If you’ve been following me, you know that last weekend we all competed at KO in the OK which is a Crossfit Competition held in Tulsa, OK. We had a wild weekend full of ups, downs, and a whole bushel of fitness.

Our gym, Crossfit 66 had a great showing this year. We sent 3 teams to compete, 1 masters and 2 scaled. Despite a surprise snow storm everyone managed to make it up to T-town.

Day 1

Our wake up call was 12 minutes of, burpees, rowing, and light power snatches. With fairly light weight and body moments this workout felt like running sprints. I was happy with how our team moved and transitioned between movements. Our team was mostly put together last minute with 2 of our people competing for the first time. Despite this, everyone acted like they’ve been there before.

Wod 2

This workout felt like a polar opposite to the first, each team mate had 3 minutes to perform 8-12 Calories on the Assault bike, and then find a max hang-snatch/ overhead squat. I was proud to see that everyone on our team was able to hit their openers and even make their practice weights.

Wod 3

This was my favorite event of the weekend. As a team we had to complete 12 rope climbs, 100 wall balls, 80 toes to bar, 70 kettle bell swings, and 150 Double Unders. We let the guys do all the rope climbs and the ladies took on a great deal of the wall balls. I love wods like this because, since 6 of us are sharing the work, when it’s your turn you can really turn on the juice and move as fast as possible.

Day 2

Based on our Saturday performance, we were placed into the scaled bronze bracket. So pretty much near the bottom of the pack but at least we weren’t’ last.

Wod 4

This was the workout I dreaded the most. 20 calories on the Assault bike, followed by 20 thrusters at a cool 105lbs on a fat bar and 10 pullups. My goal for this workout was to finish in less than 3 minutes and break up the thrusters as little as possible.

After getting off the bike I was redlining but I managed to break up the thrusters into sets of 5. When I got done with that I performed some pretty good looking butterflys to finish around 2:30. I was particularly impressed with our teammate, Nate Cmelick who got his thrusters done in 2 sets.

Are we going to the Semi-Finals

Nah, but we got close. After wod 4, the top 16 teams went on to the semis. I was looking forward to this one because it was a clean and jerk ladder and something I’ve been working on. It came down to us being in 16th place about to qualify. However, one team had yet to compete and would be able to knock us out if they beat our time.

This team had missed their original call time and asked to compete later in the day. We all sat in anticipation as they attacked wod 4. It was comical how closely matched, person for person, we were compared to them. As the guys made their way through the Assault bike and thrusters it was evident that we were ahead.

After their last guy finished, we were ahead by about a minute. However this wod was made up of a separate score for the men and the women. The women took off, and started chipping away at our lead. To beat us all they had to do was have their last girl finish the 20 calories on the bike. Their last female hopped on the bike with 1:20 seconds left. We all watched and waited for the judge to hold up his hand, signifying that she was almost done.

Time is up, and no hand! Awesome we qualified! Now we wait for the scores to update. Refresh, refresh, refresh. and….they knocked us out. You gotta be kidding me. My wife, who was watching the judge like a hawk, stormed down to the judges table to interrogate them.

They showed us the other team’s scorecard and sure enough, they finished all their calories just before the time cap. After that roller coaster ride of emotions we were sufficiently bummed out. We felt cheated as we took off all our gear. To make matters worse, we would have dominated the other team in the clean and jerk ladder. The only thing to do is work harder next year.

Takeaways

I always look for takeaways in life’s negative experiences or in this case, when things didn’t go 100% my way. Overall we enjoyed the event and plan on going back next year. To improve, I say our number one needs to be developing a cohesive team. We lost some time with our transitions between people and movements. We really didn’t train as a team much leading up to the event either so we could improve on that.

Personally it’s difficult to judge my own performance when I’m on a team. But I could for sure tell that my thrusters and Assault bike needs work. I need to spend time improving my lactate threshold which means Airbike sprints.

Why would you do this?

Why pay almost $80 a head and get up early all weekend to suffer through 4-6 grueling workouts? For me, I like getting into that flow state and having the laser focus that’s required for something like this. For 3 days, I didn’t worry about bills or work.

All I cared about was my team and my own performance. I love the camaraderie of suffering along side my team, and I love the fellowship we had later on. I love preparing for the event and feeling like a real athlete as we walk around the arena. I love hearing our team name called out when we do particularly well. I really love the struggle, and the triumph. I think it’s important to test yourself and put yourself into uncomfortable situations from time to time. I do it for the camaraderie, the competition, and the experience.

So why do you compete? I’d love to hear about it.