Jeff's Regional Thoughts/Summery

First of all, let me say thank you to everyone who followed, supported, texted, emailed, called, posted, or pulled me aside to tell me they were cheering for me.  The amount of support we had was unreal and I am incredibly thankful to be a part of such an awesome community.  I had friends call me that I thought had little idea of what we do, giving us good luck wishes.  

I want to share with you a couple observations and summery from the whole weekend:

From the beginning he CrossFit NOLA competition team had an unwritten goal of making it to the 6th and final workout (top 12 make the cut).  Things did not start out well for them when we had a judge who was not counting out loud and was not being clear during her ‘no rep’ calls during the handstand push-up and deadlift WOD.  This ended up being our team’s lowest finish of the weekend.  The team was driven by awesome performances by Rae on the row/pistol/clean WOD and the one arm snatch WOD; and Demian on the one arm snatch WOD and the team snatch WOD (he nearly stood up with 235#).  Then, Brandon, Brad, Andrea and Kelsey turned in the biggest number yet on the squat/pull-up/push press, and tied for 7th place.  Most exciting was to watch Brandon and Brad just catching people like crazy during sets of 50 pull-ups (Brandon rattled off consecutive sets of 30!).  Brandon also set a 20# PR in snatch and put 205# overhead, Kelsey PR'd at 125#!  The team made it to WOD 6 and subsequently turned in their best finish.  The final event, #6, which was arguably the most technically difficult, required 22 muscle ups from both the girls and the guys.  Brandon and Brad set out at a blazing pace and gave Kelsey and Andrea a great shot to finish the workout.  Normally this would have been perfect set up, except Kelsey was not feeling well and had thrown up about 15 minutes prior to the start.  She shot us a couple looks during the workout that led us to believe she was going to fill up the chalk bucket, but she held it together. She and Andrea strung together sets of 2 and 1 muscle ups over and over in an inspiring performance.  They finished it up with a buddy carry and it was a great effort and a great finish to the weekend, and they truly represented CrossFit NOLA and the city of New Orleans with pride.  The team improved from 25th in 2011 to 12th in 2012

Mollie had her work cut out for her over the weekend, and has been dealing with the ever increasing weights that women are required to move around.  Every year, the deadlift weights go up, the clean weights go up, the number of muscle ups go up.  There were minimum work requirements in some of the workouts that we were unsure she could complete.  Starting with WOD 2 which required at least 10 out of 30 hang cleans at 135#.  Mollie blazed through a 2k row and 50 pistols and chipped away at the hang cleans.  She impressively finished the entire WOD in 16:38, well under the time cap of 17:00 min.  WOD 3 minimum work requirements were 10 out of 40 one arm snatches with a 70# dumbbell.  This was an even taller order.  For those of you who haven’t met Molle, she is at least 7 feet tall, so that dumbbell needs to travel a long way before it gets all the way overhead.  In the 10 days prior to the competition, Mollie was successfully able to complete about 6 or so successful snatches.  During the warm up, she was able to complete 2 snatches.  But when her judge asked her to demonstrate a rep before the WOD, the weight did not go up.  When the WOD started, she easily got the right arm but failed multiple times on the left.  Eventually the left arm went too and she was able to chip away at the 10 required reps.  After 5 min into a 10 minute workout, she had 5 total reps, with the left arm still lagging behind.  She was on pace, but cutting it close.  Past the half-way, with the crowd cheering her on, the left arm started to get better, suddenly she had completed her first set of 10.  Between rounds of snatches, there was a short required run.  Mollie completed her run grinning from ear to ear, and probably waived at the crowd a bit. It was her well-deserved victory lap.  She ended up completing 17 snatches overall and avoided getting disqualified.  There were 11 women cut throughout the weekend because they could not handle the weights or the reps.  Mollie made it to the final workout and finished 17th overall.  She finished 17th last year as well.  Mollie is gracefully hanging in there as this sport continues to get younger.  She continues to be photogenic, so browse some of the pics on the south central regional facebook page (I have posted some below as well)!  Great job Mollie!

I went into this year with aspirations of qualifying for the 2012 CrossFit Games, but after my finish in the open was I was not sure what to expect (I was glad we would only have to do each each reginoal WOD one time for starters).  Going into this weekend I knew I would be able to do each workout, I was just not sure if I could do it faster than everyone else (those of you who asked me knew I was looking for a heavy power clean…).  Things actually tarted off well and I was tied for 2nd after the first day.  I was able to hold my own in most of the WODs, catching a break on #2 when Paul Smith forgot to run to the finish.  Conversely I lost out on a placing point when I slipped during the turn around on the final run of WOD #3.  Most disappointing finish was on WOD #5, the snatch ladder.  I realistically expected to get a shot at 205, which I thought would keep me competitive, and maybe a shot at 215, which was my current PR.  But after watching the 30+ competitors go before me and seeing what numbers they hit, I became more focused on what I needed to get to, instead of lifting the first weight successfully.  I think I missed the very first lift for my first weight and the first lift or two for each consecutive weight leading up to 195. I was trying to avoid panic mode.  195 went up ugly and I was not able to stabilize at the top, eventually losing control and coming down hard.  Event 5 ended up being a spectacular disappointment, and ended any chance I might have had at podium finish. (It turns out even if I had gotten 215#, I still would not have been top 3 after the final event, I needed to tie Aja with 295... right).  After I shot myself in the foot after WOD 5, I did not have anything to lose for WOD #6.  I was able to turn in my best placing and tied for 3rd on Event 6.  I finished 8th overall, improvement from 13th last year but still 5 short of the target…  I will be taking a couple days off to evaluate how my body feels and make sure it is not injured.  I can’t really tell what is going on with it right now, everything is hurting a bit.

Overall, it was an awesome weekend!  We (Me, Mollie, Brandon, Brad, Demian, Kelsey, Andrea, Rae) are proud to represent the gym, the city and the state at our regional competition.  The competition keeps getting tighter and tighter as professional athletes, and college athletes are trickling in.  During the next year, we will try to facilitate some competitions (such as the PR challenge…) for those of you who want to get a taste of competing.  So keep an eye out.  Be sure to congratulate the CrossFit NOLA competition team on a job well done and payoff for nearly a year of hard training!

Congratulations to Brian Diaz, Jason Hoggan, Aja Barto, Azadeh Boromand, Candice Ruiz, Kelley Hennigan, CrossFit Dallas Central, CrossFit Bayou City and CrossFit Central on qualifying for the games!

As you can see I am often in the background, turns out that Jason Hoggan is a bit more camera friendly than the "regional beard,"  it looks like it is time to shave that thing off...