Monday April 4th

Workout of the day

Accuracy/Coordination/Agility: 
Max double unders in 3 minutes

Strength/Power/Speed: 
Clean and jerk 3 rep max (10 minutes total time; 3 reps completed in 40 seconds)

Cardio respiratory endurance/Stamina: 
4 minutes max calorie row
rest 60 seconds
3 minutes max reps KB swings (men: 53/35lbs; women: 35/26lbs)
rest 60 seconds
2 minutes max reps thrusters (men: 95/65lbs; women: 65/45lbs)
rest 60 seconds
1 minute max reps burpees

This is the workout of the day even if you are not participating in the challenge. 

 

Today is the last day of the The 2011 Body Transformation - Look Better, Perform Better, Feel Better Challenge. It’s an exciting day for us to see the amazing progress of our athletes, and an even more exciting day for the participants to test how much they were able to accomplish in just eight weeks.

Voting on the transformation photos will commence on Wednesday or Thursday and you will be able to vote up until 6:00 p.m on Friday. The coaches will narrow the field to the top 10 competitors, and it will be up to the participants to decide the winners.

Winners will be announced and prizes will be awarded at our wrap-up party on Saturday, April 9th (location to be announced). This promises to be a very fun evening and a great chance to celebrate with your fellow CFSS athletes. We would like to get a head count so please put your name on the sign up sheet at the front desk.

***Challenge Participants – Please arrive a bit early for your group session to roll out, warm-up and have your photos taken. Please remember to wear the same clothes you wore for the first photo. And remember, sessions are running at 9:00am, 11:00am, 4:30pm, 6:00pm and 8:00pm today.***

WOD Details

After your general warm-up, you will be given 3 minutes to perform max reps of double unders. Upon completion of the double under test there will be a 5 minute rest period. From there you will be given exactly 10 minutes to work up to the heaviest ground to overhead 3-rep max you can achieve within 40 seconds.  Our recommendation is that you clean and jerk the weight, but all that matters is that you move as much weight as possible from the ground to a full standing position overhead.  You will record only your heaviest load that was successfully lifted three times within 40 seconds.

Once the ten minutes have elapsed, you will be given five minutes to rest and transition to the conditioning stations. There you will complete as many repetitions (or calories) as possible in the allotted time. 

All competitors will be given a scorecard and a partner to count their reps. Your partner will tally your repetitions when you finish, and will add this number to the amount of your 3-RM ground to overhead (in lbs.) for your final score. (e.g., Athlete X  hits 95 double unders, works up to a 225 lb. 3-RM, rows 80 calories, 90 KB swings, 25 thrusters, and 15 burpees for a final score of 530 points.)

Challenge participants must complete the workout the same as their initial performance, as an Advanced or Intermediate athlete, with no mix-&-matching between movements.  

Most importantly have fun and be ready to give it your all.  

 

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Another great event on Saturday. Thanks to Chris (CFOB) for hosting.

 

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Taken from the CrossFit Games site (well sort of, I substituted their picture with one that I felt is more appropriate):

Display Issues Are Known

By CrossFit on 04.03.11

Don't worry if your submitted results aren't showing on the Leaderboard.

If you have submitted and/or validated results for Workout 11.2, don't worry if they are not showing on the Leaderboard. The Leaderboard still needs work, but our database has collected all of these submissions and validations. There is no need yet to email your results to our support staff.

Our IT team is fixing the Leaderboard and it will be functional soon. When the Leaderboard is fixed, it will reflect the most recent submissions and validations for Workout 11.2. 

If you are having other problems with the site, please email support@crossfitgames.com.

 

Comments

[Lauren C.]

I feel like it's the first day of school tomorrow... my nerves are shot. I just want to wish the best of luck to everyone tomorrow. There is no doubt in my mind that everyone is going to destroy their first score. It is going to be an exciting day for CFSS, just another one to add to the list. Good luck, but more importantly have fun! :)

[Danielle Reuter]

Great pics!!! Good luck to all... can't wait to see who comes out on top!

[Steve Marshall]

I can do anything with He who inspires me

Hey Everyone,

To be honest I don’t know why I decided to sit down and share this intensely personal story with all of you. I can theorize that it might be because of the bonds that are forged through working out together as intensely as we do day in and day out. As well, I have seen intensity in the eyes of so many of you that remind me of the person I am about to tell you about. (And I can’t tell you enough how much that has motivated me over the past few months)

Admittedly, I am a little out of my comfort zone on this because I am not one for being overly dramatic and I’ve also refrained from sharing this story even with people I’ve become very close with over the years, but here goes….

On June 28th, 1986 I was at a place called Madden’s Pub in Eastport, Long Island with my closest friend in the world, John David Linehan. We were friends since little league days and also played Pop Warner football together as 10 year olds. We went through middle school and high school together and then went on to be roommates at SUNY Delhi for two years where we became as close as two straight guys can be.

John knew everything I ever loved or feared. I knew the same about him. Simply put, he was the best human being I have ever come across in my 46 years of life. He had a smile that could stop a war, conviction that could move a mountain, and the toughness and loyalty of a thousand men. All of this in a 21 year old kid.

On that day, I was on top of the world… I was home from San Diego State University for the summer, John had put together a little gathering of our friends at his house and it was a perfect summer day. As day turned into night, we went to Madden’s. It was “our place”… In fact, John (who had gone to Delhi for Hotel/Restaurant Management) worked at Madden’s and was in negotiations to buy it from the owner.
To this day, I am not sure there are too many things more fun than being 21, having no real responsibilities yet, and hanging with a few buddies over a beer. (Like I said… On top of the world.)

There is no way to accurately describe the chaos and hellish nightmare that soon came our way. Insane story short, a couple of true to life scum bags came into the bar and started playing pool against us. They were wild eyed and rambunctious and within a short amount of time the clash of a few preppy looking college kids and some scum bag crack heads was inevitable. One of them took a swing at one of us. I mentioned John’s loyalty, conviction, and toughness and that didn’t play in his world. It was obviously too late to play negotiator so he jumped right in and held back the guy who was swinging. Time stopped and John had full control of the guy who started the fight and we all just stood there waiting for the guy to decide to leave. He had other ideas… Scumbag one turned to to scum bag two and said; “go out and get it”.

We all knew what he meant, but nobody believed it for a second….

We were wrong.

Scum bag #2 came back in with a gun in his hand.

John’s brother Terence (all 6’4” 250 lbs of him) was at the front door and was the first one to go at the guy. An insane scrum developed at the front door and we all piled outside in a lump with shots being fired, people screaming, and punches being thrown. The sixty seconds of activity that I just described above changed my life forever.

When I looked around to survey the madness of what was going on I caught the site of someone’s feet between two parked cars. I ran over and it was John lying down in a pool of blood. I knelt at his side and held him as tight as I could and screamed for someone to call the police. I waited there forever and talked to him the whole time. I told him he was the toughest person I’d ever met and he would work through this and we will have a beer and laugh at the story one day.

He bled to death in my arms. (Words cannot express…)

He wasn’t going to be able to tough this one out and we would never have a beer and laugh at the story. On the contrary, it became the worst nightmare I will ever live through.

This happened 25 years ago and to this day John is the motivating force behind almost everything I do. Getting married, having kids, changing jobs… I have done nothing of significance in my life without looking inward and wondering what he would tell me to do. In life, he was the friend that I looked up to. The one who seemed to always have more experience, more knowledge, and better advice than a kid had any right to posses at his age. In death, he still serves as that compass for me. That 21 year old boy is still guiding this 46 year old man. That says a lot about the man he was.

To underscore his toughness and conviction I will tell you a story about our days in Delhi.

Delhi was a small state school that had a nationally ranked D3 wrestling program. Delhi was an easy school to get into so the truth is that a lot of national HS championship wrestlers who had bad grades went to Delhi before they moved onto D1 schools like Oklahoma and Iowa. So we had a lot of crazy, lower middle class, insanely good wrestlers. None of whom were genius’, but all of whom were tough SOB’s.

We soon became good buddies with a few of the top wrestlers in the school and there were only a few of us non wrestlers who got invited to the wrestling team’s parties. As you might imagine, these parties would get a little crazy with all the beer and testosterone in the room.

At one particular party early on in our first year someone decided (after 300 or so beers) that it would be funny to punch out the glass in the fire extinguisher case with his bare hand. (Again, not genuis’s) Anyway when this first happened, as you can imagine everyone turned and looked in shock for a second…. And then everyone laughed like it was the funniest thing we had ever seen. (Beer, youth, and stupidity equals a low bar for humorous activity.)

Well, John must have decided it was time to show these boys what tough was because what he did next is a story I’ve told a hundred times and I am sure half the people I’ve told didn’t believe it… But it happened.

Right after the laughter stopped and everyone was looking at the broken glass and wondering how hard the guy must have punched it to make it break… John picked up a piece of the glass and started chewing it like it was a potato chip. He stared at everyone as he did it and did it with such ease that most of them didn’t believe it was glass in his mouth and started laughing and telling him to open his mouth.

After about six more chews John spit tiny little chards of glass out of his bloody mouth. As you can imagine, there was more than a few guys staring at him like he was insane. (Which of course, he was.) I know that this little story doesn’t make him sound like the smart, centered, mature guy I still look up to today but say what you want… It doesn’t take away from the fact that this was one tough son of a bitch.

So that story really might be written off as a crazy, drunken, stupid college kid with beer muscles on. And of course, it probably started off as exactly that…

But here is where the toughness and conviction of John David Linehan is defined. He was into “never quit”, never back down, anything is possible” long before Nike commercials made it cool.

The day after that first party with the glass, we all gathered in the morning and started going through all the stories and laughing at all the insanity that went on the prior night. (Another tradition of youth that everyone should savor every second of)
At some point, a heavyweight national champion JUCO wrestler named Garrett Keith turned to John and pointed at him telling him he was insane to be chewing glass. He was laughing and almost mocking John as if to say he was so drunk and stupid and that’s what gave him the balls to do what he did.

John sat and listened and smiled. When Garrett was done John reached over and took another piece of glass and chewed it with more ambivalence than he did the night before. Cold sober. At nine in the morning…. He spit out the bloody glass again and asked who wanted to go to breakfast.

For the next two years, every time that story came up or someone didn’t believe it or made the mistake of making fun of him for it, he did it again right then and there. (It probably happened another eight times.)

Just to make sure everyone understood that backing down was not an option. It was in his DNA. It didn’t matter that it was a bad decision to begin with or that some people would think he was stupid for doing it. (In fact, I am sure HE thought it was stupid. But lets be fair, he was 18 years old and he liked his beer. Not the best combination for intelligent decisions ).. What mattered to him was that people understood that he would never, ever, (ever) back off of a challenge.

He was toughness and conviction personified. I was just lucky enough to have a front row seat to witness it.

I want that story above to serve as a small window into the man he was. Please don’t allow it to define him. In fact, I am sure if he were here today he would be embarrassed at the fact that I told that story. (I am also sure that if I challenged him to do it again, he would not hesitate) ☺

Evidence of him being wise beyond his years is the fact that his favorite saying was a short, simple, half sentence that he would use to encourage you when you were in pinch time in a game, or even (embarrassingly) while you were in the last few chugs of a mug of beer in a chugging contest. ☺

John would always yell at you; “Fill the unforgiving minute! Don’t stop!!” This was his way of telling you to suck it up and get it done. No sympathy, no coddling, just be a man and do it. He had a conviction and demeanor that made you want to impress him. Telling him no was not an option. I don’t know why some people have that and others don’t. It is just a fact.

I remember once on one of our five hour drives home I asked him where he got that saying. He didn’t elaborate… He just said that it was something he read once.

Sixteen years after John died I stumbled across the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling. In it reads the line;
“If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run, Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it, And – which is more – You’ll be a man, my son.”

I am not going to hide this fact… I cried as hard as I ever cried when I read it. (In fact, I am choking back a lump in my throat as I type this right now)

Reading those lines in that poem catapulted me into an accomplishment that I was starting to believe would never happen. I had signed up for the NYC Marathon several times and more than a few times I was lucky enough to be selected in the lottery. Each time, I would fail before I got to the starting line. The training would become too much, work would get too busy, or I would get injured and not be able to compete.

I signed up again, got in, and I toed the line at the start of the 2003 NYC Marathon with exactly two half marathons in my lifetime under my belt. I had trained a bit, but I was FAR from ready to complete 26 miles. I wrote “For John” on my shirt and crossed the finish line at 4:24. The ungodly pain in my legs began at mile 14. I heard him telling me to fill the unforgiving minute for two hours straight. Not finishing was not an option.

I’ll go back now to the original statement I made here about not knowing exactly why I decided to share this with all of you… It might be because I want all of you to experience the level of conviction that I know is possible for anyone. It might be because many of you bring back memories of John for me. (It might be because I haven’t drank in two months and I am going through withdrawals)

Do yourself a favor and find a way to fill the unforgiving minutes that we all face every WOD.

So now you know my secret weapon over the past eight weeks. I’ve had the toughest son of a bitch who ever lived pushing me to fill the unforgiving minutes…

One last thing… John’s birthday is April 4th. I have not missed visiting his grave on his birthday in 25 years since I lost him. I am coming to Crossfit directly from the cemetery tomorrow and I’m going to fill every unforgiving minute in that WOD.

Thanks for giving me the time to share this with you.

Steve Marshall

[Tara]

Great job to all our athletes on Saturday! CFSS rocked( I am not suprised!)
Wow Steve, now that is post! I had tears in my eyes as I read it!
Good luck to all tomorrow!
Let's all wish Danielle a speedy recovery:))

[Danielle Reuter]

Thank you for sharing your story Steve. It sounds like John would be doing the WODs by your side if he were here. Use his energy tomorrow & kick some serious ass! Hope to see you on top ;]

[Rob Jantzen]

Steve, after reading that I don't know what else to say except thank you for sharing that story. I look forward to having a victory beer with you on Saturday night.

[Rob Jantzen]

Still processing your post but I think something else I'd like to say is that I would love to see a future version the CFSS t-shirts with the phrase "Fill the Unforgiving Minute!" on it.

[scott]

Steve, thanks for sharing that story. I dont get to work out with you that often but when I do, I am always extremely impressed at what your capable of and Im sure your friend would be to.
Danielle, best wishes and speedy recovery. Hope your back to the Gym kicking all our butts very soon.

[richr]

WOW!!! Sorry for your loss Steve. Way to use it as motivation each and everyday you wake up. Thank you for sharing it with us. Being able to open up like that takes toughness and convition in itself. Glad you felt comfortable enough to do so.

I myself don't get much of an opportunity to workout with you @ the box. But from what i can tell you have made a commitment to yourself and John to work hard, never give up and to be a better person each and everyday. Just the the way John would want it.

[Jeanne Pirkl]

Steve, Thanks for sharing your incredibly moving story! Your buddy John would be so proud of you and how you attack your WOD's every day! Best of luck with the Challenge...(I already told you what I think this morning) See you during the week!

[Rick H]

"Steve, Thanks for sharing your incredibly moving story! Your buddy John would be so proud of you and how you attack your WOD's every day"

I'm just goig to quote what Jeanne said because I'm at a loss of words. There seems to be a lot of dust in the room rite now

[Steve Marshall]

I'd like to thank everyone for the overwhelming words of support that you all sent. I wanted to address what each and everyone one of you said to me, here, on Facebook, and in person yesterday but this post would be longer than the story I told.

I sat on that post for almost a month and I was never really ready to send it. I don't know what made me finally do it, but man and I glad I did now. Having all of you respond the way you did validated that decision a thousand times over. I guess sometimes when you go out on a limb, you get to enjoy the view a little bit.

Sincere thanks from the bottom of my heart to all of you.