As I lay there suffering what doctors refer to as a sh!t-ton* of pain, it occurred to me (not for the first time) that competitive athletics can be pretty tough on the body. In fact, if health be your priority, sports competition ain’t the best road to take unless you like boulder-strewn roads with rim-bending potholes, unmarked dead ends and a littering of landmines.
But even lying there in the grips of agony I knew by experience that my body would mend, the pain would subside, and when it was gone, the desire to test the limits of my body in the crucible of competition would burn as hotly as ever.
Moral #1: Some idiots never learn.
Moral #2: Never confuse competition with fitness.
But for those who share my hunger for competition, we are blessed to have the CanWest Games CrossFit Sanctional event coming to our neighbourhood June 2020. This week our scaled team competitors will begin their qualifiers in the hopes of representing Empower in June. All three of our scaled teams from previous years succeeded in qualifying so our hopes are high!
Qualifiers for the individual athletes are now complete and we’re all licking our wounds, grateful to have survived. Leaderboard rankings have been confirmed and invitations have gone out. Not everyone has received or accepted their invitations yet but here’s what we know so far:
| Athlete | Division | Rank | Invite | Accepted |
| Mr. Fantastic | Men 60+ | 5th | yes | |
| D’Knee | Men 60+ | 11th | expected | |
| Mufasa | Men 55-59 | 16th | Expected | |
| Doc Disc | Men 50-54 | 19th | expected | |
| Motor | Women 50-54 | 14th | expected | |
| HeeHee | Women 50-54 | 16th | Expected | |
| Sandman | Men 45-49 | 14th | yes | |
| WOD Father | Men 45-49 | 18th | yes | yes |
| Super Mario | Men 45-49 | 23rd | yes | |
| Smash | Men 45-49 | 28th | yes | yes |
| Magnum | Men 45-49 | 29th | possible | |
| Hard Rock | Women 45-49 | 7th | yes | |
| Silk | Women 45-49 | 10th | yes | |
| HHH | Women 40-44 | 30th | possible | |
| The Touch | Men Open Elite | 217th | possible | |
| Shades | Women Open Scaled | 124th | yes |
*”Sh!t-ton”: technical unit used in the medical profession to quantify massive amounts of pain
Usage: “Nurse, prep my tranquilizer darts and my sympathetic voice stat, this patient is in a sh*t-ton of pain!” (Verified by an actual physician)