The official results are in and Apollonia Helm will be representing CrossFit East Bay at the 2009 CrossFit Games on July 10th to 12th (She came in fifth). Local athlete Candace Hamilton of CrossFit Oakland will be representing CFO (she came in second).

Coming in to day two, Polly was in a three-way tie for third place. 16 women RXd the day one WODs (out of a possible 20 slots) and were able to advance to day two.

The day two WOD was the following:

22 deadlifts @ 315#/185#
Farmers walk with 45#/25# dumbbells to top of inner loop (hill)
22 thrusters with 45#/25# dumbbells
Farmers walk with 45#/25# dumbbells to bottom of inner loop (hill)
Run to pull-up bar and do 22 chest-to-bar pull-ups
Run to top of outer loop (hill)
22 overhead squats @ 95#/65#
Run to bottom of inner loop (hill)

The hill in question was extremely steep to say the least. Not one competitor managed to run the whole thing*.

Polly finished in a solid 17:42 for fifth place and a spot in the 2009 CrossFit Games. Only 150 athletes worldwide were able to qualify out of a field of thousands. To put in perspective, there were 200 competitors at the NorCal Qualifier and only 10 slots for the games available.

Polly's superb skills as a generalist and the specific training she did coming up to the qualifier served her well here and she finished strong. Her main complaint about the WODs, in fact, was that she did not go hard enough and was still able to stand up at the end. We will have to work on that going forward. Thanks again to Gita who designed the ramp-up training for Polly with a bit of input here and there.

GO POLLY!

* Gita tried out the WOD post-qualifier for fun and was one of only two people to run the entire steep section bottom to top with no breaks. The other was Aaron MacIntire of CrossFit Oakland.

Labels: CrossFit, CrossFit Championships, Featured Members, Touchstone Members

¶ Friday, May 08, 2009