An Epic Day
Epic
Wow, all I can say is this one was one of the most awesome experiences I’ve had, ever. From the camaraderie , no quit attitude and pure athleticism, to the volunteers who gave hours of their time, to altruistic sponsors, to the 8 inches of snow, to the pain we all empathized, this event was epic.
Luckily, the snow didn’t start coming down until after most competitors arrived. We had about 15 no shows, but as expected, CrossFitters don’t take shit from no one, not even a blizzard. While the rest of Charlottesville sat at home and feared the storm, we braved it.
Together we witnessed athletes pull well over 380 tons from the ground (1.5 tons per minute), press 121 tons overhead and deliver sweat, blood and tears to amazed onlookers. We did it to raise money and awareness for the Wounded Warrior Project and the Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad.
We couldn’t have done it without our volunteers, our athletes and the competitive spirit of the CrossFit community.
The Events
Event 1 Women/Event 2 Men
We wanted to test strength capacity across a time domain that the body didn’t like. We designed a workout that lasted 3 minutes and asked athletes to deadlift a 289# (men) or 177# (women) bar as many times as possible. It was pure pain, heavy breathing and some viscous back punishment. Josh Hoggan and Krista Owens won this event with an impressive 60 lifts and 68 lifts, respectively. If you do the math, Josh pulled and impressive 8.7 tons in 3 minutes; Krista pulled an equally awesome 6 tons the same time period.
Event 1 Men/ Event 2 Women
Rowing 1,500 meters for time is awful. It’s not long enough to favor those with highly technical rowing skills and it’s not short enough to favor those with pure grit. We had an impressive 5 men who rowed sub-5 minute 1,500 meters. We didn’t get a chance to ask about rowing backgrounds, but we did hear one of the men, Kevin Knight had been on a rower 5 times in his life. Our other top finishers was Todd Edmunds for the men. In the women’s rowing event we had two women row sub 5:30s which puts them above 15 of the men’s times. Two women from R.A.W. CrossFit, Kimberley Ebbert placed first and Molly Tuman placed second with times of 5:22 and 5:26.
Event 3
The planned workout for men was 50 burpees with hands off the ground at the bottom, 25 thrusters at 111# and 25 Handstand pushups. It was three pushing movements, not unlike a WOD we all know and love (hate) called JT. The first heat stepped up ready to crush it. Everyone needed high placements to get to the final heat or maintain the position. Competition was fierce. In the first heat, almost everyone blew through the burpees and thrusters unbroken in about 4 or 5 minutes. As three of the top ranked men stepped up the the handstand pushups, the all fell on their heads as if the CrossFit “Gods” had tied 100 pounds to their shoulders, simultaneously. (ANYONE HAVE A VIDEO?) The entire gym was astonished. Questions filled the room. The judges quickly adjusted the WOD to 10 handstand pushups. The competitors took turns failing, cursing and fighting muscle fatigue. The average men’s finish time was about 12 minutes for this WOD, just barely under the adjusted finish time of 15 minutes. It knocked out over half of the male competitors and 5 men who were ranked in the top 10.
On the women’s side, we scaled the WOD to 25 Burpees, 25 Thrusters at 77# and 5 Handstand Pushups on a 15kg plate. Even with this scaling about 50% of the women couldn’t finish and it eliminated two competitors who were tied for 2nd going into this WOD.
It was an equalizer, a punisher, a filthy, evil muscle fatiguing WOD. Those who faired best used hip drive on their thrusters and strategically rested to regain their strength for the handstand pushup component. Those who were gymnastically weak felt it and a lot of the bigger athletes saw their fortunes reversed.
Final Event
Our final event was 3 rounds of 50 double unders, 20 box jumps (32″ / 24″), 50 double unders, 5 snatches (111# / 77#). On the men’s side Chris Sheppard who had been tied for third conceded his spot to athletes below him, for he wanted everyone to experience a competitive final event given his admitted weakness in double unders. The final times and final placements for men were:
- 1st Place – Todd Edmunds – 10:16
- 2nd Place – Joby Shreckhise – 10:34
- 3rd Place – Daniel Samarov – 12:49
- 4th Place – Kevin Knight – 14:14
- 5th Place – Jason Garrard – 15:17
Todd and Joby pulled away from the pack: Joby with his olympic lifting strength and Todd with his double under speed. While both of these athletics are top athletes, they left this world for 11 minutes and when they returned, Todd finished 18 seconds ahead of Joby. It was awesome.
On the women’s side, the times and overall finishers were:
- 1st Place – Katie Wasalaski – 9:58
- 2nd Place – Nicole Gordon – 10:11
- 3rd Place – Laura Conklin – 15:30
- 4th Place – Alicia Barnett – 16:58
- 5ht Place – Rebecca Conzelman – 17:14
- 6th Place – Krista Owens – 25:12
Double under skills differentiated the athletes in this heat. Katie absolutely killed double unders; she was light as a feather and stung the snatches and box jumps like a bee. Nicole was just on her tail the whole time and almost caught her at the end, but the double unders set them apart. The rest of the group pained through the double unders with a special mention for Krista fighting through each one of those brutal little jumps. Laura who has never been in a CrossFit box gets kudos for her amazing grit.
Thanks
Thank you for the epic day. Please share your stories, video, comments, pictures and anything else below. See you at the sectionals. We’ll update with media as we get it.
i claim naming rights on the HOF burpee or hands off the ground burpee, “k-burpees”
great effort by all competitors there. worst judging and enforcement of standards for workouts that i have seen happened during the 3rd wod. if you forgot to raise your hands off the ground during burpees that rep didnt count, but they let people front squat and then jerk the weight for the thrusters. a front squat, a clear pause, then a push jerk is not a thruster, i doubt any cf coach would let thier clients set a pr in fran in this way. then they made clear that feet coming off the wall or feet outside the shoulders would not count for a hspu. only feet coming off the wall was enforced, so many people had feet outside the shoulders and those reps counted. and the workouts seemed poorly programmed as the original cut off for the original workout was 10 mins and only a few men got sub-10 min with the lowered number of hspu.
Sam,
There were plenty of opportunities to clarify points of performance. Judging standards were established based on what we can reasonably judge. We cared about starting position and ending position. These standards were clarified on the video and during the event. You had plenty of time to ask questions during the event, prior to the event with your judge or prior to the event on the web. We OK’ed the movement to which you refer to when competitors asked for clarification. Ex-post facto critique of judging points of performance, especially with the time we gave you to ask questions is a moot point.
Secondly, if you break up bar momentum by stopping at the top of a front squat, then push pressing it, you have done more work in a slower time.
Thirdly, judging is different than coaching. They are very different things and not relevant to a competitive environment. What about back position on a 3 minute deadlift event or not catching a snatch with locked out shoulders on the final or any other hundreds of coach-able “faults” that happen when people get tired and try new things?
That workout differentiated a lot of people and our last minute change needed to happen to keep the event going with a high level of competition. I admit we didn’t estimate the amount of shoulder fatigue, but our last minute fix ended up working just fine.
Judges not enforcing standards is another issue. We said that clear violations of feet width outside the shoulders would be counted back; that should have happened. It’s pretty obvious when people are rotating into an incline press vs a handstand pushup and the feet being wide is indicative of that.
if all you cared about was starting and ending position then why the strict standards for the hspu? if its all about time then why not allow kipping hspu?
i just didnt and still dont understand the strictness for the bodyweight movement (burpees and hspu) but relaxed standards for barbell movement (thrusters). i clearly understand that a front squat and a jerk is slower than a thruster, but its also easier.
im with you that the change was needed to lower the number of hspu and goes back to the programming point. if you had months to program these wods shouldnt you have consulted other coaches or run other athletes through similar wods beforehand to know what the times and fatigue would be like? or if you didnt want to do that do an actual cf bwi style hopper challenge.
anyway, crossfit is a constantly humbling process and a learning process as well.
I’ve attempted to write a comment a few times since yesterday, so I apologize if a bunch pop up at once. I wanted to thank you guys for throwing this event (my name is Jason, not Josh… but thanks for the props
). We met a lot of cool people, and it was definitely fun, despite the bad luck with weather. The gift bags were a nice touch as well. I have to give props to Katie and Rebecca for killing the final WOD (damn, Katie, you couldn’t even let one guy beat you??). I can’t wait to see you guys and the rest of Outlaw Crossfit at Sectionals.
With that said, I think there are a few lessons learned that I think the organizers of this and future events can take to improve upon the format and make them even bigger successes:
1 – Write back-up WODs (well) in advance to account for incliment weather
2 – ALWAYS test your WODs.
3 – When testing the WODs, have all judges either participate or watch, and document all questions that arise regarding specific points of performance and variations on movements (eg. a thruster is not a front squat and jerk… yes, it’s slower, but it also saves your shoulders)
4 – If a WOD encourages gaming, change it.
5 – If organizing heats by performance, put the fastest performers last
I think this event has awesome potential. With a few tweaks and additional planning, the organizers will avoid many of the safety and logistical problems created primarily by WOD 3. As the first guy on HSPUs – and subsequently the first guy to take a head-dive into concrete (with a pretty cool bruise to show for it) – I think I have decent standing to comment.
In any case, thanks again, and I’ll look forward to making this an annual staple in the run-up to sectionals.
Jason Hoggan
Outlaw CF / CF Alexandria
Jason, thanks for the feedback. We’ll do our best to do better in the future.
I started the Front Squat/Push Jerk movement that many athletes took on in later heats. I competed with a torn labrum and partially torn rotator cuff and knew this WOD would crush my shoulder after doing a mini version on Thursday when I saw it posted. To mitigate shoulder fatigue I asked if a jerk type motion would be allowed at 8 AM prior to any events starting. I was told even a distinct front squat/jerk would be acceptable as long as hips were fully extended and arms were behind ears at the finish. I confirmed this with two judges prior to the WOD starting. If I were told it had to be one fluid movement from squat to press then I would have done that.
It is similar to last years points of performance in the Mid Atlantic Qualifiers Snatch WOD- a full squat snatch was prescribed yet athletes were allowed to power snatch then OH Squat. It was not the prescribed movement yet it was allowed. If anything, after the question was asked all competitors should have been alerted to that question and answer when points of performance were covered.
I’m not challenging the validity of allowing a Squat/Jerk combination… I just address and agree with your last point: the points of performance need to be addressed and expressed clearly to all competitors to not give some an advantage over others. If you call it a thruster but allow deviations, just let everyone know so it’s an even field.