Josh Bunch reminisces about how much the sport and competition have grown in the past five years.
Huge white satellites protruding from the rooftops of beastly big rigs don’t blend in to more natural scenery easily. Yet it’s the first thing you see upon entering the venue at the Central East Regional.
For the first time ever, a CrossFit Regional event will be broadcast live for the world to see. For the first time, you can watch a Regional event as it happens from wherever you are in the world.
Four years ago it was in a parking lot in the rain, with thunder and lightning as the backdrop. Today, huge semi-trucks with an entire team of humans living inside of them greet spectators and athletes alike. Cameras as big as the people carrying them are scattered all over a climate-controlled floor spanning the length of a football field and is very viewer friendly.
It’s ground zero for what will be the biggest Regional production the CrossFit world has ever witnessed to date.
Maybe you're like me and you're just a CrossFitter with no clue of what “production” looks like. Production looks a lot like hundreds of people behind a curtain doing things no one will ever see so what everyone does see looks seamless. It’s a support crew ensuring what we as CrossFitters do everyday for fun, looks like something much more than a workout, even though oddly enough, the workout and the athlete doing it, is the highlight. It’s the reason we are all watching.
A small army with “Rogue” on their shirts just loaded dozens of bars with thousands of pounds. Over 100 feet of metal called a “rig” magically appeared dwarfing rowers that look innocent enough, until you test them of course. A garage gym multiplied by a thousand is built in front a massive screen showcasing the accomplishment of some of the world’s fittest humans.
It’s at that very point where reflection turns to reality and you realize you saw this all coming long ago. Maybe you weren’t sure how or when the waters would part leaving only the CrossFit path in the middle, but you knew greatness would not remain secret.
You may have never realized it before, but that little workout you found so invigorating personally is now the highlight of an entire broadcast team spanning the globe. It’s the Sport of Fitness and you’re part of it, you help build it with every sweat angel you leave behind, every newbie you invite to their first workout, and every “like” you click on that says “PR” on Facebook.
Welcome to ground zero yet again. Welcome to the Central East Regional and the first of what will prove to enhance the Regional experience and inevitably be trumped in 2013 and the year after that, because that's what we do and that's who we are.
It’s the contagion of CrossFit spreading, one-upping itself by reinventing something, that will always remain exactly the same those of us who just can’t get enough.
