfit and the community separates itself from personal trainers and globo-gyms. I went in excited about the workout but already had it planned in my head that I would scale the weight. I’ve done heavy thrusters before but not 135 pound squat clean thrusters and I wanted to really burn the workout so thought it would be best to scale down.

On a regular day I’ll go into the gym and look at the white board to see everyone’s time. I’ll look through and use someone as a guide to what times to shoot for, what weights to use and who to try and beat for time and score. This guide helps me to really get that extra little push and intensity, I’ve been doing it since day one I started cf but then it was don’t come in dead last and month after month I’d pick someone higher and higher to shoot for.

You can walk into a cf gym go up to someone and ask “what was your weight or time”; you can’t do that at a globo-gym or personal trainer.

Here are a couple of conversations for you, first one at a globo-gym:

Me: Hey what did you curl over there

globo-nerd: I did 35 pound dumbbells, eight reps. My guns got a good burnnnnn

Me: Dude I’m going to totally smoke you and do 10 reps because I’m AWESOME!!!!!

globo-nerd: Get away from me dumb a$$ I’m going to work on my pecks then hit the tanning bed.

Now if you go up to someone in a cf gym and have a similar conversation:

Me: What was your time today?

Crossfit addict: It’s tough one today, I got 8:57

Me: Not bad, I assume I’ll get 8:56 or better because I’m AWESOME!!!!!

Crossfit addict: Hahahaha you dummy, not a chance you’ll gas after the first round.

The difference is they’ll stay around and watch, cheer you on to beat them, be excited if you do beat them and be just as excited if you don’t, then after you can still talk trash, have fun and grab a beer.

So back to yesterday, I went in thinking I’d scale the wod then looked at the white board and saw Levi did level 3, when I saw that I said to myself “Fu**ing levi, A$$ Face, Butt munching, pain in my junk” Now I’m not taking anything away from levi, he’s a stud, but weighs a lot less than me. I originally wanted to scale but since I saw he did level 3 at 135 pounds, I felt obligated to do it too. Which was a good thing because I had a good wod, got it completed in a decent time. So ultimately that whiteboard again helped push me to something I wouldn’t voluntarily do on my own.

Again, this Crossfit moment is brought to you today by “heavy Squat Clean Thrusters” and Fu**ing levi, the “A$$ Face, Butt munching, pain in my junk”

p.s. and yes, I beat Levi's time(cough cough by over 3 minutes cough cough), not that it's important to point that out butttt I'M AWESOME!!!!!!!

Valdosta Georgia www.crossfitvaldosta posted by Erin

I went to Valdosta, Georgia to visit my very good friend Tracy and her family. Of course my husband being the freak he is said that I had to visit a Crossfit gym while I was there for a few days. Sure I was going to do it anyway because both JT (Tracey’s Husband) and Kayla (their daughter) train at Crossfit Valdosta and secretly I love doing Crossfit too so I’d even go on my weekend of hanging out, wine drinking and gossiping with Tracy :-)

I arrived Friday morning and had some time to kill during the day. It was about noon and I wanted to burn off some energy so I decided to go for a run. I told Tracy I was about to go running and she called me absolutely crazy and that nobody goes running in Georgia during June at noon. I might actually explode into dust. I laughed it off and went anyway……….HOLY CRAP IT WAS HOT. I used to run . . . a lot! I ran 6 days a week. I’ve ran 5K and 10K races. I ran a half marathon and was training for a 110 mile team relay and hoping to do a full marathon. Needless to say, I love running but I made it about 1 mile and had to stop. . . yes 1 mile! Then I noticed that there were no people on the street. Being from Seattle you are used to seeing people biking, walking, running everywhere. I was literally the only person on the street. When I got back to the house everyone was just laughing giving me a lot of I told you so’s. They thought it was so funny that when they introduced me to other people they opened it with “this is our friend Erin from Seattle can you believe she tried to run outside at noon, hahahahahaha”.

I made plans with Kayla and JT to visit their box, www.crossfitvaldosta.com, on Saturday. Saturday is when their gym does the Hero WOD’s and longer, intense Crossfit wods. The owner of the gym, Trebor Marple, gave Kayla and JT a warning about bringing me to the Saturday WOD and emphasized this is a longer hard wod, are you sure she’s up for it. This freaked them out wondering if they were up for it. They have been in Crossfit for a year and never did a Saturday workout before. They were now questioning if they were ready for a Saturday WOD. JT was sweating the whole time worrying how wrecked he’d get from the wod.

So Saturday finally comes around and we’re doing:

"The Seven"

Seven rounds for time of:
7 Handstand push-ups
135 pound Thruster, 7 reps
7 Knees to elbows
245 pound Deadlift, 7 reps
7 Burpees
7 Kettlebell swings, 2 pood
7 Pull-ups

They started the timer with a cap of 35 minutes. I didn’t think I’d need it but it was nice to know it was there because workouts always look so much more fun and easy on the board. So we’re in the workout and after round 3 I felt my hands start to rip, normally if they get bad at my gym I’ll stop and modify my pull-ups for pushups because once their torn Im pretty worthless. I didn’t want to look like a pansy so I just kept plugging on feeling my hands get worse and worse. Plus, Trebor, the owner of the gym was working out with us and from what I know, had been severely injured when he was hit by a car while training for a triathalon and crossfit helped him recover, he’s a beast. Here is his a link to his bio http://www.crossfitvaldosta.typepad.com/trebor_marple/ . I couldn’t very well bitch about my little ripped hands while this dude is killing the wod right next to me. The time limit was coming near and JT, Kayla and I were still going, we mentally high fived each other because the workout was almost out of time. I was finishing up my thrusters as the time neared so instead of moving to knees to elbows I skipped to the deadlift because I didn’t want to just quit but I didn’t think my hands could endure any more, then I went onto the burpees and kettle bell swings. I had another three rounds to go when the timer ran out and then Trebor yells “Don’t stop, don’t worry about the time limit just keep going” ……….WHAT THE WHAT! I was trying to hide the pain on my face as my hands ripped open more and more and now to finish the round I had to do my knees to elbows and pull-ups back to back. I threw on gloves but that didn’t work. I ripped those off. One of the guys who had finished grabbed some tape and tried to tape up my hands but between the blood and sweat, that easily fell off. They were nice enough to let me finish my knees to elbows on the rings instead of the bars to help with the sliding. I was finally on my last round of pull-ups and as Kayla was standing there cheering me on a piece of my hand skin fell off and floated ever so gently passed her face to the floor. I was literally holding back tears. Everyone in the gym was very cool as they finished they hung around and were cheering us on, I have no idea how they all knew my name but I kept hearing them yell “push it Erin, go go” So no stopping now, push through the pain.

Finally I finished. I’m so happy I moved on but I knew I wouldn’t be able to do a pull-up or anything on the bar for a couple of weeks. My hands were ripped up really bad.

I had a great trip visiting friends. The box was awesome, Trebor and Kate were great, Trebor was a rockstar and a great coach. After he finished his WOD he grabbed his gear and started doing reps next to the group to try and push them through the end.