“Holleyman”
30 rounds for time of:
5 Wall ball shots, 20 pound ball
3 Handstand push-ups
225 pound Power clean, 1 rep
(intake workout for next skill block)

Recap of the Colorado Open

Two weeks ago, four athletes at Roots competed in the Colorado Open.  Shane recaps the weekend and his experience below:

I haven’t competed in a CF competition outside of the CrossFit Open in almost 4 years.  The last one I did was a team competition in Georgia before the CrossFit Open even existed.  Two weeks ago that changed when I showed up with Chris Dizon, Blaine Guenther, and Walker Savidge to compete in the Colorado Open.  Here is what went down:

Saturday, day 1, we show up to the venue, check-in, and setup our tent for the weekend.  It’s fairly early and we have a couple of hours to burn before our first of three wods for the day.  We spent our time-to-burn talking about both related and non-related CF topics, walking around and talking to other athletes, and the occasional run to the nearest Starbucks.

Event 1 was a triplet of bar jump overs, overhead squats, and toes to bar.  The overhead squat weight was 95# so not super light but not heavy either.  15 each round wasn’t going to be fun for unbroken but it was doable, and necessary to be competitive.  It turned into a true breather and the bar jumps were an unforeseen obstacle.  Walker took 2nd overall with a blistering time of 3:55.

Event 2 was a floater wod, meaning that we could each choose to do it at any time during the day.  This wod consisted of two 500m rows with rest in between.  Your score were you total times added together.  We decided it would be more fun to do together and we all agreed to knock it out about 1.5 hours after the first event.  With friends nearby and screaming at us to go faster everyone completed the wood with great results and sea legs.  Blaine took 10th overall with the rest of the gang posting solid times as well.  The winner of this event rowed his first 500m in 1:21!

Roughly 2 hours later and we had event 3 to consider.  This was another triplet of three different barbell movements: deadlift, power clean, power snatch.  This time we only had 1 round to consider but 20 reps of each movement.  Blaine took 5th overall in this one and Dizon showed a hard charge toward the end that jumped him up a few spots as well.

Sunday we didn’t have to bother with check-ins and so the day took a later start.  Event 4 was an obstacle course involving a wall and a sandbag and included box step-ups, lunges and sprinting.   After it was over, there was a 3min AMRAP of rope climbs to be completed.  Everyone showed their skills on the rope climb beautifully posting top scores with a high of 13 and a low of 8.  I got the audience fired-up as I leaped up to touch the top of my last climb with only milli-seconds left on the clock.

The final event, event 5, was a ladder of sorts that built up from burpees to pullups and then defended back to burps by-way of front squat and push jerks.  In my opinion it was the worst workout, but I was also feeling pretty beat up by this point.  Walker was the only one left with a chance at a podium finish but it would require nothing less than a top-3 performance on this last wod.  The crowd was amped as it was the last wod of the day and the final group.  At the “go” Walker set-out with a blistering pace, but as the workout progressed he just could not hold it.  As many of our eyes were on Walker I glanced over to see how Blaine was doing only to see that he was in contention with another athlete to win the event!  I immediately started screaming as loud as possible as Blaine sprinted through his final burpees to take 3rd in the event.

Overall, I would say the weekend was a great success.  Walker finished 4th, Blaine 10th, Dizon 19th and myself 71st. 

I have no desire to be a true competitor of CrossFit but this event did help me break through a plateau in my own training.  Leaving the weekend I have been reminded of how much more my body is capable of when my mind is out of the way; I’m reminded that there are a lot of people out there pushing themselves much harder than I am;  I’m reminded of the camaraderie built amongst a group of people when they’re suffering through the same stuff side by side.  I look forward to seeing how Roots does in the 2014 CrossFit Open.