Rachel Escolas used to weigh 218 lb. at 5 foot 5. Now, she’s among the world’s fittest women, competing for the first time as an individual in the Central Regional.
“(It’s) such a huge accomplishment; this is definitely a fun year for me,” she said.
Many athletes competing at the Regional level have prior athletic experience. Escolas, now 28, had never done a pull-up or touched a barbell when she started CrossFit five years ago. She loved beer and Taco Bell.
“I was never someone that liked going to the gym. That was never my thing,” she said.
She was 21 when she reached her heaviest weight, at the time serving in the Air Force Reserves as a flight medic—and barely passing fitness tests. Though she lost a little weight with the help of a personal trainer and cutting out the Taco Bell—“I thought a diet was eating Lean Cuisines,” she said—she still hovered near the 200-lb. mark when she deployed to Afghanistan in 2012.
Escolas discovered CrossFit in October of that year in Afghanistan, home to military affiliate Kandahar CrossFit. She recalled one of her first workouts: push presses and running. She used the empty barbell and puked afterward.
“I was the last one done, I was in such bad shape,” she said.
She couldn’t do toes-to-bars, and pull-ups were out of the question—unless she used the thickest resistance band the affiliate had. But instead of getting discouraged, she got hungry.
“If there was something I couldn’t do, I was that psychopath that worked on it every day,” she said.
Any free time she had during her deployment she spent at the gym. She bought a jump rope and taught herself double-unders and began following a Paleo diet. After two months of CrossFit, she did Fran as prescribed.
“I did all singles, one kipping pull-up at a time,” she recalled, laughing.
Escolas returned home to Columbus, Ohio, in early 2013, began nursing school and joined CrossFit Grandview. She did her first Open that year, and by 2014, she was on the affiliate’s Regional team. Though the team had to withdraw after a member was injured on the first day, Escolas had seen enough to get the bug.
“It was always my goal to get back to Regionals,” she said.
Over the next two years, she became a CrossFit Level 1 trainer, quit nursing school and opened CrossFit CLC in Columbus. She also improved her Open rank from 298th in the Central East in 2014 to 23rd this year, when she qualified for her debut Regional appearance.
“But I had this burning passion to get better. I had a desire to be the best athlete I could be,” she posted on Instagram when she received her invitation.
Watching her fly through the air on the rings in Event 3, it’s hard to imagine she’d ever struggled to get her chin over the bar—though, as she wrote in her post, she has the “stretch marks to prove it.”
Maybe you struggle to get your chin over the bar, too. But that doesn’t mean you won’t ever do that and much more—as long as you’re willing to work, Escolas said.
“This didn’t happen in a year,” she said. “I had a lot of ups and downs, and you just have to enjoy it and be so proud of the little moments, and I think that's what kept me going. You have to really love to work, to really love to put in the time, knowing that it's gonna make you better.”
She added:
“It might take you five years (but) no matter what your goal is, just keep chipping away at it and realize that it’s worth it.”
For complete placement details, visit the Leaderboard.
