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FCF- FCF
The Clang and Bang Vol. 5 Partner Comp - Re-cap
Let's start off by saying I enjoy competing. In my elder years I've really enjoyed learning to compete against myself rather than others and it's worth mentioning that my enjoyment level because of this has gone up exponentially. I also have exactly 0 plans to compete as an individual, I get so much more enjoyment out of doing team things, as will be explained in full here shortly. It's also why I rarely mention placings, because I realize placings are just a product of the people/teams around you. We could have finished 1st, or 17th... all without changing any of our scores. So my reflections almost universally are about me and my team alone. If anything, in this particular comp, the team that won the intermediate division (in which I competed), won every single workout by a large margin and most likely should have competed in the Rx division. So I decided to just marvel in their talent instead of getting all twisted up about it. They were quite good and fun to watch.
Basic Information:
-Any Gender pairing, M/M M/F F/F, partner competition held over 1 day in Topeka, KS at Lionheart Athletic Performance and Fitness.
-3 workouts + 1 Floater WOD. No Finals (thank God)
-Too many divisions, but the standard Rx, Intermediate, and Scaled were available
-Partnered with Keara in the Intermediate Division amongst 5 teams
-Keara's first CrossFit competition
WOD 1:
Keara and I are either great partners or terrible partners. This is because we're incredibly similar athletes when it comes to strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately in this case, both partners being weak in gymnastics and the entire workout being... gymnastics, made for a fun start to the day. We had the opportunity to strategize this workout but not test it. The reps were split however the team chose, and I "tested" this workout by myself one day doing half the reps and trying to rest the other half and didn't make it through the HSPU before getting time capped. Expectations were low. One of the things I know best from competing in the past though is that "Adrenaline is a hell of a drug". One of the programming flaws of the competition was that they didn't know what to do with mixed gender pairings. M/M had to do 24 cals, F/F had to do 18, but F/M ALSO had to do 24 cals. This was fine, it just meant to be competitive, I had to do all the Ski Erg. I'm pretty good at the ski erg, no big deal. That meant Keara would try and open and close each movement set in between so I could be ready to ski. One other thing to mention is that at 6'2 I am a tall CrossFit athlete and we had to share a pull-up bar. Keara had moments of adversity all throughout the day and the first one was needing to JUMP to an extra high bar just so her freakish partner wouldn't drag his feet when he was kipping. CrossFit = the unknown and unknowable. We came out hot and things went well. We split the 40 T2B with K12-T18-K10. I was pretty proud of my 18 UB T2B and still have more in the tank, but again, adrenaline is a hell of a drug. We split Pull-Ups and the Keara did all 30 lunges so I could go HAM on the Skier. Proud to say, we were actually 1st in our heat of 4 going in to the HSPU's. Then we remembered gymnastics are a weakness... I'm actually super happy with how this went. We chunked out the HSPU and C2B's were done in sets of 1-3, AND WE DIDN'T GET TIME CAPPED!!!! Competitions are great for pointing out flaws, my guess is you'll see both of us doing extra C2B work in the alcove the rest of 2021. Time: 11:52 Place: 4th
WOD 2:
Once again, the mixed gender pairings programming issue came up with this one. Once again, it didn't really affect us. Basically it came down to I would need to do the Assault Bike Calories and she would need to do the Burpees for us to be competitive. I'm good at the Assault Bike. She's good at burpees. 🤷♂️ One thing to note is that local competitions are run by local gyms and the judges are volunteers, usually members from that gym. I correlate these things to food service. These people are here to do a service for the teams and their gyms and are trying their best for no pay. They WILL mess something up, don't be a dick about it. It started with my bike not counting calories to begin the 1st round. Not sure what happened, we got past it. Then, in what is my absolute proudest moment of Keara throughout the entire day: She did her 10 Burpee Box Jump Overs and I was at the deadlift bar ready to go, however the judge told her she had 1 more rep to do. She knew she had done 10, I knew she had done 10, THE TEAM WATCHING RIGHT NEXT TO US ON THE SIDE KNEW SHE HAD DONE 10... so what did she do? 1. More. Rep. In a 2 min AMRAP there's not time for anything but "yes sir, yes ma'am". How many times in pro sports do you see someone arguing they got fouled only for their man to go score on the other side, or complaining about a holding call and then not make it to the line of scrimmage. This mature ass woman shut her damn mouth and did another rep and guess what, after the bike not starting and the miscount, we were still the first team to start deadlifting. We hear it all the time, we tell it to our children, but you can't change what happens to you, all you can do is change how you react to it. That's my freaking partner, let's roll. We ended up being the first team to the deadlifts on every round. Reps: 150 Place: 2nd (Reminder there was an Rx team in our division that won every event handily)
Floater WOD:
A floater WOD is just that, you can do it at any part of the day and it's not at a set time done in heats. The image above is all we knew going in...
It ended up being: 10 minutes to find a 1RM of Shoulder to Overhead. The catch was that the buy-in was a 400m team sled drag, switching at any point. Most teams got done with the sled drag in 4-5 minutes and with some toasty legs. With adversity surrounding her every event, we were only allowed to use one bar. Males and Females typically use a different bar that is both different in weight AND in thickness. Being the absolute monster of a mentally tough competitor she is, Keara said let's just use the guy's bar. It's subtle, but it's definitively different.
Again, the sled weight for MF was the same as MM and Keara was doing the work of a male competitor. (I'm pretty sure she actually liked it). I probably pulled the sled a little more but that was always the plan and she would lift first on fresher legs once we got it. In order to compare all the gendered teams they used a Sinclair score which gives lighter athletes more credit for bigger lifts. Without explaining it all, this event was still heavily skewed towards men. Even though Keara weighs less than me and from a percentage standpoint, lifted more than me, and her form was 100x more beautiful than mine (which never matters in a comp, just proud teammate moment), my score was still much higher than hers. We both hit numbers most likely in the 90-95% range of our true max, but that was on toasty legs and 2 WOD's already in the books. I'll take it.
Travis S2O: 225 lbs
Keara S2O: 155 lbs
Place: 2nd
WOD 3:
Narrator Aside: "Everything in fact, would not be fine"
We actually did get a chance to test this workout before we went, which is why I was in a bad mental state about it all day. All the movements have to be done synchronized, but either partner can do the DU penalty. Basically, your score is that of your worst athlete, no one can carry the load themselves. This was far and away my best and worst workout. Please note neither of those words was "favorite". Let's cut to the chase, I bombed this one. I got 100% absolutely and completely destroyed. The reps aren't that many, the weight isn't that high, it. just. didn't. matter. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move, at one point I think I tried to call my mom? Up until this point, we had been equal teammates. This was my worst moment.
This was my best moment. I got to live all the things we talk about. I continuously tell people to check their ego, yet we all want to be the hero in our own stories. I took the first round of double unders, 30 unbroken. In fact, I watched a guy leaning on a ski-erg make it tip over and fall down while jumping (he's fine), and stayed unphased. But that was the wrong call. I didn't want to admit, whether to myself, or to her, that Keara was the captain here. That her fitness in this realm is far superior to mine. She did the next set of Double Unders. And then when it was my turn again... she did those too. And then when it was my turn again... I did 4, so she went ahead and did all those. I am lucky/thankful/in awe that my partner's mental game is what it is. I took our pre-game strategy and threw acid on it and she just rolled. After she did her double unders she'd come back to the bar where I was still hunched over and tell me she was ready when I was, waiting on me- even though I had just done nothing compared to her 30 DU's. The right call for our team would have been for me to plan on her carrying me and being ok with it, I sure as heck know she would have been. Check your ego's, choose the right partner. Lived in full.
This was my best moment. It was our 4th set I believe and I'm full on in the middle of my complete and total meltdown. We had just finished our 5th hang clean and in 99 other instances I would have dropped the bar. If it were a practice round, I drop it. If I were competing as an individual, I drop it. Keara caught her 5th hang clean and IMMEDIATELY dropped into a squat to start the thruster. Sitting in the bottom of a squat, 6+ rounds through the complex, having done the last 2 sets of DU's unbroken, she pauses, looks up at me, and confidently as if her words were empowering the very cells in my body "Let's do this". Every rep was my last, I swear to you. But together we made it through 3 more thrusters and 1 last shoulder to overhead. Those were the reps that don't happen alone, they don't happen outside of a competition, and they sure as hell don't happen without a truly badass partner somehow moving your own body for you. I got substantially better in those 4 reps and not a single one of them was done due to anything I had. This is why I love CrossFit and why I love competing. I learned so much. BTW, Thank you Keara.
Reps: 7+5 -> 4 breaks
Place: 4th
Final Recap:
As a gym owner and someone who also runs events, I hope I didn't come off too harsh about the mixed gender workouts. It truly was a well ran event, great competition as 2nd-4th place were separated by 1 point, the judges were phenomenal, the people were outwardly friendly. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone's first competition, but if you know what you're doing, they definitely have their stuff in order and ran a great Saturday.
Keara's wife Dana took AMAZING photo's all day. I'm not a photo taker, I try to be in the moment but I can say having a whole slew of amazing action shots at the end of the day was pretty darn hype, especially coming from our #1 cheering section, so shout out to Dana and her mom for braving Topeka to come watch us.
My mom told me I didn't work hard enough because I wasn't so sore I couldn't move on Sunday. Which I appreciated because it forced me to reflect and honestly answer that there wasn't a single place that Saturday where I could have given more effort. When I failed, it was due to fitness or strength, not effort. I'll take that.
Main Takeaways:
-Get a badass partner
-Do competitions
-Everyone's an athlete
Technically we did take 2nd, by 1 point. So that's pretty cool:
