The Open is over.

Five long, challenging, wonderful weeks of gathering as a community, of high hopes, fallen hopes, strategizing, pushing our limits, setting new personal records, and already planning ahead to next year.

Five sleepy weekends of recovering flat on our backs, stiff-muscled and wiped out, and absolutely ravenous. Five weeks of knowing that, on Fridays, you'd pay dearly for every wayward bite during the week.

Or maybe five weeks of dreading Fridays, making excuses, skipping it, and hoping no one noticed your absence. Promising yourself to do better next year. Five weeks of comparing yourself to the person next to you instead of to the old you. Five weeks of a poor mental game getting in the way of your joy at the chance to Be Here and Do This.

Photo by Brett Bobek — Photo by Brett Bobek

Five weeks of being encouraged by the community around you, believing in you more than you believed in yourself. Five weeks of sharing food, music, laughter, and lots of unsolicited advice for Erica's soon-to-be-achieved muscle-ups.

We entered our scores and noted our rankings with glee, pleasure, surprise, disappointment, frustration, comparing ourselves to others all around the region, nation, and world. Noting the differences between ourselves and CrossFit's professional athletes. Dreaming.

No one here is going to regionals.

Yet.

But our box is filled with dreamers.

Maybe the dreams are different, but they're all Big Dreams.

We dream of ripped abs.
We dream of glory muscles.
We dream of gymnastics prowess on the rings, on the bars, on our hands.
We dream of flexibility and gracefulness.
We dream of bending barbells and heavy stacks of plates lifted high overhead.
We dream of losing weight that has hung on for years.
We dream of walking up the stairs without getting winded.
We dream of slim waist lines.
We dream of chasing after our children in a game of tag, and catching them handily.
We dream of jumping rope and doing handstands, like we did when we were children.
We dream of 5Ks, half-marathons, and whole marathons, obstacle races, biking, hiking, skiing.
We dream of being an inspiration to our children and fellow athletes, if not with our prowess, at least with our dedication.

And, yes, a few of us dream of rising on the leader board, making it to Regionals, stepping out as a competitor at the Games. Winning. Someday.

If we learned anything during the Open, we learned what we were made of and where we have to go next. We learned about our strengths and our weaknesses. Not just how much weight we could move or how quickly, but about our ability to face a challenge. Sometimes more than once!

We learned about our ability to beat the bar or the clock or our own inner voices telling us to quit. We learned to shake off the no reps, and not hold it against our judges later. We learned what it was like to focus on the soft or shouted encouragement from our biggest fans. We learned the joy of rooting for a fellow athlete striving for their personal best. We were inspired.

We learned that scaling is a thing of beauty and not a defeat. Or we learned that sometimes we can do more than we thought possible, if we step up to the challenge. We learned how far we had come, and had the privilege of seeing our daily dedication become official progress.

The Open was our benchmark. It was a chance to celebrate progress, re-evaluate those Big Dreams, and turn it all into achievable goals for the coming year. It was about challenges, community, coaching, and the culmination of a lot of hard work and dedication.

No one here is going to Regionals. But we earned every rep and second of our scores! And maybe we'll surprise you next year with the goals we've met, when this coming year's hard work pays off.

Why don't you join us?

No One Here is Going to Regionals