NorCal Masters Crush the Open

March 23, 2012

Stacy Brown

Masters competitors in NorCal are showing the young folks they can hang. Many are submitting scores good enough to contribute to their team.

Freddy Camacho, CrossFit One World

Lynn Hunter, Rocklin CrossFit
 

If you ask Freddy Camacho, he’ll tell you CrossFit is a young person’s game, and the Masters Divisions are just a fun way for the older participants to get involved in the competition. But Camacho is helping his team, CrossFit One World in Union City, Calif., (34th in the Northern California Region) move up the Leaderboard. In all the Open workouts so far, Camacho’s score was good enough to contribute to his team’s score.

There are several Masters competitors who are contributing to their teams in NorCal. Lynn Hunter, 44, is part of the Rocklin CrossFit Honey Badgers team – and they are in 2nd place in NorCal. She was on the team that went to the CrossFit Games in 2011 and that’s what she hopes to do again in 2012. “We need to redeem ourselves from last year when we came in 6th place.”

Hunter says the workout on the last day of the Games was devastating, but they finished it and they want to come back this year and show what they can do. Her main concern now is a rotator cuff injury that has kept her best performance in the Open.

Chris Carroll, 44, of Humboldt CrossFit says he is stoked to be helping his team, 23rd in the NorCal Region. He had been doing CrossFit on and off for four years, but he decided to get more serious with it after burning out from bike racing, which had been his passion for more than 10 years. He credits his endurance sports background for his success in several of the Open workouts and the balance CrossFit has given him in overall fitness. He would love to see a workout with a longer time domain with the same sort of high octane, anaerobic fitness test as the burpees. “Maybe 20 minutes, but no double-unders,” he jokes.

Unlike Camacho, Hunter and Carroll, Sally Goldman, 48, of NorCal CrossFit has no athletic background. “I did athletics in high school, but nothing since then except some recreational softball and basketball,” she says. “I started CrossFit about a year and half ago to get fit.”

She has succeeded, and her score of 81 reps in the snatch workout was good enough to help her team to a 1st place finish in the region. She credits her willingness to work hard on her weaknesses, and encourages everyone to take the time to build up skills and strength, even if it “tends to take forever.”

Carroll says when he was bike racing, he always looked up to the underdogs. “I’m not a small guy like some of the others I was racing with, so the underdogs were inspiring for me,” he says.

“I think a lot of Games competitors could say the same about these Masters athletes. They all advise other athletes to keep it fun and don’t burn out.”

“Keep it in perspective and have a beer for crying out loud,” Hunter adds.