If you hadn’t caught our previous blog post about 3 weeks ago, we are posting the week’s programming over the weekend to help you plan your training schedule. To provide additional value, we are also providing some post-class accessory work. These are additional pieces to work on technique, skills, strength, and overall fitness. The class workouts are more than enough to develop a high level of health and fitness BUT if you are looking to do a bit extra, then grab a friend after class and try some of these extra workout pieces.

Event 8

This is it – the final event of the 2022 Games. Amazingly, Jenna has gone through the entire week without looking at the leaderboard at all. She has asked us how she placed after each individual event, but everyone in her crew was expressly forbidden to tell her where she was on the overall leaderboard. Once again, this strategy paid off for Jenna because she wasted no mental energy stressing about it, especially considering her overall position varied significantly throughout the week. In fact, on Day 1, Jenna couldn’t even tell you the events on Day 2 because she didn’t waste time looking – all her energy was always focused solely on “the next event”.

Though she didn’t know it, Jenna came into this final event in 7th place overall – only 10 points behind the athlete in 6th and 30 points behind the athlete in 5th. If she could beat the girl currently in 6th by at least 2 places (i.e., have 1 athlete “get in between them”), she could overtake 6th place overall. At this point we weren’t giving much thought to her overtaking 5th place overall, because she’d need to beat the girl currently in 5th by at least 4 places – and that’s extremely difficult to do when you have a field of only 10 athletes.

The Final Sprint

25 cal Echo Bike

20 burpee box jump-overs (30 inches)

10 sandbag-to-shoulders alternating 100#

Time cap: 5 minutes

For anyone that’s ever seen Jenna in the back of the gym killing herself on Echo bike interval sprints, and collapsing on the floor in tears – all that work was for a moment like this. One week before leaving for the Games, Jenna did a workout with 100# sandbag-to-shoulders with Carlos and her father (her father did a 70# sandbag) – it was for the possibility of a moment like this. Throughout the Games, Jenna consumed 600-800 carbs per day (!!) – keeping her body fueled was a part-time job itself – and it was for a moment like this. She was prepared for this event and she knew it. 

There would be no “strategic pacing” in this event – it was time to Send It!

The event starts and we’re watching her moving the Echo bike FAST. We see her judge’s hand go up (to signify 5 cals remaining) at the 58 second mark – she completes her 25 cals at 1:14 and she’s 4th off the bike – significantly in front of the girl currently in 6th. Onto the 20 burpees – if she can avoid any costly no-reps (for feet going outside the plane of the box), it is highly unlikely she will be caught.

Jenna completes her burpees and she is in 4th. There are 5 athletes way ahead of everyone else – the top 4 girls on the overall leaderboard, plus Jenna. Jenna starts the 10 sandbag cleans and her pace is faster than anyone else – 2 cleans, then advance each time until 10. She quickly moves into solid 3rd. But the athlete in second is struggling with the 100# sandbag and gets no repped. Jenna continues to quickly advance and appears to move into a tie for 2nd! The #1 athlete finishes and Jenna has 1 rep to go. She completes her rep and crosses the finish line at the exact same time as the athlete next to her. BUT…Jenna has the presence of mind to kick her right foot forward (i.e., the foot holding the timer chip) as she crosses the finish line and grabs 2nd place by 14 one-hundredths of a second!

Jenna’s support crew are all ecstatic! We then look back at the rest of the pack and realize the athlete in 5th overall is far back – she finishes in 8th. Through her final push, Jenna’s performance in the final event elevated her to #5 overall for the 2022 CrossFit Games.

This has been the culmination of a year of hard work, adversity, overcoming injuries, brutal workouts, sacrifice, and a ton of mental challenges. Jenna came in with an unmatched mindset and a mental toughness that was focused only on maximizing her own performance without focusing on other external distractions around her. It’s now time to celebrate and eat all the cheese curds and ice cream!

CHEESE CURDS!!!!!

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Event 7

After what was clearly her toughest event of the Games thus far, Jenna had to quickly regroup mentally and physically to get ready for the next event: Rinse ‘N’ Repeat…the swim event. Last year in the 2021 Games, the swim event was by far Jenna’s worst event and, as a result, she embraced it as part of her training throughout the year and got to the point where she actually *enjoyed* her swim training sessions – in short, she “made friends with her weaknesses” and worked to improve them – she didn’t avoid them in her training.

Rinse ‘N’ Repeat

Every 2 minutes:

50-yard swim

8-cal Ski Erg*

*Add +2 cal each round

The structure of this workout is what’s known in CrossFit as a “beep test” – that is, do a given amount of work on a fixed time interval, and “earn” your next interval – if you don’t hit the target for the interval, your workout is over. In this case, if you finished the work in 90 seconds, that means you’d have 30 seconds to rest (i.e., the remainder of the 2 minutes) before the start of the next round. 

Side bar for a story from last year: In late 2021, one of the online qualifier workouts Jenna did to qualify for Wodapalooza was a “beep test”. In that qualifier, she went so hard on each round to “get to the rest period”, but could never fully recover, and had a brutal workout and was not satisfied with her score. Upon reflection, she decided to re-test but this time to pace it and “go slow” in each round and not “race to the rest” – treat it as one continuous workout (making sure to just barely hit the targets), rather than sprint-rest-sprint-rest. We ironically called it “The Lollygag Strategy” – and it paid off tremendously – she got a MUCH higher score, with less effort.

Back to 2022 Games Event 7: Jenna quickly identified the similarity of the Event 7 structure to the Wodapalooza qualifier from last year, and she decided in advance that she would employ the “The Lollygag Strategy” for this event. In the first round, Jenna was in “last place” – not just 10^thplace, actually 20th place since they were all going in the same heat with the ten 16-17 boys. Whereas everyone had about 30-40 seconds rest in the first round, Jenna only had about 10. You could tell people in the stands weren’t even sure if she’d make it out of the second round. Another interesting note: the jumbotron in the venue showed everyone’s real-time cals/hour on the Ski Erg – Jenna’s was showing about 800-850, while everyone else was well over 1000-1100.

Second round comes up – same thing, Jenna only has about 10 seconds of rest. Third round – same thing, Jenna is still in 20^thplace with only about 10 seconds of rest…but something interesting is now happening: everyone else is getting less and less rest while Jenna’s rounds all look the same. Fourth round – they need to hit 14 cals this round – Jenna’s competitors, who were getting out of the water about 15-20 seconds before her on earlier rounds – are only getting out of the water about 4-5 seconds before her. Jenna is now hitting about 1000 cals/hour on the ski erg but…her rounds still look all the same! Fifth round – they need to hit 16 cals – a couple of her competitors start to fall off and Jenna is getting out of the pool at the same time (or a little before) them! Jenna now starts to put the hammer down on the Ski Erg at over 1150 cals/hour on the jumbotron and her ski shows even with 3 other athletes. The athlete 2 spots ahead of Jenna on the overall leaderboard fails to hit the 16 cal target for round 5 and she’s out – but Jenna moves onto the next round. Sixth round (18 cal target) – this is it. Jenna swims hard and gets out of the pool even with a couple other girls. She needs to hit 18 cals in less than a minute and she hammers the Ski at over 1250 cals/hour. Watching the “virtual race” on the jumbotron, Jenna is chasing down 3 athletes, including the girls currently in 2^nd and 3^rd on the overall leaderboard. Down to the final second of the round…Jenna hits 17 of the 18 cals and her workout is over. But…we look at the results on the big screen and see that she has beaten the 2^nd and 3^rd ranked girls by 1 cal! The remaining competitors move on and finish their last round. Jenna is absolutely thrilled with her results (she wasn’t sure if she’d make it out of the round of 12 or 14 beforehand) – and for the first time during the Games, she gives a smile and wave to her family in the stands.

The Rinse ‘N’ Repeat event at the Games was the absolute pinnacle of Jenna’s strategic acumen – she maximized her current abilities for that specific event – one of her proudest moments of the 2022 Games. 

Now only one event remains!

Coach Brian’s view of Event 7 from the Airport Bar

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