Community

“It’s not just a gym… When there was a car accident on the road, a coach called everyone—everyone!—who had been at the box that evening to make sure it wasn’t them. The emergency contacts for my child’s daycare are from people at CFKI. The people I work out with are the people I trust. I’ve never, ever gotten that from a mere gym.”
— CFKI member
First of all, I want to thank everyone that responded to my question a couple weeks ago, “What Makes CFKI Special?”  I received lots of very inspiring stories and testimonials just like the above, so much that I had a really hard time just now choosing one to include in this post!  Obviously this gym, this organization, even this freaking building are special to me because it’s something that Denee and I built from the ground up, but it’s so gratifying to hear from you all, and humbling at the same time because I know now that CFKI is bigger than any one of us.  It means so much more.
We received lots of amazing email responses from that question, but you all — the CrossFit Kent Island community — really showed what it’s all about during the last five weeks in our Intramural Open.
It started with four teams that were good mixes of each group class time, so not everyone immediately knew each other, but all the teams quickly came together by creating amazing team names and posting hilarious memes… mostly about the other teams.
Posting videos of “CrossFit outside the gym” not only showcased how funny and creative our community is, but also how talented!  Lots of hanging out on your hands in weird, inappropriate places!  Nice!!!
Finally, the physical challenges pitted each team against each other in competitions where no one knew the running score, so everyone really stepped up and went way beyond their normal comfort zone.  Collectively, the CFKI community biked or rowed 18,978 calories in Week 4, and then followed that up with 11,758 burpees in Week 5!!  All this while trying to take it easy on the training volume because of the nasty Open workouts that we knew awaited us on Fridays!
This year’s Intramural Open, our first in quite a few years, highlighted the close bond that our members share as part of our community.  We respect each other because of the hard training that we do together.  We’ve seen each other fail and get back up to try again, time after time.  We hold each other accountable to constant growth by pushing each other in the gym to be a little better than last time.  We love being around each other because we know it’s always going to be a good time, and we’ve gained close friendships at CFKI that extend way past the boundaries of the gym.
Thanks to everyone that participated in this year’s Intramural Open!  If you didn’t have a chance to join in this year, I hope you will next time!  There’s no pressure to be a superstar athlete, you just have to dive headfirst into the fun!
Special thanks to Alicia and Alyssa for their creativity and organization in making the Intramural Open run so smoothly.  And thanks again to all of you for making the CFKI community what it is.