This past weekend was the 2014 Great Lakes Invitational in Noblesville, Indiana. The GLI is a huge three-day competition hosted at the Hamilton County Fairground, and I believe it is one of the best CrossFit competitions put on all year. There were 25 teams, 44 women, and 51 men who participated in this competition, and I was on a team (CSC Black) with Jeff, Sophie, and Pat. Teams and individuals from all over came to throw down, including Games athletes like Lindy Barber and Elizabeth Akinwale. Reebok and Progenex were there selling their products, and tons of spectators came every day to cheer on the athletes. The teams had to do 2 workouts per day (listed in the picture below), and it would take too long to recap every workout, so instead I’m going to do a list of my favorite moments from the GLI.
Favorite Moments from the 2014 GLI:
1. Team Event 1, otherwise known as the most frantic workout I have ever done
This was the first event of the competition, and it looked like this:
7:00 to establish a 1RM clean
1:00 rest
7:00 to establish a a 2RM bench press
1:00 rest
7:00 to establish a 3RM overhead squat
I was really excited for this workout because a 1RM clean is my absolute favorite thing to do. For the clean, all four people had to share a platform and only one person could lift at a time. This meant that each person only got three attempts at the most, so we had to be smart about where we wanted to start and end. I don’t think I have ever experienced the feeling of urgency as I did during that first 7 minutes. The men shared a bar and the women shared a bar, which meant we were constantly rolling bars on and off, throwing the collars back and forth, shouting to each other about what weights we needed, throwing weights across the platform, chalk was getting crushed, etc. After a minute or two we fell into a groove, but it was a fast 7 minutes. We did really well on this part, Jeff cleaned 295, Pat 255, Sophie 175, and I cleaned 195. I went for 200 but could not stand it up. The bench press and overhead squats weren’t nearly as frantic as the clean, we decided to have Sophie and I go for all our attempts first, that way we wouldn’t have to take weight on and off because all four people had to share one bar at this point. We both hit 130 for 2 and then Jeff and Pat went. On the overhead squat, Sophie and I got all our attempts out of the way again before the guys went. We both hit 125, I went for 130 but dropped the bar after one rep. This was by far one of my favorite workouts of the competition because it required constant communication and a lot of teamwork.
2. “135”
This was the second event on Saturday and it was awesome. It looked like this:
All athletes use a bar with 135 pounds
Female 1 (me): 21-15-9 of back squats/pull ups
Male 1 (Pat): 21-15-9 of squat cleans/ring dips
Female 2 (Sophie): 15-12-9 of hang cleans/box jumps (24”)
Male 2 (Jeff): 15-12-9 of thrusters/chest to bar pull ups
This workout was in relay format, so I started, and once I finished I had to run back and tag Pat, once he was done he had to run back and tag Sophie, etc. When we walked out on the floor, I was surprised to see that for the back squats the bar had to be taken from the ground instead of from a rack. I guess I just missed the part where they mentioned this, but I was pretty pissed at myself for not knowing this haha. I was planning on breaking up the back squats 7/7/7, 5/5/5, and 5/4, and I knew if I had to clean it from the ground every time it would waste more energy and time. The workout started and I stuck to my plan of breaking things up. All my pull ups were butterfly and felt great, plus the pull up bar was super grippy and I felt like I could hang on to that thing forever. Once I got back to the bar for the round of 15, I noticed some of the females were struggling to clean the 135, so having to take the bar from the ground actually worked to my advantage. By the round of 9, I was breathing pretty hard and had to literally crawl, like some weird giant toddler, on top of the box to get to my pull up bar. I finished the workout a full minute faster than when we did it in practice and I was really happy with that. Pat was up next and did really well on his part. His dips were really fast, and also can I just say that it’s pretty badass that we had a 51 year old on our team. He finished and tagged Sophie, and she crushed the hang cleans. It was awesome. A lot of females were having trouble with the hang clean, but not Sophie. She finished her workout and tagged Jeff, and he fucking brought it home for us. His thrusters looked easy and his butterfly CTB pull ups looked effortless. Overall, we finished second in our heat and a full minute faster than when we practiced it last weekend. That was a great feeling. I’m pretty sure all of us felt like we were going to puke, but it was so cool to finish second in our heat and 4:00 before the time cap. We strategized that workout perfectly and everyone’s strengths contributed to their individual workout.
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| work it work it twerk it |
3. Watching Megan compete as an individual
Megan is one of my closest friends at the gym, and to watch her compete and hold her own against Games athletes like Lindy and Elizabeth was so cool. On the first day, she cleaned 210 pounds. Then later that night she won her heat for the wall ball/toes to bar workout. On Saturday she came in 4th overall for the sandbag run/pistol event, then later that night she demolished the row/run/row workout. It truly was inspiring and exciting to watch her do so well. She is an amazing athlete and an amazing person as well. Megan, if you’re reading this I am proud of you, sorry if this embarrassed you hehe
4. Heavy Grace and the Jerk Ladder
This workout was definitely my absolute favorite event of the competition. I love heavy clean and jerks, so I was really excited for this workout. This is how the event was set up:
115# Clean and Jerk, 30 reps followed by 135# Clean and Jerk, 30 reps
*partition all reps as needed
Time Cap: 10 minutes
-- Rest 2 Minutes --
“Jerk Ladder” (front rack only)
10 bars - 50 seconds on, 10 seconds off
145-155-165-175-185-195-205-215-225-235
Sophie and I agreed to split up the 115# clean and jerks in sets of 2 and trade off one rep each on the 135#. That plan worked perfectly, I never found myself really that out of breath, the trading gave us just enough time to rest for a second before we had to lift again. We ended up finishing the first part in 7:02, almost a full 2:00 ahead of anyone else and 3:00 before the time cap. The feeling of winning our heat was so cool, I think we were both surprised we were able to finish that quickly. It was so so cool!! It also benefited us because we got a full five minutes of rest before we had to move to the jerk ladder. Once the time cap was up, we picked up our bar and moved it to the rack. The jerk ladder started at 145 and went up by 10 pounds each minute. We were responsible for changing our weights and knowing how much was on the bar, our judge wasn’t even allowed to tell us how much was on there. This was stressful for me because I’m terrible at math and I’m bad at being able to calculate bumper plates, especially in a fast-paced situation like this. Luckily Sophie handled all the math and told me what to put on each time. We started at 145 and all the jerks felt really easy. Sophie and I both hit 195 which was exciting because that’s our jerk PR. I was not expecting to get that high, I figured I would only get up to 185 because I thought I would be way more fatigued. Sophie went for 205 and failed, so the bar dropped to the ground. This moment was also one of my favorite parts of the weekend: Sophie and I each grabbed an end of the bar to try and hoist it back on the rack, but I was too short and the bar was too heavy so I was not able to put it on my side of the rack. We set the bar back down on the floor and Sophie said “let’s both clean it” and without hesitation we stood next to each other and power cleaned the 205 together. It was fucking sweet. Sophie’s quick thinking definitely saved us. I tried for the 205 but failed. While we were doing the jerk ladder, the guys were doing their clean and jerks. When they finished, they moved their bar over to the rack and we were allowed to help them put weight on. Pat wasn’t able to get the 245 but Jeff got all the way through 275 which was great. Sophie and I ended up coming in 13th overall for the heavy Grace and 6th overall for the jerk ladder, we were both extremely excited about that. Pat and Jeff came in 17th on heavy Grace and 23rd on the jerk ladder. It was also really cool to watch Wolfgang finish the entire jerk ladder in the next heat. This was definitely my favorite event of the entire competition, I was so proud of how we all performed on this.
Team CSC Black ended up coming in 17th place overall. We were happy with that, we performed well and there were a lot of tough teams competing. I had so much fun during this competition. It was extremely well-run, the workouts were really creative and challenging, the equipment was nice, the judging was fair, and the athletes were amazing. Thanks to CrossFit Indy North/Three Kings CrossFit for putting on such a cool event. Also thank you Babs, Cody, Tom, Heather McC and Amber for coming out to watch and support all of us! Megan, you are awesome. Stephen, Leah, Jessie, Wolfgang, you guys killed it and it was great getting to compete/hang out with you all weekend.
Pat, Sophie, Jeff-thank you for being such fun, cool, talented people. I was so excited and proud to be part of this team and I had a blast competing with you guys!
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| Team CSC Black |
It was a great weekend at the GLI. I am already looking forward to next year. Onward!
Here are some other cool pics from the weekend:
