"She is a really, really driven athlete. She's really inspirational to everyone."
Linda Elstun, 48, is just one of the Masters athletes making the journey to Carson, Calif., next month. When she gets there, she’ll be representing the Central East Region, her box, CrossFit AZO in Kalamazoo, Mich., and the legacy of her younger self. She couldn’t be more thrilled.
Elstun’s athletic background has roots in her youth. Her skills in gymnastics nabbed her a college scholarship but as her focus turned to her education, Elstun said she’d simply gotten out of shape. She stayed active, but in 2006 she went back to school to study anesthesia. “I got even more sedentary,” she says. “I was so out of shape. I hadn’t been doing anything but sitting in a chair with my nose in a book.”
As a nurse anesthetist, Elstun works close to 50 hours each week. "I love my job, but it's long hours and it's very sedentary," she says.
In February 2011 she found CrossFit. A friend suggested she stop in at CrossFit AZO for a workout. “I kind of thought from her description that I would love CrossFit and I did," Elstun says.
In the beginning, she could only do one workout per week. The biggest challenge for her was getting back in the habit of moving, getting up and going in.
Needless to say, Elstun's work capacity marginally improved and she quickly remembered that feeling – that fire in her belly, that athletic spirit. "I had been athletic," she says. "I knew what it felt like. I thought, 'Yeah I remember now!'"
"Watching her move, I could tell as a coach the way she was moving was different than everybody else," says James Bray, one of Elstun's coaches at CrossFit AZO. "She is a really, really driven athlete. She's really inspirational to everyone."
As Elstun's body began to reveal itself through weight loss, Bray says she got to the point where she could do muscle-ups. The movement made an appearance as one of the final components in this year's CrossFit Games Open. It is a movement that would later separate athletes during Regionals.
Elstun's gymnastics background gives her an edge, Bray says. Being a coach of the relatively young box, (CrossFit AZO has been open less than two years), he is pleasantly surprised to be sending a member of his gym to the Games.
"She was much stronger than not only the other, younger athletes in the gym, but also the guys," Bray says.
Still, nobody at CrossFit AZO thought when the Open ended that Elstun would be headed to the Masters competition in July. "I'm so thrilled to be going, I just can't express it," says Elstun. "I'm 20th. I finished right under the gun. I've got nowhere to go but up. One of my very favorite things about CrossFit is going to the box and doing WODs with all the other members. So I'm still doing that.”
Keeping to AZO's programming and coaching, Elstun is adding in extra focus on skills and mobility. "I have to think of what will be the biggest bang for the time … where I can make a lot of improvement in a short amount of time."
Elstun says she’s ready, excited and humbled. “The Masters athletes out there right now are redefining how strong you can be at 50, 60,” she says. “They're opening doors that people probably never thought would open.”
