Lane 5 Athletics wins the West Regional.
The West Regional is full of experienced Games teams, but it’s a rookie team from Eugene, Oregon, that took the top spot: Lane 5 Athletics.
Crowned the best in the west, Lane 5 is one of four teams from the North West in the top five.
Kendall Burnham of Lane 5 now has a difficult decision to make. The 40-year-old also qualified for the Games as a masters competitor
“I made this commitment (to the team) ahead of time. I guess I'm going to have to make a decision now,” Burnham said.
When the dust settled after Event 7, just one Canadian team made it into the top five. Team Taranis will be returning to the CrossFit Games for the sixth time.
TEAM EVENT 6
Before Event 6, Team Taranis was the only Canadian team in the top 10.
“We can't have that happen,” Sean Lind of Team Taranis said. “There's a good bit of pride among the Canadian teams.”
The Canucks came through on the first event of Sunday. The win on the event went to a North West team, Lane 5 Athletics, but the Centaurs took second and Team Taranis came in third, which moved them into fifth place overall.
Event 6 kicks off with 50 GHD sit-ups for every teammate, but it’s the 50 muscle-ups in the middle—split first by the women, and then the men—that separated the teams.
The Centaurs have been to the CrossFit Games three times, but they finished 26th on Events 3 and 4, landing them in Heat 2 on Day 3.
“Yeah, we had some bad luck to say the least (this weekend),” Kurt Baker of The Centaurs said. “Today we are going to go out there and do what we need to do, do what we came here to do; put in the work and forget about the bullshit.”
The Centaurs owned its heat, with the women on the team finishing all of their muscle-ups before the 9-minute mark. The men held the pace, stringing together large sets of 5 and 6 muscle-ups to finish in about 17:30. From there, it only took the men about two minutes to cycle through the 50 hang power cleans, finishing in 19:33.8.
The only team able to beat The Centaur’s time—in any of the heats—was Lane 5 Athletics.
The women of Lane 5—who finished all 50 muscle-ups in less than 8 minutes—opened up an early lead for their team.
"(The event went) almost as planned,” Burnham said. “We had a few more no-reps than we expected, but we were definitely looking forward to this one.”
The women of Team Taranis were on the heels of Lane 5, finishing their hang power cleans about 40 seconds after Lane 5.
From there, it was all up to the men of Lane 5 to hold onto the lead handed to them by the women on their team.
The muscle-ups caused no problem for the Lane 5 men, and then it was all over except for the hang power cleans.
"Our guys killed it,” Rachel Jacobson of Lane 5 said. “We had a plan and they executed it perfectly. All went as planned—no no reps. Everything you could ask for,” she said.
The win jumped Lane 5 from fourth to second place overall, just six points behind Verdant Green.
The event gave Team Taranis a slim 12-point lead over sixth-place Cascade CrossFit as they head into the final event.
“We're going to do our best and we know if we got beat, it's because the better teams won and that's who we want representing us at the Games,” Lind of Taranis said.
Team Event 6 Results
1. Lane 5 Athletics (18:47.4)
2. The CENTAURS (19:33.8)
3. Team Taranis (20:27.9)
4. CrossFit Marysville (20:40.1)
5. Verdant Green (20:40.5)
TEAM EVENT 7
Lane 5 Athletics ended a very good Sunday with back-to-back wins, pushing them to the top of the podium. In a regional with a very tight race among the teams, Lane 5 held its own against experienced Games competitors CrossFit Fort Vancouver, CrossFit Marysville and Team Taranis to take the win in Event 7 and overall.
The order of athletes is extremely important in Event 7, with a team’s performance hinging on getting as many athletes as possible through the 30 strict handstand push-ups in the middle.
“We switched up the order on the floor from what we'd practiced. We wanted to make sure we got as many people through as possible, so we trusted the change and I guess it paid off,” Kendall Burnham of Lane 5 Athletics said.
Lane 5 was the first team to send an athlete into the handstand push-ups. Team Taranis caught up to them, with Myriam Barreda giving her team an edge by completing all 30 strict handstand push-ups unbroken.
Team Taranis, desperate to hold onto its fifth-place spot, was the first team to send an athlete into the overhead walking lunge. Lind held the 155-lb. bar overhead and walked the entire 50 feet without dropping it.
Ashleigh Moe of CrossFit Marysville was the next to complete the walking lunge unbroken. Then came Lane 5 Athletics, who had fallen into third place.
It was then Lane 5 made its move. Picking up the pace, Lane 5 was the first team to get a third athlete to complete the overhead walking lunge. It was a lead they held until the end.
After the win, Rachel Jacobson said she’s not sure what the next few months will hold.
“We made the joke that if we accidentally screwed up and made it to the Games, we would have to figure out what to do from there,” she said.
Jacobson is more sure of her immediate plans: "We might go out and get some crappy food now.”
Team Event 7 Results
1. Lane 5 Athletics (CAP+12)
2. Team Taranis (CAP+47)
3. The CENTAURS (CAP+51)
4. CrossFit Marysville (CAP+89)
5. X-Factor Black (CAP+100)
Games Qualifiers
1. Lane 5 Athletics (607 points)
2. CrossFit Marysville (591 points)
3. Verdant Green (569 points)
4. CrossFit Fort Vancouver (567 points)
5. Team Taranis (545 points)
