CrossFit

You are an athlete.

I don’t care if you are training for anything right now or not – you are an athlete. You are a human being and human beings were designed to be physically active. You can be active by climbing a tree or running along the beach or lifting heavy things at the gym. I hope for your sake you are active every week of your life. I hope you haven’t given up on being an athlete.

During my lifetime I have called myself a gymnast, a volleyball player, a softball player, a soccer player, an ice skater, a runner, a skier, a cyclist, a surfer and a triathlete.

Just recently I started calling myself a CrossFitter.

I’ve been dabbling in CrossFit off and on since October of 2008. In February of 2012, I decided to get serious about it. By serious I mean I decided to do more than go through the motions of the sport, I decided to do more than just show up at the gym every week.

I decided to pour my heart and soul  – and body – into CrossFit for the next 12 months.

I decided to compete in the CrossFit Games in March of 2013 and I succeeded in recruiting 7 of my most courageous friends to join me on this irrational adventure.  

Here’s a photo of me and those 7 courageous friends. This was taken just before a ridiculous 18 minute workout.

This blog won’t teach you how to do CrossFit. You can learn all about CrossFit over here and here. And you can read all about the CrossFit Games here. Here’s the best video I found that explains the Crossfit Games. Better yet, you can go into your local CrossFit gym and watch a workout to see what it’s really all about.

Instead, this blog will tell you a story about a unique athletic adventure. It will tell you a story about 8 women who committed themselves to a very ambitious and improbable goal. The current CrossFit world champion – Annie Thorisdottir – is 21 years old. Our average age is 42. We have never even been to a CrossFit competition, let alone competed in one.

The 8 of us know we will fail at our goal. And in spite of our assured failure, we are completely committed to the goal. If this doesn’t make sense to you yet, you’ll want to keep reading.

Every week, one of us will share a story about our adventure. We’ll share with you our successes, our frustrations and our personal growth. We’ll share with you what we’re learning about ourselves and what it means to get stronger in a sport and in life.

Between the 8 of us we have 17 kids and a dozen bicycles. Like most of you, we have crazy busy schedules. We train at four different gyms in Tucson. What we have in common is courage, commitment, and a little bit of crazy. And a desire to get as strong as we can during the next year.

Every epic adventure needs a unique name and we’ve decided to call ourselves Charly’s CrossFit Angels. In alphabetical order, we are: Kathy Cunningham, Virginia Farwell, Mindy Flannery, Laura Ganem, Holly Justice, Niki Mathias, Julie Penny, and our superstar coach – Kate Price. Here’s 5 of us climbing a tree.

You can follow along on our journey by subscribing to this blog. You can start by reading the kickoff story here.  Then you can read my explanation of the CrossFit Games as failure project. And you’ll definitely want to check out the introductions of everyone in our group:

Kathy Cunningham
Virginia Farwell
Mindy Flannery
Laura Ganem
Holly Justice
Niki Mathias
Julie Penny
Kate Price

We hope our stories will inspire you to begin your own adventure. We hope our stories about CrossFit will inspire you to become the strongest athlete you can become.