Sunday
Rest Day _____________________________________________________
Blogcast #8. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Anyone tracking what I’m going to refer to as the “Great Dumbell Controversy of the 2017 CrossFit Games Open?” We’ve been up to our eyeballs in our Box re-fit for the last three weeks. Long days, long nights and about 20-24 hours for the last three weeks so I’ve been on the tail end of this. Until now.
With more than a few weeks to go until 17.1 Dave Castro posted a photo of Dumbells with a warning to expect them in the Open. A little later CFHQ posted a confirmation that Dumbells would, in fact be a part of the Open this year. If you’ve been paying attention they have been used in the Games or Regionals before but this will mark the first time that we’ll see them in the Open.
This is no different than any other challenge we’ve faced as an Affiliate. Half the fun of being part of this community is improvisation, making the most of what’s available to you at the moment and capitalizing on that to make the best WOD you can at that moment in time. Or you can choose to use “not having what you need” as your excuse.
Here are a couple of the things some of you may consider challenges that we’ve recently faced in regard to Open WODs:
Last year there was a 25’ Walking Lunge programmed. We were fortunate that we had the room for a few lanes of 25’ but OH MY SWEET, HOLY GOD!!! What if we didn’t? Well, we would have run fewer heats. We would have gone outside. We would have lunged 12’ then turned and lunged back another 12’. Last year, after having moved into our new location in 2015, we had no more single bars for Pull-ups. When one of the announcements aired on Thursday night showing Bar Muscle-ups for the WOD I have to admit that I was momentarily concerned. My first thought? Reach out to a friend at the Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire and ask to use their outdoor Pull-up bars. This would have meant that we would have had to move barbells to the site and work outdoors but it was a solution. Instead I called Rogue that evening, ordered 2 SPEAL bars and had them delivered to their storefront in Columbus, OH. Bright and early the next morning Michael Lamanna and I saddled up and drove to Rogue, picked up the bars and drove back to Pittsburgh. Six hours and 400 miles later we were back at the Box replacing 2 of our parallel Pull-up stations with the single Rogue bars and the Open WOD was on.
That’s what we did.
Here’s what we didn’t do. We didn’t post trash on the web like little bitches. We didn’t insult our community or anyone in it. We didn’t blame anyone.
I can’t believe what I’m seeing so far this year.
How about this one:
“Dave Castro screwed us, and every other gym in the world, by programming Dumbells in the Open, and CrossFit HQ has validated that they will be utilized.” Those of you who know me may remember that there are a couple things that really piss me off. One of those things is poor grammar so before I give my thoughts as to the content of this Slip Knot’s complaint allow me to grade his use of our written language.
You don’t use a comma followed by the word and. He does it twice then throws another comma in there for good measure. Maybe there was a sale on commas?
Back to the bitch-fest:
“To make our 100+ member participation logistics less of a nightmare, we have to order DBs. (we have 1 set of 50s…)”
He then goes on to explain that the order for the new Dumbells is $1,200.00 and that they just spent their budget on Assault Bikes so they sent out a request for “sponsorship” to purchase their new equipment. Kind of like a “Go Fund Me” but internally I imagine.
Now, that’s not a bad idea. I don’t know if I’d ever consider that here at CrossFit Pittsburgh but kudos to him for coming up with a solution to a problem.
Here’s my problem. What the fuck makes anyone think that Dave Castro screwed them or anyone else by programming Dumbells in the Open? How do you blame HQ for “validating that decision? You do understand how this works right? Dave and his Team come up with more and more challenging WODs and the members of the CrossFit community who choose to compete in the Open perform those WODs. Am I missing something?
Help me understand this as well please; “To make our 100+ member participation logistics less of a nightmare, we have to order DBs.” You’re telling me that you have 100+ members of your Affiliate participating in the Open? I have to ask, how many members do you have? If you have 100 participating in the Open it’s safe to say you have more than 100 members. You should thank God everyday for your numbers and figure out a way to deal with the challenge of logistics. That or don’t host this Open WOD. Instead you choose to insult Dave, HQ and the rest of us in the community. Shame on you.
I bet some of you thought I was going to use profanity and call this guy a pussy. Right?
When we received confirmation from Tony Budding that we were the newest Affiliate back in 2006 one of the things I’ll always remember was that HQ simply requested that we “don’t do anything embarrassing to the community.”
That’s not a lot to ask.