“This year it was definitely a fight to get there.”
Michele Letendre is used to fighting for qualification to the CrossFit Games. She’s not used to fighting for her life.
“This year it was definitely a fight to get there,” Letendre said after the 2014 Canada East Regional, where she narrowly edge out Kristine Andali.
For the first time, Sunday’s result wasn’t a foregone conclusion after Saturday.
Since 2011, Letendre and Camille Leblanc-Bazinet have been the top two women in Canada East, and have typically held substantial leads over the rest of the pack at the regional.
But in a year that saw many veteran athletes knocked out of Games contention, Letendre found herself in unfamiliar territory heading into the last event: third place.
Leblanc-Bazinet had all but secured the top spot, and Andali sat behind her in second place. Letendre was third—1 point out of a Games qualifying position.
“On the third day, it was just kind of uncomfortable,” Letendre said, adding that she made a conscious effort to use that feeling as fuel. “I felt like there was a fire up my butt and I tried to use that to my advantage.”
With 64 pull-ups and 8 overhead squats to go, Letendre knew what she had to do.
“I kept repeating to myself the words that my coach (Ben Bergeron) was telling me all throughout the year: overcome adversity,” she said. “Forget about what just happened. Move on.”
Even with a clear mental slate, Letendre’s back was still to the wall at “3, 2, 1 … go!” One minute and 47 seconds later she ran to the finish mat, arms stretched to the sky. Though she finished second, Letendre’s time was ahead of the event record at the time. She was going back to the Games.
While she said she felt “utterly relieved” in that moment, and is extremely happy to be heading back to Carson, California, she admitted she was on the verge of quitting competitive CrossFit completely before the 2013 Reebok CrossFit Games.
“I wasn’t having fun anymore,” she said.
Believing it would probably be her last competition on the big stage, Letendre decided to give it all she had in Carson in 2013. In a way, she said, the thought of retirement removed much of the pressure. She won the first event of the Games that year, and finished 13th overall—her best Games placing to date.
“At the Games I did so well that I was like, ‘I still have some left in me,’” she said. “I wanted to keep competing, but I knew I had to take it in a different direction.”
When she returned home to Montreal, Canada, she made a major change and hired Bergeron as her coach.
“I think I made a really good decision,” Letendre said. “In the last year, I feel like I’ve become a completely different athlete. Not only have we worked on my weaknesses, but I’m getting that mental game prep that I’ve never had before.”
“Ben has been able to switch my mentality to kind of like, ‘I’m ready for anything,’” she added. “The mental game is very much a part of the test to find the Fittest on Earth.”
In order to train at the top level, Letendre said you really have to love what you do.
“When you have to work really hard, there are bits of training sessions that are not fun, but you have to love it,” she said. “You have to understand that whatever comes out of the work is really worth it.”
She added: “The minute I don’t have fun with it, it’s not worth my time anymore.”
Letendre is enjoying the variety in her programming leading up to the competition in July. She recently did a reverse bear-walk hill climb with other Games athletes like Chris Spealler.
“It’s such a fun period of training now because we’re just doing whatever it is that we possibly can to get ready,” she said. “I’m trying to find as many training partners as possible that are willing to go through the amount of pain that I have to go through.”
That list includes fellow Games qualifiers Albert-Dominic Larouche, who also lives in Montreal, and Paul Tremblay, who occasionally makes the drive from Ottawa, Canada.
“I’m running a lot, I’m rowing a lot and so far I’ve touched pretty much everything,” she said. “I knew that after regionals was going to be a lot of conditioning and just kind of getting that ‘suck factor’ into training.”
In her fourth trip to the Games, Letendre said this year she plans on taking a slightly different approach.
“This year, I think I’ve finally learned that you really, really cannot expect anything. You can hope for the best, but you have to prepare for the worst,” she said. “I’ve learned from having high expectations in terms of results, and having no expectations in terms of results, and kind of channeling that into a happy medium to go through the events as best I can.”
This year, Letendre has no set goal for the Games.
“I’m not going there to lose; I’m going there to test myself,” she said. “I’m going to try to attack every workout as if it was the only one I was doing.”
While it’s impossible to predict what will come out of the hopper, Letendre, a former water polo player and swimmer, said she would be more than happy to see another pool event.
“They’ve thrown so much—for lack of a better word—shit, at us,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to the ‘wow factor’ of the events we’ll have to do.”
As she has evolved as an athlete, Letendre’s support system has also grown, she said.
“In my first year of training, I was very alone,” she said. “When I came to CrossFit Plateau three years ago, it was just night and day. Everyone’s behind me here. It’s amazing.”
With her gym, family—including twin sister Ericka, who finished eighth at the Canada East Regional—and boyfriend, Fred Dancose behind her, Letendre said the force driving her to compete remains trying to find out where her pinnacle is.
“Motivation for me is less about results and more about finding where I can go,” she said. “My biggest motivation is trying to be the best athlete that I can be and just not stopping until I find it or until I don’t have fun anymore.”
