DFL beats DNF beats DNS.

This past weekend was the CrossFit Games South West Regional. I was lucky enough to be a competitor. I say lucky in the sense of how I got there.

About a month ago I entered in the SD/AZ games sectionals, which was one of several sectionals that then fed into the regional. In order to qualify for the regionals you needed to place 20th or better to continue... I took 24th place. I was happy with my standing for the most part and chalked it up to experience.

Then about 2.5 weeks ago I got an email from CrossFit HQ informing me that enough people had dropped out of the individual competition and if I chose to, I could compete at the regional. My nutrition had been spotty to say the least. My training had taken a little bit of a break, but i decided to enter.

As far as I know, this may be the closest I get to the actual games. Since every year the field of athletes gets bigger, faster and stronger. I dialed my eating back in and starting hitting the gym as hard as possible.

Was I at the top of my game? No. Was I planning on going in and beating anybody? I hope so. We have something written up at the gym...DFL (dead f*ing last) beats DNF (did not finish) beats DNS (did not start). This was my mantra for the event. I registered for the event and showed up, so the DNS was out the window. The next battle was for no DFL and especially no DNF...

Wod #1: 20 shoulder to overheads @185lbsand 40 burpee lateral jumps.
Break them up how ever you want. Get it done with a 7 min time cap. You could choose when you wanted to do this wod. I got there on the later side...so most times were taken but i opted to make it the first wod of the day. I have down "Freddy's revenge" which is 5 rounds, 5 reps 185 S2Oh & 10 burpees. So I new it was going to be able to finish. I was the only person in my time slot, this means all eyes were on me! 321 GO... I got the first 15 reps unbroken and clean! I dropped the bar for a short rest and then one of the highlights of the weekend happened. One of our awesome students Danielle yelled "quite being a b*tch and pick up the bar!" Most of the crowd didn't know what to make of it....but I got the bar back to the shoulders and knocked out the reps. Then went at the burpees as best as I could. I was able to finish the wod in 5 min flat! I had finished the wod, and faster then some others I watched and there was several men who DNF'd on that wod already. GOAL ACCOMPLISHED!

WOD 2: For time- flip a 250lb tire 75 meters, run back 75m, carry an 80lb log 75m 2 rounds for time.

I have never carried a log before nor have I flipped a tire...this should be fun. Out of the gate I was a bit slow. Trying to figure out the move and how to be efficient and not waste energy. About half way through I started to figure out the tire flip and how to get it to move faster, I sprinted the log back to the finish line and I was done! I beat out two guys in my heat! No DNF and no DFL! GOAL ACCOMPLISHED!


WOD 3: 5 muscle-ups, 10-135lb power cleans, run 200... for time. 15min time cap.

This was going to be interesting. Muscle-ups aren't my best move, but they aren't my worst move either, cleans aren't a big deal and 200m is 200m. The time cap is what I was worried about. If there was good chance of DNF for the weekend...it was this wod. I really feel I lucked out on this one. The rings they used were the new Rogue wood rings, the grip on those things was better then any plastic ring I have ever used. I never used chalk and never had my hands slip drastically. I got the first set of 5 unbroken, then 4 & 1, then 3 & 2, then 3 1 & 1 the last 2 rounds. The cleans got broken into 5 and 5 on most rounds. The run was a jog becuase My heart was racing so fast. When I finished my last set of cleans the judge says, "if you want to finish this you better run, you have 1 minute left." I went into a decent run then finished with a good sprint. Got 14:40!!!! No DNF and DFl! GOAL ACCOMPLISHED!!!

I rounded out saturday in 39th place!!!! I wanted to beat one person and I had beat 24 so far!!! Now I had to wait and see what the workout would be for sunday... my friend Trish filled me in saturday night and I was a little happy and said at the same time.

Sunday final WOD #4: Row 1000m, OHS 135lb, run 1200m. for time
As soon as I heard the workout I started planning the attack. I got there early to look at the set-up and how other athletes were fairing through the workout. The first thing I noticed was the the ground for the OHS was slanted slightly... if you faced away from the crowd your feet would be uphill ( awkward to begin with, extra awkward if you are use the oly shoes). If you faced the crowd your feet would be slightly downhill (similar to using oly shoes!) Also when athletes finished the row you needed to get the barbells that could be anywhere from 15 meters to 100 meters away...for me I new I wanted the closest bar possible so I could get some lead built since the heavy OHS is a strength of mine. So the plan of attack went like this.

-Row at my pace, 21-23 spm (strokes per minute), maintain 1:45ish 500m pace.
-get the closest bar possible
- use an narrower then normal grip, so I could just pull back on the bar and not worry about it falling behind me.
-go steady on the Squats and face the crowd as to replicate the feel of oly shoes
-use good form and control the breathing on the first lap of running
-2nd lap pick up the speed a bit and use it to gauge how fast I can go on the last lap.
-final lap would be a 85% or so effort with the last 150m being every thing I had left!

Would all this extensive planning help? With all the nervousness I had, I was hoping it would. Especially since the heats had been re-arranged in accordance to point ranking. I was the lowest ranking athlete (or least likely to win) in my heat.

This is how it went down...321 GO

The row started and the nerves took over, I was rowing to hard and to fast. I then pulled myself back and slowed to the pace I was aiming for. Held my spm and the 500m split I wanted. Got of the rower at about the same time as the other guys. Went into a slight jog to the bar. Grabbed the first bar in the line up! While the others walked to the bars at the end of the line. I got my narrow grip established and went to town on the OHS. I got 15, 5 and then 4 reps... in my head I thought I would do 3 and 3 to finish the sets.... then I heard the crowd screaming for something. So I said screw it, I am going for all 6 and just fight for it. I got all 6!!!!!! I turned to start the run and....nobody else was on the track. Then someone at the end of the line turns and starts his run. In my head I was thinking, WTF did I really finish the OHS 1st? Am I really in second place? The Guy ahead of me on the track wasn't running fast at all. I stuck to my plan though. Don't try and catch up yet, just run your own race and at least keep pace with this guy. Half way through the run felt as if I was running to slow, so I closed the gap between me and the 1st place guy. Got next to him for about 10 seconds to see how he would respond. He didn't respond with speeding up so I decided to go for the lead. I proceeded to take the lead (still thinking to myself holy shit is this really happening?). On the beginning of the last lap I picked it up a bit. With about 250m left I do a shoulder check (in the streaming video you can see me look over my shoulder and see
that a new guy as over taken the previous 2nd place male... so I begin to speed up my run as to keep my lead. I actually started to sprint at 200m left...I then pulled back knowing that I couldn't sprint for a full 200 and I would burn pre-mature. With about 150m left I do one last shoulder check (also on the video) and planned it out. So I kept running and at the 100m mark I went into a 100 sprint. I crossed the finish line... in my odd way. I missed judged where it was and stumbled of the track about ten feet early, but still crossed the actual line non the less!!! I took 1st place in the heat!!!!! I also beat Pat Barber and Josh Everett on that wod, both of those guys are well known and very amazing athletes!

That workout was by far the best experience of the entire weekend! Especially becuase there was several men in the heat that had beat me at our SD/AZ sectional!

At the end of the weekend I took 34th place overall! Went in with the goal of beating 1 person and I beat 29! I also beat 9 males that had beat be at the sectionals!

Thanks to everyone that came to watch and to everyone that yelled at/for me!

A whole new world

So I picked up an issue of "Draft" magazine a bit over a month ago for my reading pleasure. In this particular issue there were several great articles. One about "Real ale" or cask beer, one on collaboration beers and another on "beer trading". The article on beer trading was very interesting.

Beer trading is something that has been going on for some time now. There are several social networking such as beeradvocate.com that serve as a place for beer drinkers to share thoughts on different brews and also as a place to seek out people who may have beers of desire but that one can't get their hands on. On your profile you can list the beers that you "got" and "want". While living in San Diego does allow for a fantastic selection of great local brews and a great assortment of west coast brews...we/I am still limited in selection.

Inspired by this article I decided to give it a go and see how it would work out!

While many traders refer to some beers as "whales" or "white whales" (think Moby Dick), I wasn't planning to go after any of those on my first go around. I set out to get my hands a bottle of Sah'Tea, a brew that a friend heard about in an article a couple of months back. It is a yearly release from DogFish Head brewery in Delaware. Easy for east coasters to get...impossible for west coasters. I proceeded to start a thread on BeerAdvocate.com in search of a bottle of this. Over the next day or so I got several "beermails" with offers for a trade for this brew! (being from San Diego) I do get a little bit of help becuase people now the beer selection out here is pretty good!

Then I get a "beermail" that makes my jaw drop... one person replies with "I will trade a bottle of Sah'Tea, I also have a bottle of Tactical Nuclear Penguin that I would be willing to part with." The TNP is on my "whale list" of beers! It is the 3rd strongest beer in the world...weighing in at 32% abv! I almost can't believe it, my first trade and I am going to get one of my "whales" and it wasn't even solicited? Now the question becomes what I am I going to be sending out in exchange for these beers? Well my trading partner was great about keeping communication flowing between beermails about what brews he wanted and what he had access to. So we decided to do a trade based on $4$. (dollar for dollar) This means I was going to be sending a pretty hefty box since the TNP cost about $65-70! In addition to multiple other bottles that were coming my way. the good thing is that the majority of the brews that I sent out I already had sitting in the cellar!


All in all I ended up sending out 11 bottles (Alpine Pure Hoppiness not shown). Now this is were it becomes fun! Since it is a federal felony to mail alcohol through the USPS, private shippers are the way to go. The thing is that UPS and FED-EX "will not knowingly ship alcohol", so you have to be careful when packaging and shipping your brew. You individually wrap each bottle in bubble-wrap and lots of packing tape. In a big box packed with shipping paper and Styrofoam and just encase there might be any "sloshing" or liquid sound coming out of the box...i added to packages of rice-a-roni to cover up the sound. Then take to a UPS store and send it off. And religiously track the package online for a week.

When my package arrived I was like a child on Christmas morning. The kid who new exactly what he got and it was exactly what he asked for!
I start cutting through the all the tape and bubble wrap that ensured the beer was safe on its journey. My trade partner was awesome, everything I wanted and then some. He included several "extras" in the package including a DogFish Head Old School Barleywine, Capsicum habanero Stout, Troegs Nugget Nectar and a terrapin Hoppy Monster! We already are setting up another trade to happen in the coming months...and you can bet he is going to get some gnarly extra's in his box next time!

The world of beer as reached a whole new world now! Not only do I have my normal stores in SD that I know get the rare stuff in but now I have a friend on the east coast forming a symbiotic relationship! I get him great beer he can't get and he does the same for me!

Can't wait for the next beer tasting event!