Category — Competitions

Join the fun! Here are lots of upcoming opportunities for lifting, laughing, PRing, spectating, and getting dirty…

The Heart and Sole Festival of Miles: Sunday, May 20, 2012
This is just a 1 mile race, right here at the Santa Rosa Junior College track (where we hold our own Track WODs). And CFSR is an official sponsor of this local event. Registration is only $15 and the deadline to sign up is this Saturday. This is a last minute announcement, yes, but who’s in? Let’s get a little crew together. Please talk to Ryan if you want to meet up and run. Or even if you don’t want to, but know you should!

Redwood Empire Championships: Saturday, July 7, 2012
This is best Weightlifting meet in Northern California! Hosted by our friends Myles Ahead Weightlifting, and held every summer in La Plaza park in Cotati, this is a great opportunity for watching the sport of Weightlifting or competing yourself. Held outdoors with hay bale seating and Lagunitas beer flowing, this is a super fun event, worth marking your calendar for. If you have an interest in competing, please let Joanna know ASAP, and commit to attending Olympic Lifting class Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon.

Occupy Strength: Saturday, August 11, 2012
Yeah! We want a big team for this one, and space is limited, so please register ASAP! CrossFit One World hosts the Northern California’s CrossFit Football-inspired competition, Occupy Strength. This competition has two parts: the CrossFit Football Total (max Power Clean, Squat, Bench, and Deadlift) then an under-15 minute MetCon to be announced that day. There are weight classes for this event, as well as a team score. The more people from CFSR that compete, the more fun for us all! Please register now, and send any questions to Ryan or Joanna if you have them.

The Mud Man: September 23, 2012
The folks that bring us the Vineman Triathlon are now bringing us the Mud Man obstacle course and mud run in Petaluma. There is  a 6.1 mile course for individuals and a 3.5 mile short course for a CFSR team. (There’s also a 1 mile kid’s course for anyone that wants to bring the kiddos). Team CFSR! I know Lily and Stock are both planning to run the long course. Will you join them, or hop on the team for the short course? We have a little bit of time to plan for this one, so let’s start talking. Registration is available here.

Ukiah Triathlon: Sunday, September 9, 2012
This is a sprint triathlon; it starts with a ½ mile open-water swim in Lake Mendocino, followed by a 21.7 mile bike ride in the countryside, and concludes with a 3-mile moderate run course at Mendocino College. Register here, and talk to Ryan if you have questions. This is a great opportunity to try out the sport of of triathlon, especially if you’re doing CFSR Swim Camp. It has short distances and is just up the road from us.

Get out of your comfort zone, and consider signing up for one of these competitive events. Give a purpose to your training, get comfortable with uncomfortable, and reap the rewards of hard work and accomplishment.

And, if the intrinsic rewards don’t motivate you, maybe a t-shirt will. We’ll be making up a Team CFSR shirt soon, and welcome your design ideas. Free tee to all CFSR competitors!

Last year CFSR was well-represented at the 2011 Friendly City Open, hosted by Myles Ahead Weightlifting in Rohnert Park. We had four athletes compete and a load of members that came out to cheer them on and check out the sport of weightlifting at a meet right here in our backyard. Click on the link to see a report back and photos of the event.

This year Myles Ahead has moved to Petaluma and therefore renamed this meet the Rivertown Classic. Although there are no CFSR athletes competing this year, this is a great opportunity for you see what a weightlifting competition is like. You might be surprised to see regular people of all ages, shapes, and sizes (just like any of us) getting up on the platform to Snatch and Clean & Jerk. There will be kids as young as ten, high schoolers, folks in their sixties, and everything in between, as well as variety in experience and technique. We hope you’ll consider checking it out. Who’s interested? Talk to others, and you might meet up at a certain time, or take off after the 10 am class at the box.

The meet goes on all day, and you can stop by for even just a few minutes to watch a few lifts! The schedule is as follows:

Women’s bodyweight classes: 48, 53 & 58 Kg will lift at 10 am
Men’s bodyweight classes: 56, 62, 69 & 77 Kg lift at 12 noon
Women’s bodyweight classes: 63, 69, 75 & +75 Kg lift at 2 pm
Men’s bodyweight classes 85, 94, 105 & +105 Kg lift at 4 pm

By the way, 1 kilo = 2.2 pounds, so to see the weight classes in pounds, just multiply the number of kilos by 2.2.  It is always fun to see how and how much people of your own gender and in your own weight class are lifting. But most of all it’s fun to see the great variety of people that enjoy doing and watching this sport.

And remember that our Olympic Lifting class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon. We encourage anyone to attend, and to let us know if you have any interest in competing. We’re hoping to bring Team CFSR to one or two meets between July and December this year. You can join the team!

Find the familiar faces of Joanna, Shannon, and Adrian in this highlights reel from the Level 10 Fall Strength Challenge in Oroville a few months ago. CFSR represents!

Did that get you in the mood for some CrossFit competition? There’s just one week left to register for the 2012 CrossFit Open, which starts next Wednesday, February 22 and continues for five weeks.

When you register, be sure to select “CrossFit Santa Rosa” as your affiliate and then again as your team. Once you register, please let Joanna know that you’re competing in the Open, as we need to know who’s on the team to coordinate scheduling. Let’s go Team CFSR!

Big ups to everyone who submitted a score for the January Challenge: Kyle, Terri, Stock, Jessica, Taylor, Matt C, Lily, Rich, Dan, Tracey, and Andrea! I’m so proud of each of you for doing this. Here are the winners:

Men
1st place: Rich 6:52.2
2nd place: Dan 6:53.4
3rd place: Taylor 7:07.5

Women
1st place: Andrea 7:40.1
2nd place: Jessica 8:09.5
3rd place: Lily 8:11.0

February Challenge will be announced tomorrow!

Last year's CrossFit Games at the Home Depot Center in Los Angeles.

The CrossFit Games season is upon us, and the CF Open starts in a month on February 22nd.

If you’re new to us and this whole CrossFit Games thing, here’s how it works. Anyone in the world can compete in the Open, which lasts for five weeks. Each week, CrossFit Headquarters will announce a new workout to be completed that week. Participants complete the workout with a judge at a registered affiliate (that’s us!) or may submit a video of the workout for score verification. Each week you register your score on the Games site and are ranked by your cumulative scores over the five weeks. The top 60 individual men and women plus the top 30 teams in each of 17 regions in the world (Northern California is ours) are then invited to compete in the weekend-long Regionals. From Regionals, the top three men, women, and teams move on to compete at the CrossFit Games at the Home Depot Center in July.

We will follow the same format we did last year to complete the Open workouts: we will reserve Saturdays after the regular class as a time for the Open competition. We’ll have a judge for each competitor, and break the workout into heats as needed. Like last year, you may arrange to do the workout at a different time if you can’t make it on a given Saturday. The Saturday slot is ideal though, in that it provides the competitive atmosphere and support that often promotes higher performance. (There is one important note to make here: the first Saturday of the Open, February 25th, we are excited to be hosting the Balanced Bites Practical Paleo Seminar; the first workout of the Open, therefore, will take place at CFSR on Sunday, Febuary 26th.)

Are you interested in competing? Everyone is welcome! It’s a fun time, and if you’ve been even a little interested in this CrossFit as a competitive sport thing, the Open is a great opportunity to get your feet wet. Note that scaling is not allowed to submit a score, so you’ll need to be able to do the workouts – whatever they are – as prescribed. Check out the six workouts from the 2011 Open to get a sense of what this could look like. We will have absolutely no idea what this year’s workouts will look like until they are announced week by week. Registration for the 2012 CrossFit Open begins February 1st!

Happy New Year folks! We are so excited to roll out a number of additions and improvements to our programs in 2012. Stay tuned for more info. For now, we are announcing (drum roll, please)…the first of our monthly challenges.

For January, our monthly challenge will be a 2000m row. Bragging rights go to the top three men and top three women with the fastest times. Anyone can participate in this, really, so please don’t bow your head and decline the invite. Take it on! You will learn something from the experience, I promise. And, this is a chance for your training this month to have specific focus, if it doesn’t already. What do you need to do to be a better rower and get the fastest 2k you can?

The Rules:

-The PM must be set to 2000m and run down to 0, leaving you a score to the hundredths of a second. There is no rowing up to 2k.
-A coach must be present to verify score.
-Challenge scores can be performed before or after class any day from January 25-31.
-You can try as many times as you want for a better score! We encourage you to first do a 2k row around now, early in the month -  to feel it out, develop strategies, and come up with a target time that you want to hit. Reading and using the monitor, paying particular attention to split time and strokes per minute, will be essential.

The Concept 2 website has tons of information to help you in this if you want to geek out: Technique Videos, an explanation of the Damper Setting, or a how-to of the Fish Game (have you seen that on the PM3s?)

We look forward to the Challenge! Now get rowing…

This past weekend Adrian, Shannon, and I (Joanna) competed at Level 10 CrossFit’s Fall Strength Challenge. This was a really well-organized and well-programmed event that I’m glad we got to be a part of. Thank you to the organizer of the event and owner of Level 10, Santos Reyes, and to all his members and volunteers who made everything run so smoothly. And a big thanks to our support crew of Mark, Lily, and Michelle! It was a long day for all of us, but we three finished with post-competition contented exhaustion. It was fun.

All of these photos and videos were taken with iPhones, so please forgive the quality:

Shannon swinging a heavy bell in workout #3.

Adrian pushing the sled in workout #1.

Joanna hopping over the wall in workout #1.

Here’s Adrian moving quickly through the first round of workout #3:

Joanna’s Drop Snatch at 155 lbs:

And even though Shannon was worried about these Front Squats beforehand, she rocked them! This was Shannon’s first CrossFit competition, and even though she was sick all week before the comp, she still managed to do a stellar job. Congratulations Shannon!

There were three workouts that all competitors completed. Then the top 18 men and top 12 women went on to complete two more final workouts. Here are the overall men’s and women’s placements from the day.  Adrian finished 22nd out of 47 men, Shannon finished 26th out of 32 women, and Joanna finished 11th. For some more videos from the event, you can check out our YouTube channel.

On the platform at the 2009 Redwood Empire Championships. Stop by on Saturday for a short or long while. It's the best weightlifting meet in Northern California and it's just a few minutes away!

Please drop by the town square in Cotati (aka La Plaza Park) on Saturday to watch some great weightlifting at the 2011 Redwood Empire Championships. This annual competition is hosted by our good friend Freddie Myles and is a fun, outdoor event with hay bale seating, beer, and bbq. Last year both Emily and Thomas lifted in the meet.

This is a fantastic opportunity for you to see some top weightlifters Snatch and Clean & Jerk. Lifting goes on all day, from 10am-5 pm. Stop by any time. Oh, and Thomas will be lifting with the big guys, at 4 pm! This is a free event, and so close to home. You’ll be missing out if you don’t check it out. Hope to see you there!

In other news:

-Gleason Ranch Meat CSA box drop off is this Monday evening (8/29). Please plan to pick your meat up by 8:30 pm.

-Please note that on Labor Day (Monday, September 5th) we will hold a 10am class only.

-On Friday, September 9th from 5-7 pm we’re hosting a Happy Hour! We will only have one evening class at 5:30 pm.

(For more pictures from the day, please see the CrossFit Santa Rosa Facebook page.)

Michelle's 185 lb Clean (a PR), which earned her a 4th place spot in Event 2.

One hundred female competitors and at least three times as many fans and spectators showed up at Alhambra High School in Martinez on Saturday for Femme Fit 2011: Summer Edition. In the competitor pool were CrossFit Santa Rosa members Carolyn and Michelle.

There were five events in the day. The first was a trail run through the dry and brush-filled hills surrounding the main site. The catch? Competitors did not know the length of the run, even while on the course. They were directed by guides as to the direction of the path, but did not know when it would end. It is estimated that the run was around 3 miles. Carolyn came in 2nd place in her age group in this event.

Carolyn was worried about the Deadlifts in Event 3, but it was the Box Jumps just after Deadlifting that was hard.

Event 2 had athletes establishing a maximum-weight Clean within a 5 minute time period. Michelle’s opening lift of 155 lbs was heavier than most of the women even finished with. By the end of the five minutes, she had successfully cleaned 185 lbs, a ten pound personal record! This put her in a tie with Jenny LeBaw who just finished 6th overall in the 2011 CrossFit Games.

With time left on the clock, Michelle attempted 195 lbs, but the bar got away from her and hit her knee on its way down. Although she iced her knee on and off over the next few hours, the swelling and discomfort caused concern over how she’d be able to handle the rest of the competition. Despite the hurt knee, Michelle powered through Event 3, the deadlift/box jump/Kettlebell workout, in just 6:05.

Athletes take off running up into the hills surrounding the event site. They did not know what the total distance of the run would be; it ended up being about 3 miles.

The last two events of the day were a 100 meter dash (sanctioned by USA Track and Field and monitored with fancy-schmancy stuff: a gun start, a clock with hundredths of a second recording, and a photo finish) followed by a run/sandbag carry/burpee combo. The 100m race was an exciting crowd pleaser, with the top two women in each heat going head to head for a second round. The sandbag carry workout came an hour later, which on the one hand provided the athletes needed rest, but on the other just gave time for the adrenaline levels to drop and fatigue to set in. Still, Carolyn held her own in both of these events, coming second in her age group on the sprint and first in the burpee/sandbag workout.

I don’t think I could be more proud of these two amazing women. Congratulations Carolyn and Michelle! I am so proud of you for choosing to enter this competition, and for giving it your best. Competing can be scary and nerve-racking, but I know that you are better athletes now because of the experience this weekend. Mad props to you both.

When you see these two strong ladies at the box, give a big high five to each of them. They really deserve it.

This weekend, on Saturday, August 13th, both Michelle and Carolyn will be competing in Femme Fit: Summer Edition. I know they’d love to see some of your faces there and hear you cheering for them. Round up a crew to carpool, pack some snacks and sunscreen, and head on down to the East Bay for some or all of the events. Directions to the event can be found on the ‘Location’ tab of the FF website. Please come out and support these two awesome ladies!

This should be a super fun competition to watch, too, as women from all over Northern California will be showing their skills, strength, and stamina. There are five different workouts and 100 competitors. The spots were filled within hours of registration opening.

We’re so proud of these two strong women for taking on this challenge! Show them some love!

Femme Fit – You Vs. from CrossFit Sweat Shop on Vimeo.