The Furious Fundraiser Competition

Hey everybody. The Furious Fundraiser was easily one of the funnest experiences I have ever had! It was a blast from beginning to end. We started that morning off by waking up at 5:30 a.m. so we could have enough time to make our "Rich Froning Food" which is just a tub of peanut butter and jelly. By tub, I mean a jar and a half of peanut butter and one jar of jelly. Let me tell you, my friend Ryland and I are 2 very capable individuals. But getting peanut butter out of a jar with a plastic spoon at 5:30 in the morning must have been a sight to see to say the least. After fighting pb&j for the better part of 20 minutes, we walk next door to meet the team at Cracker Barrel for breakfast.

We got to CrossFit Fury at 7:30 for registration. Once we got our numbers and heat assignments, the team picked our spot in the gym to start warming up. The First heat was off the line for the 2 mile obstacle course at 8 a.m., and I was up 7 minutes later in the 7th heat. As soon as the guy said 3, 2... I got easily one of the biggest adrenalin dumps I've ever had!  ...1, Go! Our heat takes off and I'm doing everything I can to not blow myself out in the first 200 meters! I settled into a pace that was somewhat uncomfortable, but it was a pace I knew I could keep for a majority of the 2 mile course. The first obstacle was hay bail hurdles. Once we got past that, it was about half a mile to where we had to pick up the sand bags. The men had to carry the sand bags (I would guess about 20 - 30 lbs.) up and over to hills which was probably about 200 meters or so. Then we ran to up to a dead end street where we had to do 10 "jump over log burpees". Afterwards we had to run back to the hills to carry those infernal sand bags that were immediately followed by balance beams that we had to walk on. Then it was the home stretch back to the gym. I was pretty exhausted at that point but I was able to keep my pace for the last 1/2 mile to the finish line. I was pretty excited to almost be done when I turned the corner and saw those hay bail hurdles from the beginning of the race. I had forgotten all about those things, and to be honest, I didn't thing I was going to make it over them. Thankfully I finished without incident at 18:27. At this point I knew I had a lot of ground to make up in the second workout if I wanted to make it to the 3rd one.

We had about 2 hours of rest between the run and the second workout which was as much ground to overhead that you could accumulate in 6 minutes.  The trick was you had to lift 4 (132, 154, 176, and 198 lbs.) different amounts of weight at least once before you stuck with a weight that you were comfortable with. The bar started with 132 on it. As soon as he said go, I added all of the weight on and failed my first lift. I tried again and got it, then stripped the weight of. I did my 4 lifts at each weight, then promptly went to town with 132 lbs. The last minute of this workout was one of the longest minutes of my life! I wanted to make the cut to get to the 3rd workout so bad! I fought all the way through to the last second and immediately fell to a heap on the floor. I was completely exhausted and I had nothing left. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough and I didn't make the cut. 

I'm not disappointed by my performance by any means. I left it all out there in both workouts. I just simply wasn't strong enough. I have a lot of work to do and I'm really looking forward to doing it. This was a great learning experience for me. My next competition will be Grapplers Quest on November 19th and then I have another CrossFit comp at my home gym on December 3rd. Thanks for the support everybody, 3 weeks of training for Grapplers Quest!