AKA – My (mis)-adventures in San Antonio
I scored a pass to all three days of the Crossfit Regionals competition in San Antonio this past weekend, because I signed up and competed in the Open this year. I couldn’t go all three days, but Beth and I drove down on Sunday to check out the final day of competition.
I’ve never been to the Freeman Coliseum before, which is right next to the giant AT&T Coliseum where the Spurs play their games. I had never been there either, so we didn’t know they were two different buildings in the same area until we had parked and started walking with a bunch of people who definitely did not look like Crossfitters.
The guy at the ticket booth — who was shocked that we did not know there was a Spurs game at noon — told us where to go, and after a short drive we found the Freeman Coliseum around the corner.
“Now these are Crossfitters,” I said as we walked toward the building. It didn’t take us long to find the area where everyone from Crossfit central and RedBlack Gym was sitting.
We had missed the Individual Women and Team Women take on Workout 5, but we were just in time to see the Team Men in Workout 5 — the snatch ladder. All members of the team had a total of 50 seconds to successfully snatch a barbell, starting at 155 pounds. They worked their way up through: 165, 175, 185, 195, 205, 215, 225, 235, 245, 255, 265, 275, 285, 295.
Athletes who could not successfully snatch the weight could not move on to the next weight.
Only one person made it all the way to 295#, and as the announcer said — it’s pretty scary that it looked like he could have done more. I shot this video of the dude’s final lift:
I was fascinated watching them work up the ladder. I saw some pretty impressive form, and some pretty scary form. It was cool knowing just enough to be able to identify really good or really bad form.
Oops! Fiesta!
Beth and I were determined to make the most of our day out away from our families, and we decided to find a place to eat in San Antonio. We couldn’t find the place we picked out and just kept driving. We ended up in downtown San Antonio and decided to find another place recommended on Urbanspoon. Somehow we lucked into a free parking space and made our way to the restaurant — a Mexican place right in the heart of Fiesta, probably the worst time for us to go searching for a Mexican restaurant.
Ultimately, we ended up saying no to the hour-long wait, walking through the Fiesta craziness back to the truck, and finding a Walgreens where we could get nuts and jerky to tide us over (neither of us had eaten breakfast).
The final workout
We made it back to the venue in time to see the last team workout of Regionals. It was pretty exciting — Crossfit Central’s team kicked major butt, beating all other teams by more than a minute. Carey Kepler and Jessica Estrada are in this video I shot from the last part of the WOD.
Their performance in the WOD secured them a spot to the Games this summer.
We stayed for one more WOD — the final workout for Individual Women. This was a very tough WOD. In fact, not one woman in any of the three heats finished it. The first part involved muscle ups, which are vicious, and many women were slowed way down. It was both inspiring and hard to watch.
Traffic sucked on the way home. Beth and I were determined to make the most of our day away. We finally landed at Takoba, a fabulous Mexican restaurant on the East side of Austin that I had never heard of. It had everything we were looking for — good drinks, an outdoor patio, and delicious food. I had the pork and hominy stew. Yum!