Has everyone met McKenzie? She is currently the youngest member of the Fort at a tender 14 years old. With Garth and Audra as her parents, it was only a matter of time before she would make her way into our Fort Family. McKenzie, or "Kenzilla" as she is called, is full of life and enthusiasm. She even brought her ipod last night to the Ladies Only class so that we could share her music.

CrossFit is intimidating for most ADULTS, so I think it speaks volumes about Kenzilla's bravery that she comes to the Fort. It's also a good illustration of how scalable CrossFit really is. Bill always tells people, "Don't feel like you have to be a 20 something year old athlete...even my DAD does CrossFit."

Great job Kenzie! We're so glad to have you as part of the Fort. After all, it's never enough to have just ONE member who poses during workouts!

Kenzilla works ring dips

The metcon yesterday:

800m run
21 ring dips
21 sit-ups
400m run
15 ring dips
15 sit-ups
200m run
9 ring dips
9 sit-ups

There was a little confusion about where exactly the turnaround point is for the 800m run. To help clarify, Brian and Zach took a picture for us last night.

Here is where you turn around if we're doing 800m runs:

800m turnaround. See it?

See? Right to the right of those bushes. What's that? You can't see it? Oh, well, that's because it's PITCH BLACK along Wegner road! I think we might need to invest in some reflective vests...what do you think?

NEWS FROM THE GYG: I just heard a rumor that Super Dave is the strongest guy at the Fort. Could it be true?  One challenge that nobody has been up to yet, is to overhead squat their body weight for 15 consecutive reps. This morning Super Dave did a single rep at 95kg's, which is easily 20kg's above his body weight. I'd like to throw out an official challenge MAYBE EVEN A PRIZE to the first CrossForter to OHS body weight for 15 reps.

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Is there anything more scary than hearing that from your Coach? That's what The Show heard from our Mayor yesterday morning. Craig, Dave and Garth were working hang power cleans 3-3-3-1-1-1 during our Graveyard Gang class, and all three tied at 85kg's. The Show thought he'd load HIS bar to 90kg's and get just one more rep.....but the Mayor quickly squashed the ever-lovable, yet sometimes over-zealous Show. You'll get it next time Garth!

After hang power cleans, the metcon was AMRAP in 12:00 of:

7 sumo dead lift high pulls (50/35kg)
7 box jumps (24")
7 pull-ups

Everyone did a great job! Stacy took the high score of the day for our ladies, and Tommy Mo edged out "The Show" to take first for the men.

We have some new faces...has everyone met Brett? He was the last man standing after Bill called "TIME" last night.

This is how you can tell it was a good workout

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Who likes turkey? Who likes having two Thanksgivings!? WE DO!

Let's celebrate Thanksgiving - Paleo style - together as a Fort Family!

Date: Saturday, November 21st

Time: 1:00 PM (I think)

Place: Jeanne's house (in Wauconda)

Jeanne and her family have graciously opened their home to all you crazy CrossForters and your families. Bill and I will be providing the BIRDS, and we'd like to ask that everyone bring a dish to pass. Try a new paleo recipe, or bring one that's tried and true. Either way, just get yourself and your dish to Jeanne's house for some food and fun!

I'll update this post with firm times once everything is confirmed. Please RSVP in the comments section so we know how many mouths we're feeding.

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A special thank you goes out to the 15 ladies who came out on Saturday for our Ladies Only Event. I know that I had an absolute blast spending the afternoon with you guys!

Our agenda for the day looked like this:

Purse Game
WOD
CrossFit Fire Trivia
Nutrition Discussion
Emotional Farewell

The purse game is always a lot of fun. I think we learned a lot about each other by investigating the contents of each other's purses. Example: Kelli had 9 shades of lipstick in her purse! One of our ladies has a pair of UNDERWEAR in her purse. We didn't ask why because we're not here to judge; just to love. Our Purse game winners were Audra, Brittany and Robin.

Next up on our list was the WOD. We did the same WOD as the Team Saturday crew, only the ladies did 150 presses instead of 75, and their weights were scaled back appropriately. I'm proud of you guys for getting through this workout. This workout encompasses two things that a lot of people are afraid of: box jumps and handstand push-ups. Congrats to you guys for sucking it up and pushing each other. Our winning team from the WOD was Connie, Barbie and Jessica. Nice job ladies!

Our last "game" of the day was a round of CrossFit Fire trivia. The questions were everything from "who is the youngest female member of the Fort" to "which two members of the Fort have siblings that own CrossFit Affiliates"? Our trivia winners were Jessica, Brittany and Jeanne.

In addition to prizes for the individual games, we also had overall winners for the day.

1st place - Audra
2nd place - Brittany
3rd place - Jessica

Great job to ALL our ladies! I want to also thank all of the local businesses that donated prizes. Without your generous donations, we wouldn't have had such AMAZING prizes to give away!

Prize Sponsors:
Atmosphair Salon
The Trend Cellar
Chapel Hill BodyWorks
Rave Waves
American Outfitters
The Meat Goat
Tropic Stop Tanning
Celebrating Home

I want ALL the ladies of the Fort to know how proud I am of you. What we do at the Fort is against "the norm". How many other women in your life do you know that lift weights regularly? The ONLY women I know that do, are CrossFitters. You have taken strides to live healthier lives and set good examples for your children/families/coworkers.  Congratulations on being brave enough to be strong. Congratulations on everything you have accomplished. Congratulations on not being a "damsel in distress". You are a special part of my life! HUG!

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/7134173[/vimeo]

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Yesterday was a great day at the fort. Before I talk about the Ladies Only Event, let's talk about the Team Saturday workout. You'll be glad to hear that it wasn't a total sausage fest...we had 3 ladies there to help the men get through a tough workout.

In teams of 3
150 burpees
75 handstand push ups
150 deadlifts (100kg)
75 box jumps (24" box)
75 press (60kg)
800m run with 20kg barbell

Only one person could be working on burpees or box jumps at a time, but as an added bit of AWESOME, all 3 team members could be working on HSPU's, deadlifts and presses at once. This means all 3 team members could be on the bar at once! Handstand push-ups had to be done in the middle of the floor, but team members could assist each other in any way possible. If you were

Zach, Mark and Deb, this meant that Marc and Zach could be jack-hammering you into the floor for 75 reps! If you were Brian, Garth and Kenzie, this meant you could throw your legs over your partners shoulders....let the giggling begin.

Everyone did a great job - I think all our teams finished within 2 or 3 minutes of each other. This was a tough workout, but you guys made it through!

Zach, Mark and Deb were our champions - have you guys all met Deb yet? She's one of our newest members to complete the ramp-up program, and she completed the Chicago Marathon in around 3 hours and 30 minutes!

Our Champs

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We do LOTS of workouts at the Fort. We try and keep things mixed up nicely so that you guys aren't repeating workouts too often. With all the workouts we throw at you, there are just some that stand out more in our minds than others. After we did Press 5-5-5-3-3-3 yesterday, we did one of those workouts:

5 rounds
5 dead lifts (125/85kg)
10 burpees

Everyone was frantically flipping through their notebooks trying to find the last time we did that workout. I know that I was convinced we had done it more recently than April 22nd. It's a short workout, but it stays with you long after you've done your 50th burpee. Staci finished her last burpee, looked over at me and said in the saddest voice, "why is that workout so hard?"

We had a TON of PR's yesterday on this workout. Congratulations to the brave souls who did it RX'd! Tommy Mo got after this workout like the fat kid chasing the ice cream truck, and took the top spot for the men by finishing in 3:39. Garth was just behind him at 4:07 with Super Dave taking 3rd at 4:44.

As a special treat, the 6PM class got to workout with Bill! Like father like son, he pulled on his knee high red socks and got ready to work!

I dig the socks

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Yesterday the strength/skill work was overhead squats/muscle ups. For anyone who doesn't yet have unassisted pull ups or ring dips, you guys did some work with the assistance bands. Keeping things organized and flowing nicely has been a little tough now that we have half the class doing strength work, and the other half doing skill work. Overall, I like that we brought back the skill work because we are already seeing people progress to using smaller bands for pull-ups! Hooray!

The metcon was:

7 rounds of
7 power cleans (60/40kg)
7 push press (60/40kg)
14 double unders

I'll tell ya what...those 14 double unders are probably about the hardest ones you'll ever have to do! After the cleans and push presses, there's a good chance your  shoulders are going to be feeling-the-burn as they say.

With the chilly weather, we were forced to jump rope inside, which can always be a little treacherous.  Fortunately, nobody lost an eye or appendage...but we did lose a jump rope. RIP black and white jump rope...you'll be missed!

Jamie shows us a solid lockout

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