The competitive CrossFit season isn’t just the CrossFit Open and Games anymore (more on that to come very soon) but now includes many other high-level competitions. Probably the biggest and the one that starts the 2024 season is Wodapalooza. This weekend the world’s best CrossFitters are descending on Miami, Florida to compete in this amazing fun, and demanding competition. And we are so excited to say that our very own Jenna Michelotti is “taking her talents to South Beach” and competing not as a teen but as the elite athlete we know her to be. She was invited to compete with “Fearless Misfits”. It includes such amazing athletes as 5-time CrossFit athlete Paige Semenza and Makenna Enslin. She will be going head-to-head with such CrossFit luminaries as Brooke Wells, Baylee Rayl, Kelsey Kiel, Alison Scuds, and Kelly Baker. She is no longer a teen but shoulder-to-shoulder with the other elite athletes who have been our CrossFit heroes.
We couldn’t be more proud or more excited for Jenna. We will be posting information about the competition on Cove the Club and it’s a really fun event to check out.
The first day of the competition is Saturday and here is the Fearless Misfits schedule.
BIKE RACE: Lane #2 9:11
WORMS CAN’T SWIM Lane #14 4:14 PM
UNO.DOS.TRES Lane #14 6:59 PM
Let’s go Coach Jenna!
Also, best of luck to Tola Morakinyo, who has been training at the Cove for the past couple of months and has been such a wonderful person to have at the gym. He is on team “Ombré Hombres” which includes such CrossFit superstars Chandler Smith and Noah Olsen.
Jenna and Tola, we hope you come back smiling, tan and filled with wonderful stories.
All was right in the world over the holidays with Jenna in the back listening to Taylor Swift
Take notes gentleman, one of the strongest men in the world warming up with an empty barbell
We are not big on rules at the Cove. While some places do burpee punishments for being late (the horror!), we know we are all busy, trying our best, and are considerate of the class and one another. This place is your escape from the madness of the outside world, so we want to keep it as stress-free as possible!
But there is ONE rule we ask you to follow:
During workouts, we ask that you don’t clean up your weights until the last person finishes the workout. Why? Just finishing most workouts is hard enough, but it is even harder when you see people around you cleaning up and moving on with their day while you are still grinding out the last reps.
With that said, we know many of you are busy and must head out early or might need to hop in the shower before work. No problem. The coach can take care of your equipment, or you can come back after your shower or bathroom break to get your stuff.
We don’t have many rules here, but rather a core value system that says that we lift each other up – in every sense of the word.
The month of December is a notorious difficult month to make it to the gym and we are so proud of so many Covies making it to this month’s Committed Club. The Committed Club is for those athletes who find the time to make it to the Cove 14 or more times in a month. It is a commitment that are making to themselves and the Cove community. We had 31 people make the committed club and we looking to continue to grow this group!
Each month, we give away a special gift to a random member of the committed club and this one goes to Axel Rodriguez. He is one of our longest-running members and he and his family have been cornerstones of the Cove community. As part of the Cove Committed Club, he wins one of the new Cove Hoodies that will be available later this month.
We hope to have even more athletes make the committed club for January (have you posted your quarter goals yet on the Cove goal board?) and we will have a new prize for a lucky member of the Club!
We can only imagine how stressful the last days of anticipation of a comeback marathon might feel after putting so much time and training into it. Here begins the mental challenge, and the mind 100% affects the body. While traveling to Chicago, Sondra began to feel pain in her feet and ankles; she was literally limping around the airport and through the event expo. Not the visual you have for a marathoner. Her entire body had filled with tension and it was showing up in her feet. How could she start if she was feeling like this? Kevin to the rescue, again. He put together a quick plan to get her back on track: Epsom salt baths, muscle rub-downs, and sleep. Next day? Tension gone, feet and ankles springy. Nothing was going to stop the Ailingers on this special day. Go time!
The weather was great and the race was well organized, but the crowds were massive and the logistics of security, bag drop, and getting into her starting corral 45 minutes before she started were daunting. Time was not on her side when Sondra finally found the forest of port-a-potties … and the random, seemingly endless line leading to them. She had to wait until she hit the first pit stop on the course at mile 3. Those were the worst miles of the race – but the 4th mile was glorious, and her split time for that mile — a full minute and a half faster than her overall average — showed it.
As Sondra was running, Kevin had his own race going on. He was maneuvering around an unfamiliar city, on and off public transportation, dodging over a million other spectators, trying to catch a glimpse of Sondra amongst a sea of runners to cheer her on. He made 5 attempts to see her over the course of the race, and only found her 3 times; Sondra only saw him once, at his first cheering spot.
With that said, she ran her race: Walking through each water stop along the way, keeping her heart rate in her planned zone (we are finishing this race healthy!). At mile 15, the race gets real – stick to the plan, hold onto the form, breathe, keep going. At mile 24, it was time to 3-2-1 GO. No more disciplined heart rate or pacing; it was time “send it”. She sure did, running a sharp 9:23 mile for the last full mile, the fastest mile of her race.
Afterward, no matter the placing, no matter the time, Sondra had felt like she had won the race. She met her goal of finishing in under 5 hours, doing it in 4:54 with that pesky bathroom break included. She finished healthy and feeling great (in fact recently ran the Richmond half marathon for “fun”). After the marathon, the Ailingers spent time enjoying the city and eating anything they wanted!
We wanted to congratulate Sondra on this accomplishment. You have inspired us over the past year plus and the big question we have for ourselves is, what is the next challenge you are about to tackle?
We wanted to highlight one of our most beloved members at the Cove, Sondra Ailinger. She is a warrior of the 7 AM class and has inspired us all with not just her athletic prowess but her dogged determination. We could talk endlessly about her athletic accomplishments inside the Cove. Instead, we wanted to focus on her victories outside of the gym, coming back from a difficult injury to compete and kill it at the Chicago Marathon.
Getting better at “CrossFit” certainly feels great, but sometimes we lose sight of the reason we do this demanding and life-changing training regimen. Our belief at the Cove is that we train this way to have the ability and confidence to do any physical activity that we desire. Life is going to throw plenty of challenges at us and this is how we prepare to meet them.
Sondra has always been an athlete of sorts, but she’s mostly dabbled at various things along the way (softball, weight lifting, volleyball, Tae Bo, Insanity, P90X3, Ninja Gym, …), always looking for a new challenge. Nothing ever really stuck until these last couple of decades. In her 40’s, she found running when she trained for her first 5k to mark her 40th birthday; that turned into a string of 5K’s, 10K’s, half marathons, and now three full marathons. As she approached 50, she took on the challenge of working up to her first strict pull-up. Since then we have all witnessed her knocking out thousands of those! And, of course, she and Kevin found CrossFit together, which is an endless world of challenges that inspire and humble us all.
Sondra’s favorite funny tagline to inspire her to keep trying new, hard things was, “Aging is for Idiots!” But the reality is, if we’re lucky enough to keep living, aging happens to all of us; it presents new challenges to continually adapt and overcome. In early 2021, Sondra began experiencing nerve symptoms from a structural defect in her lower back. It has likely been there since childhood, but only now made itself known as typical natural processes resulted in less space between her vertebra and compression of her nerves. The preferred answer was PT to increase deep core strength and uncompress the nerve … but until that happened, activities that could aggravate the condition had to be shelved. A return to running and Crossfit was a cautious hope but not a guarantee. Kevin had just undergone back surgery himself for a more severe acute injury, and was in the beginning of his recovery stage. So, running and CrossFit took a step back; recovery through PT was Job #1, and Sondra and Kevin tackled it together. They were both going to do what was necessary to get this part of their lives back. Thus began their comeback; and as things progressed positively, Sondra decided she would not only run again but run another marathon and finish healthy.
At the Cove, we are firm believers in the power of physical therapy, and the biggest key to recovery is not the therapist but the athlete. A PT will give you exercises to do, but it comes down to the athlete to consistently and thoughtfully do their recovery with the belief that they will get better. Dr. Colin VanWerkoven was (and still is!) the PT-wizard for both Sondra and Kevin; the exercises he prescribed became their WOD for a few months until they were cleared to begin attending classes with modifications again. Even now, to keep moving well and symptoms at bay, PT is the accessory work they consistently do after class.
While PT helped restore her physical integrity, to get back to running a marathon, Sondra had to change her approach to running, to make it as easy as possible on her body. We all assume that running is a natural movement, and in some sense it is, but to do it at a high level and for long distances, technique is important. Every mile you run is about 1500 steps, with a tremendous amount of force on the body (impact forces between 1.5 and 5 times body weight). Minimizing that force means actively holding yourself up, reducing contact time with the ground, and keeping the motions efficient and in the correct planes, with the correct timing. Relearning how to run at age 54 is not easy, after a lifetime of basically “just doing it”, but it’s just another challenge.
CrossFit provided the tools Sondra needed to meet the challenge. Strength days became important for building not only leg strength and power, but core strength and control to support her body and keep her back healthy. She also needed to continue to build her aerobic capacity while minimizing mileage; classes supported that as well without the impact of running. Taking 2 classes per week and a third focused strength session in addition to 2-3 days of running (not more than 9 miles at a time) gave her all the training she needed. As a bonus, her CrossFit training wasn’t a solitary pursuit. Kevin was there to support and inspire her. His recovery and patient, dogged pursuit of his own goals (he is putting up great squat and bench numbers these days!) was a continual example for Sondra. Sondra will gush, “He is so patient, he shows up, does the work, stuff happens, but he doesn’t worry about it.”
Getting ready to take on the Chicago Marathon healthy took over a year of intentional effort … and then suddenly, it was time to go! It’s an event attended by over 1.6 million people, watching over 47,000 runners! Think about that for a second when you think of going to a basketball or football game.
We are excited to announce that we have some awesome new Cove lightweight hoodies. To help with sizing, we are doing a pre-order. I will pick up a couple of extras but if you want to be sure we have your size, please put your name on the following Google spreadsheet with your size, and will bill your Wodify account. The retail price for the hoodies is $50.
This order form will close in a week and the hoodies should be delivered a couple of weeks after that.
For the month of November, we had our inaugural month of the “Committed Club”. This club represents those athletes who made it to the gym fifteen or more times within the month. We believe that with regular visits to the gym, you can make tremendous progress over a relatively short period of time.
We are so proud of the 37 people that we able to make this month’s Commited Club. Each month we will be doing a special prize drawing for a member of the club. This month, we went with straight cash, awarding $50 to Tom Anglin. We have been trying to give it to him all month, but for some reason, Tom stopped coming to the gym? He was actually on vacation, so we will let it slide.
The committed club is an ongoing group at the Cove, so if you didn’t win this past month, don’t sweat it and see what you can do in a very busy December or to start the new year. We know how busy life can be but we hope that many of you can take the time for yourself and your health. What will be the prize for next month?
With that said, if you didn’t catch our release of the committed club on our social media, let’s give a big vitrual hand to these 37 inspiring Cove athletes.
Amy Chao
Andrew Zink
Angie Bryl
Axel Rodriguez
Beth Pavelka
Carlos Stekman
Carolyn Pangburn
Chrissie Tupe
Courtenay Wallace
Cynthia Marshall
Darnell Watson
Eduardo Salgado
Edward Pavoni
Eriq Gardner
Heather Schultz
Ian Dombroski
Jamie Lang
Jenn Killion
Juhee Im
Karl Greaser
Ken Ahn
Kevin Ailinger
Kimmy Culver
Kristin Crane
Kyung Ho Yoo
Laura Mullis
Linda Couture
María José Figueroa Miletti
Mariah Robertson
Mateusz Dzierzanowski
Megan Bass
Mike Ellis
Ron Sims
Ryan Strout
Ryan Woodward
Steven Pangburn
Thomas Anglin
#Committed2theCove
Tom also finished up his 100K Row yesterday, which happened to be his birthday. Happy birthday Tom!
