Brandon and I just got home from the CrossFit Games Southeast Regional competition, which was held in West Palm Beach, Florida this past weekend. We had a phenomenal time gallivanting and competing. Here’s my recap:

Pre-Day 1

We spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday cooking and prepping. Here’s what we brought:

Curried chicken salad, bananas, avocados, cut pineapple & mango, meatballs, sausage & eggs, sardines, coconut rice pudding (yes, we eat rice sometimes), chocolate, pepperoni, pre-roasted sweet potatoes stuffed with butter and heavy cream for coffee…because half ‘n half just doesn’t cut it.

Even though we brought a crap ton of food, we barely ate any of it. My nerves shot my appetite throughout the day, so I was starving by dinner time and cold or re-heated food wasn’t going to cut it. And really, when we’re faced with new food horizons, we feel obligated to eat and try each and every thing we can get our hands on, so we went out to dinner every single night.

Day 1

Day 1 started out with a 4 person workout, 2 men + 2 women, each gender had to complete 2 sets of 20 handstand pushups and 20 partner deadlifts. Brandon and I did this workout. That’s me in the center of the photo, the tall one. My badass partner is about 5’2 and I’m 5’9, so locking out at the top of the deadlift was really fun.

Communication started breaking down (along with my back) on our second set of deadlifts. We ended up 13th. Not a great start.

My back was totally jacked up after this workout. I spent the next few hours alternating icing it and getting it electropulsed. Okay, I don’t really know what it’s called. Some kind of pad/sensor thing was stuck on my back and I felt like I was being speed acupunctured by a handful of ninjas.

The second workout was another 4 person one, with 2 men + 2 women. There were 3 stations: row 1000 meters, then 25 alternating pistols (one legged squat), then 15 hang cleans (225 lbs for men, 135 lbs for women). Working one at a time, each teammate to complete all the above listed work. The first teammate would row 1000 meters, get off and advance to the pistols, while the second teammate would start the row. The second teammate couldn’t start their pistols until the first person had finished their pistols and so on and so forth until you finished the hang cleans.

Brandon and I both did this workout too. We ended up placing 4th (by like 10 seconds, grrr), which jacked us up to 7th overall at the end of day one. This was probably my favorite workout of the whole competition.

Brandon and I felt pretty good after Day 1. No real soreness, no complaints. We ended up eating at a restaurant in downtown West Palm Beach, Florida called Grease. We knife and forked some insanely greasy (I say this affectionately) blackened blue cheese & bacon burgers. We also got involved with some sweet potato fries/tater tots with sriracha mayo and Brandon polished off one of our teammates sweet potato sundae.

Day 2

Day 2 started off with a 2 person event, 1 man + 1 woman. Each person had to do 3 rounds of 10 alternating one-arm dumbbell snatches. Men had 100 lbs and women had 70 lbs. You had to some silly 100 meter sprint in between each round too. This workout KILLED a good majority of the girls, team and individual. Many, many, many of them didn’t finish the workout or didn’t do the minimum amount of reps (I think it was 10) to continue on the competition.

We placed 3rd on this workout and made it into the CrossFit Games recap video (nice still right?):

I was the only person that whole day that had the burpee penalty. The rule was that you had to do a burpee if you dropped your dumbbell. It was pretty much bullcrap. Not because I was innocent (I was guilty), but because the rule was only enforced on me. Whatever.

This is what I came home to on our gym’s comment board. I love my gym:

The second workout of day 2 was a nasty squat, pullup, shoulder-to-overhead workout for the 2 men + 2 women that didn’t do the first workout. The weird thing about this workout was that the barbell could never touch the ground. The girls had to start. They did their squats, then the men would hold the barbell while the girls went to do pullups, and so on and so forth until the girls were done. Then the boys would start and the girls would hold the boys’ barbell. If the barbell ever touched the ground, the team would incur a 1 minute penalty.

With a 25 minute time cap, not one team finished this workout.

Day 3

Day 3 started off with the Snatch Ladder. Men started at 155 lbs, women started at 105 lbs and we had 50 seconds each for the 3 men and women teammates to make a good snatch lift before you could move on the next, higher weight. You could try as often as time would allow, but once you didn’t make the lift, you were done-zo.

Brandon did phenomenally well. PR’d (personal record) his snatch by 20 lbs. We all agreed that the sweet potato sundae directly caused his PR.

Brandon sat in 235. He did it twice, but could never stand it up. But heck, let’s not be too greedy, I’d take a 20 lb PR.

I, on the other hand, was not happy after this workout. I power snatched 135 lbs right before we left and was thinking I could maybe, possibly hit 140 or 145 by the time I was all amped up on the competition floor.

Instead, I looked like I’d never picked up a barbell in my life. I mind f!@#d myself, evident in the photos:

Let me count the errors: 1.Lifted with my butt instead of my chest. 2.I didn’t keep the bar close into my body. 3. There was no pull under the bar.

I am still very irritated about this.

But on a happy, cheery note, our gym owner, the one and only, Paul Beckwith, snatched 285 lbs that day, highest of the day. He pulled 295 easy, sat in it and just couldn’t stand it up.

We tied for 1st place in the Snatch Ladder.

The last workout of the event, well…you can just see for yourself:

Okay, that was just for shock and awe. I’m fine. But obviously, I’m not that great at muscle ups.

The boys did great, but unfortunately, like all but the Snatch Ladder workout, how well you did really depended on the girls.

The boys started out this workout, they completed all their work, and then the girls would complete all of theirs. The boys came hauling in around 2nd/3rd, when we started.

We ended up DNF’ing the workout because we (the girls) couldn’t get through the first 20 muscle ups. It was sad, but honestly, we all knew it was coming. I felt bad, not because we didn’t finish, but because the boys weren’t ever really able to showcase how amazing they are. Brandon placed 31st and Robby, the guy in the gray shirt pictured above, placed 19th in the Open Southeast, one of the largest and hardest regions.

After flip-flopping between 4th and 7th all weekend, we ended up 7th overall. Which honestly, I’m content with that. With 13th, 4th, 3rd, 16th, 1st, and 11th place finishes, we just weren’t consistent enough. Too many weaknesses. We didn’t deserve to make it the Games in California. I don’t train for this. I do the scheduled gym WOD 3-4 times a week, and will occasionally lift on my own, that’s it. Brandon is definitely more dedicated and motivated than I am.

It’s hard for me to stay motivated. I realized this once the CrossFit Games Open started. I rarely go 100% day-to-day, I just don’t care enough (unless it’s a benchmark). I think I’m a lazy athlete. But when I had to enter my score for the Open, a score for the world see (not like anyone is actually looking), I was finally motivated to go balls to the wall. I was excited and I wanted to kick some ass. But by that point, I was only going to do what I trained up to that point to do, which wasn’t much.

So I’m happy we drove that 20 hours because it has definitely fueled my fire. I’ve got an itch for next year and training started yesterday.