Crossfit Regionals Week 2 Recap

So Week 2 of the Crossfit Games Regionals we had the Mid-Atlantic, Norcal, Canada East, and Europe. In my opinion probably the most competitive of all the regionals. This weekend's regionals had everyone talking about one guy, A.J. Moore.

Mid-Atlantic

- A.J. Moore finished 1, 2, 2, 30, 2, 6. His 30th place finish in the 100s workout (it should be officially called that) is definitely an outlier. Apparently he had 59 missed reps on his kettlebell swings during this workout and there is video evidence of this. You be the judge.

My 2 cents: Sure, some of them shouldn't have counted but given the context of the situation, as a judge, you need to balance being strict but also give some leeway according to how your other fellow judges are judging the other athletes. If the other judges are being more lenient and letting things slide, you should back off a bit also. I can understand 10 no-reps, maybe even 20. But 60 no-reps when you have to do 100 total? I think that's a little too harsh.

- There is now a campaign to get A.J. Moore to the Games, and deservedly so cause he would be a beast in Cali.

- Ben Smith won the last 3 workouts, look out for him. Current prediction: Definitely top 10

Norcal

- Maybe the most stacked regional of all the regionals. We have 5 athletes in this regionals who were in last year's games and they finished 1-5, duh.

- Jason Khalipa dominated the weekend

- Neal Maddox gets to go to the Games because Khalipa gets a free pass for being a previous Games champ.

- Too bad, Big Dawg, Joey Warren just missed out. If he was in any other regional, he woulda made it

- On the girl's side, big ups for 30 some-odd year old Annie Sakamoto for qualifying. Old School.

Canada East

- I don't think any of the men who qualified will be big contenders this year. They should've combined Canada as one regional again this year. It would've been interesting to see how that would have turned out with 4 guys qualifying. I haven't checked the numbers but all 4 guys potentially could've been from out west.

- Camille (F'n hottest badass chick in Crossfit) Leblanc-Bazinet completely annihilated the competition. She won every event except for a third place finish in the last workout which she probably could also have won if she wanted to. She is a force to be reckoned with. At this rate, wouldn't be surprised to see a top 5 finish from her at the Games.

Europe

- Outstanding performances for Tuomas Vainio but he can't do muscle ups well so that's his Achilles heal

- The other Mikko needs an extra year to be truly competitive.

- Annie dominated to nobody's surprise and it will be damn fun to watch her and Kristin battle it out at the Home Depot Center. Can any woman challenge these 2? Camille? Becky Conzelmen? Angie Pie? We'll see....

Next week, we'll have Central East, North West, South West, and Asia doing battle. Until next time.

Musings from the CrossFit Games Canada West Regional

- All six events were won by three athletes in the male division: Lucas Parker (1st), Jeremy Meredith (2nd) and Steve Howell (4th).

- If you look at the scoreboard, you'll see one blip on Howell's scorecard, the thruster workout where he accumulated 20 points, if he had lifted 10lbs more, he would've gotten 7 fewer points, putting him ahead of Meredith.

- It's been mentioned before, but if there were no cutoffs after day 2, and everyone competed in the last day, the standings would definitely look different, but would it change the top 2 who gets to advance? If so, Crossfit HQ might wanna re-visit that idea.

- Jeremy Meredith finished in chronological order: 1st, 2nd, 7th, 1st, 9th, and 10th. He blames it on his nutrition on the last day. He's got 8 weeks to figure out what went wrong.
ps. I have video on my iphone of him cleanly and successfully thrustering 255lbs so he shoulda got 1st on that WOD too. I don't know why it was a mis-rep. Does anybody have an explanation?

- If we compare the top 10 from the Sectionals to the Regionals, you'll see that most guys at the top stayed at the top save for Nate Beveridge (mainly cause of his goat, handstand push-ups) and Brian Carter. Carter finished in 9th place overall in the Sectionals and 40th at the Regionals. But if you look closer, his placings at the Sectionals were 2, 4, 5, 50, 29, 32. So does that mean he got progressively less fit during the opens? Did he lose work capacity as the opens went on? Hmm.....

- Over on the Women's division, it was all about the story of the Taranis Twins (they needed a nickname), Angie Pie and Alicia Connors who dominated the weekend winning all the events between the two of them.

- Angie Pie is gonna be a HUGE Crossfit Celebrity. You heard it here first. She is gonna be this year's Camille Leblanc-Bazinet. She's got the looks and the work capacity to back it up. Watch out for her.

- Angie finished 28th in the world during the Opens and WILL place top 15 at this year's games.

- Gotta give a shout out to my man, Pete Kendrick, 9th place, gutsy performances all around. Brrraaap.

- Finally, Congratulations to Lucas, Jeremy, Angie, Alicia, Crossfit Taranis and Crossfit Vancouver for qualifying to the games. Go Canada Go!