Road to the CrossFit Games Open; The Beginning

Last week I got an email with a link to the following information:

Registration is now live. Whether you are the Fittest on Earth or it’s your first time competing in CrossFit, welcome to the 2013 Reebok CrossFit Games Open!

The Open will put competitors through five workouts over five weeks, starting March 6 and ending April 7.

The first workout will be released at 5 p.m. Pacific Time on Wednesday, March 6. To be in the running for Regional or Masters Competition, you must register, complete the first workout, and submit your score by 5 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, March 10.

It’s on! Get registered and ramp up the training. Fewer than five weeks remain until the first workout is announced.

After reading the web page and watching the video over and over again, I actually said the following outloud to myself (and everyone at the coffee shop); “HOLY BALLS!  Am I actually going to do this? Am I actually going to enter the Open?  Fuck it! I’m doing it!”

Even though I’ve been doing CrossFit off and on for the past 5 years, it’s all been on my own and I was 100% self-taught.  My gym is based on functional fitness and incorporates some of what CrossFit does, but we aren’t a CrossFit Box and we don’t have the same community and support that CrossFit has.  Now that I think back, up until I took the Level 1 Trainer’s course in December, I wouldn’t consider myself a CrossFitter.

With the time I got to spend with “real” CrossFitters and seeing what knowledge, experience, support and abilities they had, I realized I needed to educate myself more, practice more and completely change how I looked at fitness and how I should be training people.  That experience inspired me to step up my game both as an athlete and a coach.

So here we are, two months later and I’m now training for the Reebok CrossFit Games Worldwide Open.  I know I’m a bit behind on my training because of the whole “You Can’t Out Train A Bad Diet” experiment and I’m coming off of a pretty bad shoulder injury, but I’m determined, and I’ve got heart, and I’m willing to give it everything I’ve got.

The biggest downfall for me is that there aren’t any CrossFit boxes in the North and unfortunately I’m the most skilled CrossFitter, so that doesn’t really give me anywhere to learn except from reading, videos and practicing.  The owness is completely on me.  That being said, because I want to be successful and learn, I’m planning a trip to Vancouver to visit some CrossFit Boxes and get some help from some great trainers to get some training in before the Open starts on March 6th.

I don’t anticipate that I will make Regionals this year, but I’m hoping that with some good coaching, lots of research and practice, plus the experience of the Open this year, that I will qualify for Regionals next year.

There are currently almost 700 people registered for the Canada West Region and I haven’t figured out what my goal is for this year’s Open yet, but I will have one shortly.  Top 200??

Source: http://www.yourinnerskinny.ca/the-road-to-the-crossfit-games-open/