“Earn Your Turkey Challenge 2010”

I can’t even put into words how awesome of a day it was yesterday!

There were 6 athletes from CrossFit Lakewood who competed in the “Earn Your Turkey Challenge” at MBS CrossFit, and it was a full house all day long!

The event began with an outdoor 5k (~3.1 Mile) Hill run through the industrial park by the gym. The run wouldn’t have been as bad if the entire 1st half wasn’t downhill, and then the entire 2nd half uphill! All said, though, the weather being on the cooler side made this run much more tolerable. Many runners were out of the gate fast, and by the end, there was quite a spread of finishers. I think it ended with 100% of CrossFit Lakewood athletes setting 5k PR’s, some by MINUTES. How awesome is that!?

After that was the CrossFit Total Event. That meant each athlete had 35 minutes to complete 3 attempts at their 1 Rep Max for three different exercises. In order, they were the Back Squat, the Shoulder Press, and the Deadlift. The way they broke down the event was with 9 platforms, and 4 athletes at each one. While one was lifting, another two were spotting (if necessary) while the 4th athlete prepared to lift next. Setting up and changing weights was a team effort, and you instantly bonded with the other competitors there with you. It was one of the coolest things I’ve been a part of, for sure. For the CrossFit Lakewood athletes, almost every single lift ended up being a PR. That is unheard of, and awesome!

After the Totals were completed, they opened the huge airplane hangar door, and rolled in huge wooden boards. Well, it turns out that they BUILT A WALL right in the middle of the gym, and also lowered 10 15-foot ropes from the ceiling. Yeah, the last workout was going to be nuts! CrossFit prepares us for the unknown and unknowable, and while some people may have guessed that rope climbs would have been a part of the workout, I don’t think anyone would have guessed that we would have had to climb a 5-ft wall 22 times with a burpee on either side!

Yeah. They just built a wall!

Once the wall was built, Pat Burke (owner of MBS CrossFit) gathered all of the athletes together and announced the Final Workout. It was called the “Deep Fried Turkey.” For the Elite Group it was 15 Ground-To-Overheads with 115lbs. That meant just to get the weight overhead with arms locked out however you could; clean and jerk, snatch, didn’t matter. Next came 10 Burpee Wall-Jumps – Drop to the ground for the burpee part, jump over the wall, that’s one rep. After that was the game changer… 5 ascents up a 15-foot rope. Once those are done, it’s back to 10 more burpee wall-jumps, and then another 15 ground-to-overheads. For the other classes of competitors there were only a few modifications made, but it was basically the same thing. Quite the workout. Here’s the kicker…. there was a 10 minute cap on it. That meant if you didn’t complete all of that stuff in 10 minutes, your total score would just be the total number of reps you did complete.

The Final Workout!

At the end of the day, we spent about 10 full hours at MBS CrossFit, and even though it got really cold at the end of the night, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

It was so amazing to be part of the CrossFit Lakewood family, and seeing what we were all capable of was so much fun! On top of that, the spirit of camaraderie that all of the competitors showed towards one another was so incredible.

GREAT JOB to everyone who competed, and THANK YOU for everyone who was there to support us!

Onto the next competition!…. you’ll know when that is as soon as I do!