Year 5

The wait is over, it’s time for Year 5!  As you will see, our fifth year was one of continued growth, a lot of great times with hilarious people, and it was where we solidified our culture of service.  I hope you enjoy looking through these as much as I did!
Early in 2016, Liz, one of our regular 6am members, let me know she was raising money for diabetes research by participating in the Tour de Cure, a team biking event.  I knew Liz had Type 1 Diabetes because she had briefed me on what to do if her blood sugar got too high or low, and as a professional fitness trainer I of course just made jokes about it constantly.  But Liz also mentioned that the main inspiration for her team was her 3-year-old son Charlie, who was recently diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes himself.
We decided that we would help out Team Charlie, but it would take the collective effort of all of our members to make the biggest impact.  Throughout the month of March, any extra biking or rowing that our members did outside of classtime would contribute to the cause.  If someone rowed 10 calories, CFKI would donate $1 to the American Diabetes Association, on behalf of Team Charlie.  It was a quick success, and the momentum grew throughout the month.  In the end, we donated $1,015, which helped Team Charlie be the highest fundraising team in the Chesapeake Bay Tour de Cure 2016!
As we continued to grow our membership and add classes, it became clear that we needed to add more coaches to our team!  We are lucky to have so many great athletes that have previous backgrounds in instructing and leading teams, and they haven’t needed that much convincing to step up and coach at CFKI!  Tristan has always been a formidable athlete, especially when it comes to long, grind-it-out workouts.  He is also a leader in his Baltimore firehouse and a firefighting instructor, so we started talking about him starting to coach and in early 2016 he joined the team!  Tristan brings a special New York charm to his classes, and as previously mentioned he likes to work hard and likes it when you do, too.  Don’t attend his classes if you are allergic to pepper spray, burpees, or Billy Joel.
 

Getting your body ready to move properly and recovering well are crucial to getting the best performance in the gym, and continuing to improve.  In the last couple years we have been more focused on mobility, both in terms of programming pre- and post-WOD smashing and stretching, as well as offering dedicated classes to make major improvements in range of motion.  Josh is a tireless learner and teacher of mobility techniques, and very creative in his approach.  He has also been very “flexible” (get it?) with his schedule so that as many athletes as possible can attend these classes and seminars.  Kudos to Josh for his extra effort, and hopefully more of you reading this will continue to see the importance of making mobility a regular part of your fitness regimen!
 
Taking a quick break from highlighting some of our amazing coaches, I want to share another awesome community experience that we’ve been a part of from the beginning – the Eastern Shore Affiliate Challenge, or ESAC!  As in Year Two, we came away from the competition  with two podium finishers – Mike Harkema was the top ranked Masters male athlete at the end of the day, and Paul Sullivan won the Scaled Men competition!  Awesome job to these two and all of our competitors.  We’ve made a tradition of placing some CFKI members on top of the podium at these events, and I can’t wait to see how we do next time!
This ESAC was particularly memorable because of the addition of a sloppy outdoor workout that consisted of heavy sled pulls and even heavier Atlas stone cleans.  That workout wiped us all out, and was an awesome test of strength and stamina.  Needless to say, Mike and Paul did very well on that one!  It was also memorable because at the end of the event as we were driving through the gym owner’s front yard to leave, I got our Honda Pilot (loaded with lots of heavy balls) stuck in the muddy grass and it took us a couple hours, another stuck vehicle (owner’s tractor) and a lot more yard damage to get out of there!
The ESAC happens a couple times per year, rotating between volunteer gyms around the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Delaware.  There is another one coming up soon on October 28th – I encourage you all to try it out!  If you ever have a competitive itch, or if you watch the CrossFit Games on TV and daydream about what it would be like to be competing in a sport that you put a lot into every day in the gym, this is for you!
 
Our final big happening of the year brought 2016 to a close just as it had started, with an opportunity to give back.  Barbells for Boobs, as funny as the name is, is an awesome organization dedicated to helping women that can’t afford it get screened for breast cancer, a disease that has touched so many of our families’ and friends’ lives.
We began by asking our members to create personal fundraising pages, fueled by the promise of sweet gear like shirts, sweatshirts and even bags depending on how much you raise.  All of the efforts of our individual members would then add up to our overall CFKI total.
Behind the organization of all of this was our newest coach, Jason.  Jason had prior experience with fundraising for BFB at CrossFit gyms in Annapolis where he had previously coached.  He is our first coach to not first be a CFKI member, but he immediately became a huge success with his energetic personality (and warm-ups!), and his genuine passion for constant improvement.  Jason spearheaded our Barbells for Boobs effort with so much energy and enthusiasm, it wasn’t hard to get hooked and try to bring the same energy to your own fundraising.  By the time of our live workout and event at the gym in late October, nothing was certain but it looked like we were going to raise the most money out of any gym in Maryland, due to all of our individual efforts but also Jason’s persistence and leadership to keep the momentum going.
The event planning was a real team effort, with lots of folks volunteering their time and creative energy to make the gym look like a pink wonderland!  As Halloween was close at hand, we turned it into a costume party (and of course competition) and had a very hard but hilarious time picking the winners.
A partner workout of “Helen Meets Grace” fed into a championship workout of “Karen”, and everyone involved got a great workout in, donated a lot of their own money at the event, and then had a blast hanging out afterward.
As the year 2016 ended and the Barbells for Boobs fundraising drive officially wrapped up, Jason got an email and forwarded it to me – CFKI was in fact the highest fundraising gym in all of Maryland, beating out a number of very high-profile CrossFit boxes.  I was and continue to be so proud of this, not only because this was our first experience with BFB and we did so well, but because it demonstrated one more time how thoughtful and giving our members are to a world that truly needs our help.
In my next post, I’ll try to wrap this all up and talk about what we’ve learned about our collective values and our mission.  For now, though, looking back one more time at the past 5+ years, I just want to say thanks and leave you with a quote, one that I have loved for a while but previously thought of it only in the context of military or political heroes.  But now I know it applies to you, to all of us whenever we step up to the plate to do what is right.
“True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic.  It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.”
 – Arthur Ashe