Beyond the Competition

• The crowd for the Crossfit Regionals was the fittest crowd I've ever seen. And they came prepared! Yes, the fairgrounds had some food for sale, but they probably didn't need to. The crowd brought coolers full of meat, veggies, fruit, jerky.... No popcorn. No candy. I saw some burgers and corndogs (I may have even eaten a cheeseburger), but this was a healthy crowd. I heard from one woman that the previous weekend in NorCal, the catering company had grilled veggies and turkey burgers ... seems like a great opportunity for some locals to sell their great food!

• Speaking of fairgrounds, the organizers missed some serious funtime opportunities... I know that the athletes had to do all the workouts that everyone else did, but there were so   many rides just sitting there! And a giant slide! Giant Slide! They could have at least opened it up for spectators ... maybe during the breaks?

• There weren't a lot of female individual competitors. I guess that many who qualified competed with a team because they figured they'd have a better chance of making it. But there were plenty of male competitors. Hmmm...I wonder if this has anything to do with mindset and proving something to yourself instead of doing it for a team and not getting all the glory. I may be overthinking this.

• The music was terrible! I expected the typical 'daddy-didn't-love-me' death metal'. They actually played Miley Cyrus "Party in the USA" during the last women's WOD. Seriously. Who decides that?

• I wonder if a totally average woman who never even went to a gym regularly until she was 27 could actually make it to the Regionals/Games. If she like, trained really hard for a year and didn't eat cake. Or minimal cake. So many of the athletes have a competitive background ... could someone fairly normal handle the pressure? Hmmm...

• A whole weekend of sitting ... not awesome. But I did manage to do some double unders.

Only 42 in a row - a bad showing. But I was in jeans!

               
*As an aside, there was lots of Reebok there. Interesting. Josh Everett posted this free article this weekend on the Crossfit Journal about the partnership with Reebok. I may have more thoughts on this soon.

Playlists

A while back, I wrote a post about Music to Crossfit to (terrible grammar, sorry). This is a subject I think about often because I work out too much and there's usually terrible music playing. Once in a while we play our own music, which can be fun, but when that happens I'm usually thinking about what will play next and if it was the right song to play next. That's just how my mind works.

Full disclosure: I have really bad taste in music. It's steadily been going downhill for the past 5 years or so. Or maybe in my aging, I'm just being more honest in what I listen to. George Michael, Ke$ha ... it's all good. But it wasn't always this way. Back in high school, I had great taste in music and I could make a killer mix tape. I feel now that I'm at Crossfit so often that I should be able to come up with the perfect playlist for a Crossfit workout. But there's a big difference between a playlist and a mix tape.

First, you listen to a mix tape while you make it. You figure out what you want to say with the music, you gather a bunch of CDs or tapes, and you start. You might have a good idea of what should come after "Under the Milky Way", but after you listen to it, you might have other ideas. I guess you could do that with a playlist, but you don't have to. You can just click and drag songs and forget about it until you're listening to the playlist. Then you can change the playlist if you want. You can't do that with a mix tape, not really. A mix tape is forever. I have some in a box in the closet that are 15+ years old...and if I pulled them out I'd probably be brought back to sitting alone in my room in high school, thinking about what to say to that certain someone, which brings me to my next point...

When we're doing a workout in Crossfit, or at least when I'm doing a workout, I'm thinking about how much it sucks and why am I doing this and only 5 more reps or whatever. These are fleeting feelings that will be over soon. The vast majority of my mix tapes were created while thinking about a boy and whether or not he liked me and if I'd ever find out. These are much stronger emotions that create much more powerful music. 

I'll keep trying to come up with some good stuff to listen to during the WODs. But I know where my talent lies. 

Good Artists for a Crossfit Playlist:
En Vogue
Lady Gaga
AC/DC
Guns 'n Roses

Good Songs for the Perfect Mix Tape:
Helpless - Sugar
I Want to Touch You - Catherine Wheel
Under the Milky Way - The Church
Shake the Disease - Depeche Mode

Music to Crossfit To

If you walk into a Crossfit box or watch any Crossfit video, you're bound to hear some terrible music. I'm not sure if it's supposed to make us work harder or make us angry or what, but I'm over it. I do like Tool, who often come up in the mix. I can stand Rage Against the Machine if I'm doing pull-ups. But I'm really getting tired of all this new hard rock daddy-doesn't-love-me crap we have to listen to during the WODs. I guess the real motivation would be to finish the WOD faster so I can go outside and not listen to it anymore. Lately, it seems like our box is moving more towards the Beastie Boys and away from whoever's playing the Warped Tour this year, which is a move in the right direction.


My preferences for workout music differ from what's typically played in the box.  Once in a while I'll speak up and advocate for Guns 'n Roses or Jane's Addiction, but it never lasts long. I used to take this Body Combat class at a globo gym and we would punch and kick to Christina Aguilera and Pink. Good stuff.


Maybe that's why I "like" running so much. I can listen to whatever I want. I set my playlists for the approximate time I want to finish that distance, so my 5K lists run from 27-30 minutes. This is the one I've listened to the most:


In a Big Country - Big Country
Love is a Battlefield - Pat Benetar
Filthy Gorgeous - Scissor Sisters
Supersonic - Oasis
Rebel Yell - Billy Idol
Live Your Life - TI
Palace of the Brine - Pixies


It's a little random but it works for me. I usually feel like singing out loud when Filthy/Gorgeous comes on, and I know that I should be near Target when the Pixies start. 


I made a mistake when I put together my latest one and made it a little too long, so when I was running a 5K in May, I thought I was getting a PR, then realized I was about 30 seconds too slow.


What You Waiting For? - Gwen Stefani
Take On Me - A-ha
Barracuda - Heart
God is a DJ - Faithless
Hella Good - No Doubt
When Love Takes Over - David Guetta
Closer - Ne-yo


So I just took Hella Good out, since I already have Gwen Stefani on there. I like having a longer dance song in the middle because I know I'll be about a mile further by the end of it. God is a DJ is perfect because it's 8 minutes long and it varies enough withing the song to keep it interesting. I also like hearing, "This is my church. This is where I heal my hurts" while I'm running. It makes sense to me.


So I'm not even sure what I'm doing tonight. I might be running or I might be doing Fight Gone Bad. If it's the latter, I'm sure we'll be listening to some terrible music while wall balls hit me in the face. If it's the former, it's up to me to decide how to get through it.