SuperWOD Sunday Throwdown!

This past weekend I hosted a competition at my gym, CrossFit St. Louis! It was called SuperWOD Sunday Throwdown and it came together with the help of the individuals at my gym. It was such a success that we are making it an annual competition and I could not be more excited! But in all reality it could not have happened without the help of the members of my gym and all the individuals that came out to participate.

My partner in crime planning this!

I originally had this idea about 2 months ago and I approached one of the owners of the gym, JoAnna, with my idea. When I sent her all of the information I expected her to either say "no" or to take the reigns and plan this event. However, she emailed me back and said that if I wanted to put this together and run it, then go for it. I was a little hesitant at first because I knew there would be a lot of work to go into this and with me out of town I wasn't sure how I was going to get it all done. However, one of my good friends at the gym, Jacob, stepped up and said he would help me plan this and Matt another friend said he would help in anyway possible as well. These two gave me the confidence that we could pull this competition off.

The calm before the storm. WOD debriefing!

When we gave JoAnna the heads up that we wanted to do this, she immediately helped us start marketing for the competition because we had about four weeks until our competition date. We were going to open up 60 spots for two person teams and see how it went. I was just praying that teams were going to sign up and this wasn't going to be a flop but within a week all the spots had sold out! After the first person signed up, Jacob and I were bouncing off the wall and when we sold out we were ecstatic. But soon after that, I realized we had 120 people competing at our gym, plus all the spectators and other personnel there and that this was going to be huge! There was no room for error.

Planning out all of the details was intense. The biggest thing we had to do was test the workouts and make sure they were going to be alright. This required MANY trial runs, tweaking of the WOD components, and overall just a lot of effort! To make sure we had workouts that everyone could successfully do was a challenge, but in the end, I think we succeeded pretty well. We had a strength WOD, a row/AMRAP workout, and of course a chipper to finish it off. 3 WODs, 5 scores we were ready to go...

Ha that's funny. There were so many details we had to work out that between 4 people we had 16 email threads (with an average of 20 emails on each). That is a lot of communication... Thankfully the four of us worked together and we were able to think of everything that we needed to get done. The week leading up to the competition was super busy working out the details, I had so many lists of things to do, but when I got to St. Louis on Friday night, we were ready to go and get everything ready for Sunday.

The amazing volunteers!

Really this competition would have not have been possible without all of the volunteers from out gym that stepped up to help us out. We had the entire CrossFit St. Louis competitors class plus a few more members help us run this competition. On Saturday after our fun team workout, everyone stayed afterwards to help tape the lanes, rearrange the gym, and move all the weights and bars to where they needed to be. Sunday they were incredible judges that held everyone to the standards but were kind about it and cheered for each team in every workout. We got a lot of compliments on how fair and great they were and I could not be more proud to hear this!

Throughout the entire competition, the volunteers' help with registration, scoring, and resetting for every workout to keep the competition running smoothly and on time. At the end, the volunteers helped us take everything down and it was all cleaned up 30 minutes after we were done. Talk about amazing teamwork right there. Everyone did this without complaint and it really made me appreciate even more the great family I have here.

I was so nervous for Sunday and the competition that it almost made me sick, but looking back on it, it was totally worth it. I got to see so many people compete that were all from different backgrounds. For many people it was their first competition and for others they had competed multiple times. But everyone was there giving it their all the entire day. It was so awesome to see many people who have never been "athletes" in their life so passionate about fitness. While walking around and announcing the competition I had a strange sense of pride for everyone that was competing. It takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there and compete in front of so many people and in doing it, it makes you a stronger person. People may think we are crazy, but the community that has been built around this premise is incredible and makes you love CrossFit even more.

Most of the athletes!

So in conclusion of this weekend, I fell in love with CrossFit St. Louis and the community within it even more. I am so thankful for the amazing friends I have met through this sport and I don't know what I would do without it. I cannot express enough gratitude to Jacob, Matt, and JoAnna for all of their hard work to help me complete this. The countless hours, emails, and planning that went into this was all worth it and I am proud of us! The members of the gym are incredible, both in volunteering and competing! I was so excited to see the CrossFit St. Louis logo all over the gym! The competitors, no matter what level, are amazing! How many people put themselves out there like that? Not many. And the spectators that came to watch were an amazing crowd. At one point Jacob and I looked at each other and just said "wow" because the crowd was so great.

We did it! Thank you boys!

JoAnna and I! Thank you so much for helping
me plan this! You also did an amazing job
competing for your first time! 

So thank you to everyone that was a part of this experience. It is something I will never forget! And hopefully I will see you all in the years to come either at the gym, other CrossFit competitions, or just life.