Sep
14
By Tamsin Fellows
With 3 of us (Laurence Brown, Jyotsna John and Tamsin Fellows) competing in our first ever Crossfit competition, alongside experienced competitors Captain Coach Vandy, and James St Leger (competing as an individual), we were charged up and ready to go after some of us took a painstaking 6 hours to get to Manchester in heavy rain!
In our first event, consisting of Hang Squat Cleans (60kg M, 40kg F), Box Jumps and American Swings, we took it to the wire and completed the required reps on the last second of the 12 minute time frame! We were the only ones to complete it in our heat, and sixth overall out of the 18 teams, which gave us a massive boost for the rest of the day.
The second WOD…..Hmmm..Snatches! Each member of the team had 1 minute to complete as many Power Snatches as possible. This is where Jo-J really came into her own! She was throwing that bar up like it was a PVC and got 17 in the minute! The rest of us, not quite so many, but we all put everything into it (including Vandy doing split snatches for the first time ever, because that was the only way it was going up!) and came out with a total of 36! This placed us 16th in this event….!
WOD 3 – Franpee! Each member to do 45 thrusters (40kg M, 30kg F)), without letting the bar touch the ground until everyone had finished them. This was followed by a team effort of 180 Burpee Bar Hops! This is where we excelled. With great communication between us, we never stopped, thrashed out the thrusters and started the burpees way ahead of anyone else. Andrew came up with the idea of us doing 1 burpee at a time in a revolving circle, so that we could get through them quicker, and it worked brilliantly!! Yet again, we were the only ones to finish in our heat and finished 4th overall in this event! It was the most amazing feeling!
All along we were told that the top 10 teams would qualify to go through to day 2. And we came 10th so were through! Then we found out they had decided to put all the teams through anyway!!! So Day 2, aching and shattered after very little sleep in a hot, noisy hotel room, we were back to attempt the combo of Deadlifts and Double Unders. The guys whipped through their first set of 10 Deadlifts @ 140kg, and flew through their Double Unders. Jo-J had 3 attempts at getting the 100kg up, and it didn’t seem to want to budge! But she persevered and got 2 really strong lifts. Then it was down to me (TF) to get at least 1 lift! My previous max Deadlift being 82.5kg, it was hard to get into the mindset of “I can”! Apparently I did get the plates off the floor at one point, but it just wasn’t coming up! So that was the end of our journey at the Manchester Games – we placed 15th in this final event, and joint 10th overall.
I can personally say I had one of the most amazing weekends ever – to be amongst so many inspiring people, to take part alongside my awesome team mates, to watch JSL smash his individual events, and just to get stuck in and be a part of it all – you can’t beat it! We came away knowing we have the fitness to win these comps, but we need to work on our olympic lifts and our strength overall. It’s great to find out your weaknesses, because then you can turn them into your strengths!
I can’t wait to compete again soon – bring it on! BOOM!