Today Team USA traveled to CrossFit Performance in Fairfield. We went there to hone our team by doing a competition with Team Performance and Team Milford. These are 2 great teams that I'm sure we will be facing when we get to the CrossFit Games. We went in hoping to aquit ourselves well and we believe that it was mission accomplished. First off I want to thank Ben Kelly and his  team for hosting this in their great new box. They could not have been a better host. I also want to thank Jay and his mighty crew from Milford for showing up. Worth noting was the fact that Jay had been functioning on very little sleep and almost no food as he and his lovely wife just welcomed a baby girl into the world.

Team USA learned a valuable lesson today. Never give up...even if it looks like your in last place. The  wod Ben had created was a grueling physical test but mentally it was equally as hard. The first part of the wod was a nasty unbroken squat clean ladder 10-1 with the mens weight at 155lbs and ladies weight at 105. This is a heavy weight to manage and all the teams struggled with this. Team Performance had one lady tweak her back , Team Milford had and athlete nursing a prior shoulder injury and was allowed to drop the weight and our girls struggled hard to get through this. Brendan was a man posessed on the squat cleans. He was actually smiling while doing them!

The grit and determination to fight through and just finish the first part of the wod was epic and of worthy of any highlight reel. Team Performance is a force and they finished first(after losing one athlete) and techinally not finishing the wod as prescribed. Team Milford finished second but because of the injured athlete was allowed to scaled and drop the bar from the start. Team USA finished with the slowest time at about 1 hour and 16 minutes(yeah it sucked that bad!).

After the squat clean ladder we went on to an escalating(1-10) chest to bar pull up ladder. All 3 teams ripped through this portion fairly well and it was clear all 3 teams are primed for the coming CrossFit games. Once all the athletes finish the pull ups each team had to complete a total of 400 double unders. In actuality it was 800 because although the teams worked in 4's as a whole they were segmented into pairs of two so that each pair of two athletes had to finish 400 double unders.

Somewhere in the middle of our double unders Ben Kelly let us know that although we were finishing with the slowest time we were actually in first place because of the formentioned injuries. I then told our team and the news gave them added energy as they plowed through what seemed like a million double unders. The learned to never give up,to fight through no matter how it looks during the event. I have never been as proud of them as I was today. Gerry,Brenda,Jen,Janeil and Becky showed they have the stuff to compete with anyone. Great job Team USA ! Now it's on to the CrossFit Games!