Today here is a slightly non-traditional post from me – however it still covers being healthy, food, and exercise. As most of you that follow my blog know, I do Crossfit and think its a great workout, way to get healthy, and amazing physical challenge. If you haven’t found a Crossfit near you, check out some of the media coverage of the regionals competitions, I promise you’ll be intrigued and inspired - the level of athletes at these competitions are amazing! This past weekend I was proud to represent my home Crossfit gym, Crossfit King of Prussia at Midatlantic Regionals in Landover, MD – northeast of Washington DC. This was my second time at regionals, but in 2010 we were in the Central East region where regionals were not standardized worldwide like they were this year and were in 2011. In fact, our 2010 regionals were held in a large field area and included a 5K team trail run including a killer sandbag carry.
Crossfit KoP Athletes Team + Aimee Lyons
We arrived on Thursday evening, with the events starting early on Friday morning. Myself along with Chris Plentus, Vinny Joyce, Danny Spataro, Cate Kelly, and Kristin Trostle were the 3 men and 3 women that made up the Crossfit King of Prussia team. The Regionals Workouts, WODs, were announced a few weeks before so we had already planned and strategized who was doing each workout. For the weekend I would be doing Team WOD 1, Team WOD 4, and everyone was doing Team WOD 5 — we would need to make the top 12 to get to Team WOD 6. Since we were coming in 29th we were hoping to move up but getting top 12 wasn’t in our plans.
Weights for Team Wod 1, Men 455#
WOD 1 was a great experience, we were in the first heat so we were the first heat, of the first workout, on the first day of Regionals – the energy was awesome and our cheering squad was on fire! This was the workout I was most worried about since I just got handstand push-ups, and can only do them kipping. You can watch the video of us here, we’re wearing black t-shirts with green writing and we’re the second team in.
Teams of 4 (2 Men, 2 Women) – The team doing this workout was Chris, Danny, Cate, and me.
All smiles after a great WOD 1 performance!
For time:
20 Partner deadlifts (455 lbs)
20 Handstand push-ups
20 Partner deadlifts (315 lbs)
20 Handstand push-ups
20 Handstand push-ups
20 Partner deadlifts (455 lbs)
20 Handstand push-ups
20 Partner deadlifts (315 lbs)
The second day I was on in the afternoon and was doing a longer workout which was designed to have the ladies go first and then the men. So far no one at the previous regionals had or has finished the workout in the 25 minute time cap – we knew this and our goal was to finish the ladies part as fast as we could to give the men as much time as possible to get in as many reps as they could to help us get the best score we could. This workout was HARD, we had practiced it for real and then at 2/3rds and 1/2 reps but on Day 2 the judging standards were very strict which slowed down our movements making sure we were fully extending our hips at the top on all of the squats. I was proud of us on this one, it involved a lot of communication since while the women are working, the men are acting as the “rack” for the bar. When the men were working the ladies were the “rack” and let me tell you I’m glad that our men are demons on the pull-up bar because holding that 135# bar sucked!
Men (Vinny) repping out shoulder to overhead
Laura getting to full depth on that back squat
Laura on the Pull Up Bar and Kristin ready to go
Teams of 4 (2 Men, 2 Women) – Vinny, Chris, Laura, and Kristin — Video 1 and Video 2 (it’s 25 min wod)
For time:
LADIES
75 Back squats (95 lbs)
50 Pull-ups
25 Shoulder-to-overhead (95 lbs)
75 Front squats (65 lbs)
50 Pull-ups
25 Shoulder-to-overhead (65 lbs)
75 Overhead squats (45 lbs)
50 Pull-ups
25 Shoulder-to-overhead (45 lbs)
MEN
75 Back squats (135 lbs)
50 Pull-ups
25 Shoulder-to-overhead (135 lbs)
75 Front squats (85 lbs)
50 Pull-ups
25 Shoulder-to-overhead (85 lbs)
75 Overhead squats (65 lbs)
50 Pull-ups
25 Shoulder to overhead (65 lbs)
Team WOD 5 was a snatch ladder (ok you can stop laughing now) where all members of the team must go through to get to the maximum weight that they can lift successfully. For the team, the women went first and had 50 seconds to complete the lift, rotating through all 3 women. If you fail, you step out of line, if you succeed then after 50 seconds you’ll move to the next weight.
Women’s weights (pounds): 105, 115, 125, 130, 135, 140, 145, 150, 155, 160, 165, 170, 175, 180, 185.
Men’s weights (pounds): 155, 165, 175, 185, 195, 205, 215, 225, 235, 245, 255, 265, 275, 285, 295.
For the women Cate got to 115 and failed 125, Kristin T and I failed at 105, which would have been a PR for both of us. For me a 20# PR, Kristin has gotten 100# before so there was a chance she could pull 105# — warm-ups were tough for this event because it was crowded and we didn’t have a lot of weight variety. You could go from 45, 75, 85 and then not much in between 85 and 105. I got 4 at 85 but a 20# jump is a huge jump in weight and that was just too big jump for me to make it. In pictures it looks like I had the weight high enough, I was just afraid to get under it!
Plentus getting 165#
The men did great, Chris P. got up to 165 successfully and Danny and Vinny made it to 185 successfully. They definitely added the most pounds to our score! Watching this was awesome the best team girl got all the way through the ladder to 185, and with the men I believe the best team male got to 255 but don’t quote me on that!
To see the rest of the events from the weekend you can check here for some more videos and photos. For additional information and media coverage of the whole event, check the Games site. Check here for the Crossfit KoP Regionals recap.
Crossfit KoP Athletes & Our Cheering Section!
It was in incredible weekend where we also go to cheer on individual competitors Aimee Lyons (owner of Crossfit King of Prussia) and Nikki Sieller (co-owner of Iron Cross Athletics) who has been a member of the Crossfit KoP team in 2010 and 2011. The team workouts were tough, but the individual competitions where even tougher, I have an immense respect for all of the men and women that made it to regionals and competed. Going to a competition like this is extremely humbling for me, and I am amazed at the caliber of athletes and what you can do when you put your mind to it!
Ok enough about the workouts, let’s talk about food! So what the heck do you eat when you’re at these kinds of competitions? What you choose to fuel your body with really matters – never try anything new on game day…this is true for Crossfit, Running, Triathlon, and life in general. You want to fule your body with foods that you know are good for you and that are things you would normally eat and that you know how your body will react to them! For breakfasts I brought hard-boiled eggs, blackberries, and 2 avocados that I ate all 3 competition mornings. For lunches I had leftovers from home, Paleo pulled pork and Butternut squash lasagna – they weren’t the best cold but they were still good and nutritious and I knew that it would fuel my workouts. We also had Paleo friendly snacks, apples, almonds, Anytime cookies, larabars (a special Thank You to Annie too for sending larabars for the team!) and the venue had fruit, cut up chicken, almonds and almond butter, along with water and some coconut water available for FREE for the athletes, which was awesome.
Larabars for the team, Thanks Annie & Larabar!
For dinners we went out and were at the mercy of the local restaurants, want an idea of how to eat out Paleo and while doing a competition, here is what I got. Night 1, pre-competition we went to a nearby Wegmans’s and I got a BBQ chicken breast (not 100% Paleo but I did my best), broccoli, and green beans. I was missing a sweet potato but I didn’t really need it yet so it was OK that I skipped it.
Night 2 was after Day 1 of competition, I had done Wod 1 that morning which was a total of 6:34 where I was only working for half the time so I did maybe 3 minutes of work. but HARD and INTENSE work. We gathered a group together and went to Outback Steakhouse, I ordered a 9oz sirloin steak, broccoli, and a sweet potato with butter of course. Tonight I also got a glass of pinot noir, I really like red wine with steak, it helps me digest, and 1 glass of wine along with my dinner is something that I felt woudn’t impact my performance the next day. I forgot to take pictures of my food the first two nights sorry!
Night 3 was after Day 2 of competition, I did Wod 4 which was a heavy metcon where I did a lot of squats. Tonight the team went to Joe’s Crab Shack, instead of a steam pot I opted for gluten free sunrise salmon (or something like that) that came with pineapple salsa and asked for double veggies instead of veggies and potatoes.
Dinner at Joe's Crab Shack
So there you have it my weekend recap of an incredible athletic event, and how to stay Paleo and fuel your workouts while doing it. One other important thing to note here is sleep. I was shooting for a 9:30/10pm bed-time most days since we were getting up by 6:15/6:30am wake up call and heading to the venue around 7am. Friday and Saturday were long days, and cheering along with doing the workouts is exhausting – I was careful about how much yelling and standing I did the first 2 days to conserve energy. Thanks to all our fans, friends, and family that came out to cheer us on – you all helped make it an awesome experience!
About Laura Pappas
