West Vancouver’s Susan Clarke practised overcoming nearly any athletic obstacle as she prepared for her first trip to the CrossFit Games, but she never thought to heat her equipment with a blowtorch.
That sensation, however, is basically how it felt when she hit the black rubber crash mats or metal pull-up bars that had been baking all day under the sun in Carson, Calif., host site for the annual competition that pits amateur athletes from around the globe against each other in an effort to find the fittest person in the world. The competition at last week’s Games was definitely heated.
“The equipment was smoking hot,” said Clarke. “I think everybody has burns on their hands from the pull-up bar. Literally it was so hot that it blistered our hands. . . . They told you to wear gloves because it was like egg-frying hot on this black rubber mat.”
Though this was only Clarke’s first appearance at the Games, the 55-year-old audiologist proved that she could handle the heat, winning the masters women 55-59 category. Clarke led a strong contingent of North Shore masters competitors at the event, including Debby Brouwer who placed ninth in the same division that Clarke won as well as Terry Peters and Richard Roston who finished sixth and seventh, respectively, in the masters men 60+ division.
The Games are the culminating event of the fast-growing sport of CrossFit, an open competition that gives athletes from anywhere around the world a chance to measure themselves against their age-group peers by doing the same exercises in a five week challenge known as The Open. Each week athletes face a different set of exercises — burpees, pull-ups, Olympic lifts, sprinting, skipping or anything in-between — and the top finishers are tracked online. At the masters level — there are also open and team competitions — top qualifiers from The Open are eventually whittled down to a final group of 20 athletes invited to attend the CrossFit Games. There they face a whole new set of exercises to test their athleticism and find out who is the fittest in the world. If we’re talking about women aged 55-59, the answer to that is Susan Clarke, who finished first in three of the eight events at the Games on her way to the title.
“It just feels fantastic,” Clarke said of claiming the honour. “I was just so happy to have made it (to the Games), so then to actually come through and win is just a big, huge extra bonus.”
Clarke took up CrossFit a few years ago when her friend Troy Straith, now her coach and also owner of the Crossfit BC gym in West Vancouver, encouraged her to try it out. She loved it right away.
“You go in there every day, you don’t know what the workout is. It can be long, it can be short, it taxes all types of movements.”
Clarke has a background in sports such as gymnastics, basketball, soccer and cycling but there’s one more word on her athletic resume that helped her excel in this new sport that tests the whole body: ballet.
“The balance required from ballet and gymnastics certainly helps you with all the elements,” said Clarke with a laugh. “I wouldn’t have thought that, but I think CrossFit draws from everything you’ve done in the past.”
This was the second Games appearance for Peters — whose day job is managing editor of a little community newspaper known as the North Shore News — and he was better prepared for everything that goes on during the event which now receives live airtime on ESPN and is streamed live online.
“I learned that there’s a lot of distractions — there’s TV cameras aimed at you, there’s crowds and there’s all this other activity going on around you that makes it hard to stay focused on just what you have to do,” he said. “I certainly went into this one more relaxed because I knew the environment and had better anticipation of what that all would feel like.”
Peters shone in an event that saw competitors doing lunges while carrying a 50-pound medicine ball over their heads but felt the burn, literally, while doing a more traditional event that included running laps around a track. The temperature was hovering around 100 F during the laps.
“Around the third lap I looked at the fence and thought, I could just climb that and go home now,” said Peters. “(But) I just kept plodding around.”
Peters, who trains at CrossFit North Vancouver, said that half a lifetime ago he never would have imagined doing these types of things at age 60.
“At 30 I was a new parent and completely focused on keeping track of my kids, maybe playing some pickup baseball,” he said. “I’ve been doing CrossFit for six years and it’s kind of remarkable to me the physical condition that it’s got me to at this age.”
Fitness diversity is one of the hallmarks of the sport but another that is mentioned over and over by nearly every competitor is the camaraderie. Athletes trying to qualify for the Games all work together at their various gyms and even at the Games the competitors push each other to reach their highest limits.
“It was fantastic to be working out with 20 women who are in my age group, my vintage,” said Clarke with a laugh. “Usually the last person gets the most cheering. Everybody cheers them on.”
Peters said the team element of the sport has pushed him to new heights.
“For years I went to the gym religiously three times a week and just did my same routine, mindlessly repeating the same exercises that I probably wasn’t particularly good at and never received any instruction for and certainly no encouragement to do better,” he said.
“This whole idea of going into a group environment where you go and you workout together and have a coach there correcting your form and giving you tips on how to improve, it takes you to another level entirely.”
The experience of going to the Games and competing against the best in the world has given Peters a great appreciation for masters sport of all kinds.
“The interesting thing for me is when you get into competitions in the masters category there’s very little ego involved,” he said. “It’s a really great group of people that you meet at these events and all very supportive of each other and encouraging. . . . I’d encourage anyone to not give up their dreams of competition because they’ve left their 20s behind.”
• • •
If you’re interested in the torture — er, experience — that athletes go through at the CrossFit Games, each event can be watched in its entirety online at games.crossfit.com.
