For time:
100-meter walking lunge
800-meter run
100 squats

Regionals Recap

What a weekend!  First off, thanks to everyone who came to Salt Lake, watched from home, or sent words of encouragement throughout the weekend.  The support from the Roots Crew was incredible.

CrossFit Roots finished 7th overall in the South West Region and while we had high hopes of qualifying for the Games, we fell short in a few areas that put us out of contention.  Here’s a recap of the weekend!

Day 1 – Friday
Day 1 started off with the muscle-up and clean and jerk team relay.  While on paper and in practice it seemed like it would be a strong event for the team, it didn’t go exactly as planned as Nicole’s 15 muscle-ups didn’t go exactly as planned.  That being said, the team walked away with a 9th place finish overall in Event 1.  They all knew as a team that Event 2/3 would be the biggest challenge.  The team went 11 for 12 on the hang squat snatches but even with the team’s strong individual performances, their snatch totals overall landed the team in 15th place in Event 2.  Event 3, the handstand walk was a challenge.  The team spent a considerable amount of time over the past month working on handstand walking but as many of you know, this is a skill that takes awhile to develop and small bits of practice add up.  Abby put in the furthest distance at 100 feet but the team struggled to put together consistent hand walks and finished the event in 19th place.

As a side note, it was absolutely impressive to see the depth of handstand walking across the regions and throughout the teams.  As a community we often respect a person’s one rep max snatch way more than their ability to handstand walk.  If you review World-Class Fitness in 100 Words you’ll see that weightlifting and gymnastics should be developed equally.  Maybe we should start thinking of a well rounded athlete as the one who can snatch in pounds the same distance they can handstand walk in feet!  

Day 2 – Saturday
The team started Day 2 in 16th place but they wouldn’t stay there for long.  The women kicked off Day 2 with a 5th place performance in Event 4, the thruster rope climb event.  The men would follow up with a 2nd place finish in Event 5 of the same workout.  Those two events would pull the team from 16th to 6th.  Roots would go on to put together a jaw dropping performance in Event 6.   Only 20 teams across all Regionals finished this workout in under the time cap and just four in the South West Regional.  Blaine, Walker, Cindy, Nicole, and Abby all did their handstand push-up sets unbroken.  Roots took 2nd place in this workout and Dave showed the athlete that he is by perfectly executing his most challenging event.  Roots would go home in 5th place after Day 2.

Around 4pm that afternoon, things took a turn for the worse.  After a low-key afternoon Nicole started to get sick, and after vomiting for multiple hours, Alyssa took Nicole to Urgent Care.  While getting a few bags of IV fluids, Alyssa got a text from Blaine that he too had started to throw up.

Day 3 – Sunday
After a long night and lots of anti-nausea meds the team made their way back to the competition on Sunday morning only to learn that multiple athletes from multiple teams had also been sick all night long.  A virus had hit the athletes and judges.  More than 20 athletes, team and individual, would not be able to compete on Sunday.

Events 7 and 8 went very well overall.  While Blaine and Nicole were sick, once the clock started, they powered through and the team turned in solid performances in both events.

In the end the team finished 7th overall in the South West Regional!

Having now competed in five CrossFit regionals over six years, it warms my heart to see the breadth of development across teams and individuals.  The caliber of athletes that go to compete that have each mastered such a vast number of skills, drills, and loads would have been unfathomable just a few years ago.  It is humbling and inspiring to see the depth of capacity across the top teams in the South West.  Whether you do CrossFit for sport or health, or hopefully both, it is inspiring to know that the examples we see in front of us every day should remind us only that anything is possible with consistent and broad dedication.

Thank You!

A huge thank you to our vast support system!  First off, thanks to our families for the support over the past three months and for making the trip – Alyssa, Dave’s Dad Tom who made the trip from New York, Eric, Harriet, Drew, Dyer, Julie, and Kayan.

Thanks to Stef, Ali, Lisa, Dizon, Megan, Arlene, Brendi, Andrea, Joe, Kim, Adam, Ryan, and Katie for coming out to cheer us on!

And finally, a huge thank you to our incredible body support staff of Charlie Merrill and Shane Upchurch.  Over the past three months, the team has seen Charlie, of Merrill Performance, once a week to help us stay fresh, prevent injury, and work through movement deficiencies.  While at the competition, Charlie and Shane worked on each of us at the venue and at home to keep us ready and rearing to go.  Their passion for what they do to help athletes of all types perform better, heal, and improve comes through in so many ways and we are lucky to have them at Roots.