FITERNITY and CrossFit New England take Events 1 and 2, respectively.
If Day 1 is any indication, the East is a beast.
While the Atlantic and South Regionals saw many teams, and entire heats, fail to complete the Day 1 events within the time allotted, the teams at the East Regional showed that they were not only able to complete the work, but put a handful of teams through ahead of the standing event record.
Longstanding North East affiliate, CrossFit New England, has returned with two teams—”CrossFit New England” and “CFNE Courage.” They’re joined at the top by FITERNITY, of Superhero CrossFit, and 2014 Games competitors Pro1 Montreal. With just one returning team, Pro1 Montreal, performing well at last year’s CrossFit Games, there’s plenty of intrigue and unknown in perhaps one of the deepest team competitions this season.
Which region can benefit from the new format, which sends the top five teams to the Games, remains to be seen.
FITERNITY was hanging back behind the leaders for most of Event 1. But if Friday’s opening event proved anything, it’s that no one had overlooked the top-seeded regional team, which rallied with its third and final pair on the pull-up bars to storm to a first-place finish.
“We did it a bunch of time in practice, even ran it on Monday—still a little sore honestly—because we thought the strategy was so important,” said Kevin Seaman of FITERNITY, whose team used a Tabata-like system to take scheduled breaks and pick up the win in 15:01.
“The timing (looking at the watch) of everything was new. We sort of did it last week and it didn’t quite work out right but Mike (Abgarian) planned and strategized everything,” Seaman added. “He broke up everyone’s reps for us since he knows what we’re good at and what we’re not, and we stuck to it and it worked.”
While much of the three-day regional will rely on each team member’s strength and skill, Event 1 added a new degree of difficulty: choreography.
Partner deadlifts, which made their regionals debut in 2012, were loaded unevenly and the mixed-gender pairs—often at comically different heights—were forced to work together 45 times in various rep schemes.
Communication issues were magnified in the synchronized chest-to-bar portion that followed as mostly short sets and avoiding no reps was of the utmost importance. Time and time again, teams jumped out to an early lead only to watch it dissipate on the pull-up rig.
FITERNITY, the third team to get through its opening set of 45 partner deadlifts and synchronized chest-to-bar pull-ups, settled into fourth place in the middle 27-18 rep scheme but didn’t panic. Instead, the team kept checking the clock, confident it was right on pace.
“The pull-ups were the game changer. If you start to fall apart on the pull-ups, you start to get unsynchronized and you start to drop on singles,” said FITERNITY’S Molly Abgarian, who partnered with Corey Berger in the third round. “So it’s best to do bigger sets, and Corey and I can handle bigger sets (of pull-ups) without getting totally fatigued on the deadlifts. Thank god he’s a great deadlifter and I didn’t have to do much.”
While CrossFit New England and Pro1 Montreal held the audience captive in a back-and-forth pendulum swing —passing early leader CrossFit Plateau 2—Abgarian and Berger closed the gap on the middle set of 21-15-9. Pro1 Montreal, which like FITERNITY used kipping pull-ups for its final pair, were no-repped on their last pull-up and had to return to the rig and settle for second.
“It was more safe and there were less no reps in chest-to-bar with the kip,” Pro1’s Karim El Hlimi said of his team’s strategy. “So, you have to take into account the risk of going faster in butterfly or doing a good fast (kip) at a constant pace. There is a lot of strategy this year, but this was more of a rhythm and synchronization. You have to look at your partner.”
CrossFit New England also struggled in its last round of pull-ups as Plateau was able to sneak in and grab third. Lusine CrossFit Taschereau jumped out to an early lead in Heat 2, with its first pair finishing in 5:06, and never let up as it crossed the finish line first in 15:45 and fourth in the event overall.
Twelve teams did not finish under the allotted 20-minute time cap.
Team Event 1 Results
1. FITERNITY (15:01.9)
2. Pro1 Montreal (15:04.2)
3. CrossFit Plateau 2 (15:41.2)
4. Lusine CrossFit Taschereau (15:45.7)
5. CrossFit New England (15:49.7)
As CFNE Courage’s Max Isaak put it, Event 2 was all about the women.
Or, more specifically, CrossFit New England’s women. The Event 2 mash-up of Hero workouts Randy and Tommy V—which required the men to go first and the women to close it out—saw three teams come in under the previous event record, two of which hailed from CrossFit New England.
How were CrossFit New England—the overall event winners—and CFNE Courage so well-prepared for the the crushing trio of 175 snatches, 25 rope climbs and 115 thrusters?
“That guy over there, (box owner) Ben Bergeron,” said Rachel Martinez, whose team crossed the finish line with a first-place time of 18:37. “That’s the man behind it all.”
Bergeron’s teams set a blistering pace early as CFNE Courage finished in Heat 2 at 19:01, a minute ahead of the second-place team in the heat and a new event record.
“Honestly for the guys here we were just trying not to get caught by the girls,” Isaak said. “They are super fit … we are lucky to have very good girls.”
Bergeron’s wife, Heather, said CFNE Courage didn’t get caught up in specific sets but just went based off of feel.
“Our strategy was to make calls on the fly, not have a set of numbers that we were going to open with,” she said. Because it’s too easy to get into rhythms of you have to do 15 or 10 even though you are slowing down … we had guys who were there telling us how many (reps) we should be doing. And we did good sticking to that.”
Seconds after CrossFit New England watched CFNE Courage’s performance, it put on a show of its own, edging FITERNITY—the first females to the thrusters—on the final 50 to best its box’s record.
“When Ali (Allyson Bushey) said, ‘Turn it on,’ we started bringing the bar overhead to the next quadrant to start our next set,” Martinez said of the time-saving transitions. “And we saw that (FITERNITY) were dropping it, which is what brought us ahead.”
Still, FITERNITY—who took an Event 1 win—is in first place after Day 1 and couldn’t ask for much more than two top-two finishes.
“That was our goal, coming back here and taking a top-5 spot,” said Molly Abgarian. “We are happy, but right now we got to keep performing. It’s only Day 1.”
Pro1 Montreal took fourth in the event, and third in the final heat, in 19:09. All 30 teams finished under the 25-minute time cap in the event, an impressive feat for the first-year East Regional.
Team Event 2 Results
1. CrossFit New England (18:37.0)
2. FITERNITY (18:53.8)
3. CFNE Courage (19:01.2)
4. Pro1 Montreal (19:09.9)
5. Operation Lando TeamDO (19:41.6)
Overall Standings
1. FITERNITY (195 points)
2. CrossFit New England (180 points)
3. Pro1 Montreal (180 points)
4. CrossFit Plateau 2 (170 points)
5. CFNE Courage (163 points)
6. Lusine CrossFit Taschereau (160 points)
7. CrossFit Milford (146 points)
8. Team United (134 points)
9. Operation Lando TeamDO (128 points)
10. Equipe CrossFit Laval 1 (124 points)