"I feel like I have discovered how determined I am. And I'm kind of proud of that--that I keep fighting for what I want."
Photos courtesy of Trinity M. Tagliapietra.
Linda Elstun placed 13th in the Masters Women 45-49 Division at the 2012 Reebok CrossFit Games. But after finishing 23rd in her division after the 2013 Open, she failed to make a return trip to Carson, Calif.
Now, ranked sixth in the world in the Masters 50-54 Division after the Open, the 50-year-old hopes to call herself a Games athlete again in 2014.
“Every day I think about qualifying and getting back,” she said.
When Elstun, a nurse anesthetist from Galesburg, Mich., joined CrossFit AZO in 2011, she set no designs on becoming an elite CrossFit athlete. Though she was a competitive gymnast in college, for her CrossFit was just a fun way to get back into shape.
But after missing the cut for the final day of Games competition by just one place in 2012, Elstun left the floor itching to get back and go all the way.
“I was totally bitten by the bug,” she said. “It left me wanting to do better.”
She expected to get that chance in 2013.
“I knew it wasn’t gonna be easy, but I did feel fairly confident that I would be able to get back (to the Games),” she said.
She started strong in the 2013 Open with an eighth-place finish in 13.1, a 17-minute AMRAP of burpees and increasingly heavy snatches. But her early lead couldn’t withstand a 60th-place finish in 13.2, a 10-minute AMRAP of shoulders-to-overheads, deadlifts and box jumps.
“My strength was there, but I just didn’t have the conditioning,” she said. “My heart rate goes sky high when I do box jumps.”
After five Open workouts, she missed qualification for the 2013 Reebok CrossFit Games by just three places.
“I was really, really bummed,” she recounted. “I was disappointed in myself. It took a little reflection before I figured out my mistakes in training.”
Those mistakes, she said, were training alone and failing to customize the Outlaw Way program she followed. As she streamed the Games online from her living room last summer, she vowed to course-correct.
“I knew that I had to take control of my training,” she said. “I discovered that I really do need to make the programming individual to me, and part of that is I need to work out with people. I don’t reach the intensity I normally would unless I’m with people.”
Taking Control
Elstun doesn’t make the same mistake twice.
To prepare for the 2014 season, she grabbed a partner to train with and a coach to manage her programming, moving to CrossFit 269 in September.
“We loved all the people (at CrossFit AZO), and it was a wonderful box,” Elstun said. “It was a tough decision to make, but we had to find a place to accommodate the path we had set for ourselves.”
Jack Kelly, owner of CrossFit 269, was eager to take the Games athlete under his wing.
“It was a great match of coach and athlete,” he said. “From the first workout, we were finishing each other’s sentences about training.”
At first, Kelly made only small adjustments to the Outlaw Way programming Elstun was used to. Focusing on strength through the fall and winter, by January, Elstun increased her one-rep-max back squat from 225 lb. to 238 lb., and her snatch from 123 lb. to 138 lb.
Six weeks out from the Open, she turned her focus to conditioning. Remembering the lung-burner that had cost her a ticket to the Games in 2013, she appealed to her new coach for help.
“She comes from a gymnastics background where the routines are not very long,” Kelly said. “She’s a powerful athlete, but the endurance has been a challenge. We’ve been doing work-rest intervals that have been designed to build that engine.”
To get her comfortable with a high heart rate, Kelly programs workouts like 10 rounds of a 300-m row with three minutes rest between rounds, or kettlebell swings and burpees, alternating on the minute for four minutes.
To build muscular endurance while honing skill, he programmed high-rep toes-to-bars or chest-to-bar pull-up workouts.
Elstun appreciated the guidance.
“I would have been trying to do a lot of running and long met-cons,” she said. “I thought that improving your conditioning meant spending 30 minutes on a rower or something awful like that.”
The effort paid off in her sixth- and fourth-place finishes in Open Workouts 14.1 and 14.4, respectively—two workouts she said would have had her huffing just months ago.
“I was relieved,” she said. “It was like, ‘OK, I think I can do this. I’ve been doing the right things.’”
If last year’s rules still applied, Elstun would be holding her ticket to the 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games already. Instead, she’s preparing to prove her fitness in the four-day Masters Qualifier.
“(CrossFit HQ) is trying to take it up another level and make sure that the people that need to go to the Games go,” she said. “I appreciate that and respect it. Things change and that’s a part of life. You change with it, adapt and keep rolling.”
To prepare for the four consecutive days of workouts in the upcoming Qualifier, Elstun trains three hours per day, Friday through Sunday. On weekdays, she joins the regular class workout after finishing her individual strength and skill sessions, to feed off of the camaraderie of the community.
“Once we get into the (metabolic conditioning) and start working side-by-side, it’s the same as if we were all doing the same thing all day long,” she said. “It’s the community and cheering. It’s all that stuff that I really enjoy and need.”
And according to Kelly, the community appreciates Elstun just as much as she does them.
“Linda has really been an inspirational figure,” he said. “When (athletes) see someone who’s a masters athlete performing at such a high level, it gives them a lot of hope that you can improve and your athletic career isn’t over after school. It’s pushed everyone, and it’s really been a blessing.”
Though Elstun craves to finish what she started in 2012, she said the fight to return to the Games has shown her that she’s capable of more than she thought.
“I feel like I have discovered how determined I am,” she said. “And I’m kind of proud of that—that I keep fighting for what I want.”
