Some of the best parts of the trip to the The CrossFit Games actually happened outside of watching the workouts themselves.
First of all, we stayed at this amazing resort, Terranea in Palos Verdes.
Knowing we wouldn’t have much downtime at the resort, I spent Thursday afternoon enjoying the pool there with a pool service boy named Spencer that looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mini me at age 20, a view of the Pacific Ocean and a delicious salmon blat salad that was to die for. It made the 4am wake up that morning worth it for the early flight.
Although I would’ve loved to have seen the Triple 3 event in person, we spent Friday morning getting a tour of the StubHub Center (including a walk by the Reebok bacon truck <– epic), learning about the 2014 Reebok CrossFit gear and then heading to Torrance CrossFit for a wod with our guest host athletes, Blair Morrison, Lindsay Valenzuela and Josh Everett.
Last year, the wod was pretty scaled down so that all levels of our group could participate so honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from the workout.
And then I saw them setting up Fight Gone Bad.
There are two benchmark wods in CrossFit that have left me either coughing up a lung or feeling like I might puke. Fight Gone Bad is one of them.
Thankfully, we only did 2 rounds, not 3 like you’re supposed to for time’s sake but that was enough to get me sweating up a storm and feel like I got a decent workout in for the day. Ericka and I were partners and funny enough, we both got the exact same total reps after 2 rounds.
We ate lunch afterwards back at the hotel with this as our view. I mean, come on California. Why do you have to be so freaking gorgeous?
(photo from Ericka)
At lunch, Blair alluded to the following day’s workout that was planned on the grounds of the resort but wouldn’t give us any details besides confirming we didn’t need bathing suits. Nonetheless, we all were wondering what the heck he had in store for us knowing it would be extreme in some form.
We found out after breakfast on Saturday morning as we made our way down to the beach area of the resort.
(prior to being caked in sand)
In teams of 4, 1 person bear crawled across the beach while 1 goblet squatted with a rather large beach rock of their choosing, 1 did burpees and 1 rested until the bear crawler got back and then we all rotated. For 20 minutes. About half way through, the bear crawl changed to walking lunges. Not sure if that was supposed to be easier or harder or just different, but I preferred the bear crawl. Lunges can be deceptively difficult in that “omg my quads are on fire!” kind of way.
The workout was fun, the backdrop of the ocean was amazing but the sand just sucked. I don’t like sand when my sole purpose is just laying out on the beach nevermind throwing my entire body onto it and standing back up over and over for 20 minutes. I found sand in places sand should never be after that…
Be back with one last post all about the Reebok gear I got to test out!
*This post is sponsored by Reebok and FitFluential. All opinions are my own.
Gina Matsoukas is an AP syndicated writer. She is the founder, photographer and recipe developer of Running to the Kitchen — a food website focused on providing healthy, wholesome recipes using fresh and seasonal ingredients. Her work has been featured in numerous media outlets both digital and print, including MSN, Huffington post, Buzzfeed, Women’s Health and Food Network.
i wanna live there.
Amazing views!!!! Looks like so much fun!!!