The Again Faster Semper Paratus 2014 Teams event held at the amazing Crossfit Crossaxed, I must firstly thank Rob, Julz, Ollie and Matty for allowing me to be there and for all their help across the weekend.
This was my first Major CrossFit event, my plan was to cover every athlete across all the WOD’s and come away with one photo of each athlete in a REP in every WOD, photos of the volunteers that were judging and the pulse of the event. 7 of the toughest WOD’s (workouts) that I had seen, were team based, usually one athlete on the team working at one time, however there were few WOD’s that had all the athletes working out at the same time.
There were 36 teams, 216 athletes and a lot of ground to cover in the process. I wont go into what each WOD consisted of, though a few of them I would love to be able to finish one day! I could feel the adrenalin of the athletes, this spurred me to do more and push myself to get in front of as many as I could in the time I had. Running from one side of the gym to the other to get one more picture of one more athlete before the time was up.
As the WOD’s progressed and the athletes started to feel the burn the atmosphere grew intense as the other athletes and the crowd willed them to do just one more rep, I was truly amazed, the team spirit that was being shown across opposing Teams of different CrossFit Boxes was inspiring, to see athletes at this level with the humility to help their opponents just makes me smile on the inside.
So after 20 hours of taking pictures across 2 days, with about 4 hours of sorting and processing, would I do it all again, Hell YES! What I learnt over the weekend was this, I am glad that I am fit as it allowed me to be on my feet all day running about and to get those shots. I didn’t manage to get a photo of each athlete in each WOD as I had planned, I did manage to get a decent shot of every athlete in at least one WOD.
This is what CrossFit is all about, to set goals and to push yourself to meet them, getting better and better each time you do it. No one ever said they finished Fran in a fantastic time their first time, you first set yourself a benchmark, and then you do it better next time.
I am now looking forward to my next event, so I can do it better!
If you are looking for images from the day email me with your team name and heat number, a photo of you or your team would be helpful too.
