Bridge City Beat Down

Quick and dirty results:

I finished in 10th place out of 20 competitors in the Brutes division (Division 2 and 3). Hard to believe that two years ago I finshed 8th out of 17 in Division 1. I may be a bit less fit than I was then, but really it's because the level of competition and the difficulty of the workouts has gone up considerably.


Detailed results:

EVENT 1: Clean complex (Deadlift, Hang clean, Jerk)


Somewhere, Aaron Maier is weeping at my shitty form

195lbs. This is what I did in practice earlier in the week. It didn't go up easy, so I decided to stop there, rest an extra minute before the row, rather than go for 205. That put me in a three way tie for fifth place.


EVENT 2: 90 second row sprint

Brutal. 446m, which was good for second last place in the event., I was clowning a bit at the start, smiling for the cameras. I don't know if that cost me any distance, but it was probably not a smart move. I didn't want to kill myself at the start and lose steam at the end, though.


EVENT 3: 200m Prowler push.


The only time I was able to keep up with the other guys in my heat.

53 seconds. Not sure how I compared to other guys in the division, but it was probably 12th or 13th. I was dead last in my heat, so I got the pity cheers. Y'know, the ones where you can practically hear the people saying "Aw, look, he's trying so hard."


EVENT 4: "On the Minute"

25 power cleans (75lbs)
12 ring pull-ups
12 fatbar deadlifts (185lbs)
11 parallette jumpthroughs - I'm not sure if my form was bad and I got some no-rep calls. It was loud and I couldn't hear my judge well.
13 wall jump-overs - That was fun. Felt like I was going pretty good.

Total: 73 which was 13th best in my division.


After four events I was down in 16th place in the overall standings, which was pretty humbling.


Event 5: Run, Thrusters, Ring Rows


8:05.4 That was good for fourth place in the event. I did my thrusters and ring rows unbroken in the first set of 15 and the last set of 9, but took a break on the middle set of 12. On one of the runs (the last, I think) my mouth all of a sudden became RIDICULOUSLY dry, but Ryan Baht (husband to Alana, one of the other CFR competitors) appeared alongside the track and handed me some water on the run back to the thruster station. At that point, it was like an angel had dropped down from heaven.

There was a guy from CrossFit Brio who passed me in the second round and we were neck and neck on the last set of thrusters.


That's right, Captain Shirtless. Look right the fuck at me when doing your thrusters.

He was getting some grief on his form from his judge and head judge Chad. I was too busy doing my own thrusters to notice whether his form was actually bad (although when I commiserated with him after the event, he said something about not having been told you gotta put your head through your arms) but either way I felt bad for him. If I had two people telling me my form was wrong on my last set of a grueling day of workouts, it would have been really disruptive. He and I finished our thrusters around the same time and headed into the gym for the ring rows. I managed to get my ring rows done first and had a two-burpee lead on him at the end. I did not want to get passed on the burpees, so it kept me going as fast as I could. He ended up a second and a half behind me.

After a day of my performances ranging from decent-but-not-great to pretty bad, I'm very happy with how I did in the final event. Before the later heats ran, I wasn't sure how my time would hold up against the other competitors' times, but it turned out that it held up okay. The top three guys in the division all were significantly (30-60 seconds) faster, so fourth was plenty good enough for me.

After I was finished, I was just super happy to be done. It was nice to be done early, so I could cheer on the CrossFit Regina athletes in the later heats, eat some beef jerky, and socialize with other CrossFitters. It was another fun year in Saskatoon.