My gym, Yeti Cave CrossFit, has become a central part of my life — not only physically but socially. On Saturday, four different teams from Yeti Cave took part in Project Uplift, an athletic competition that raises funds for local foster families. I am not quite ready to start competing myself, but I rode my bike to the course to cheer on the 16 competitors from my home gym.

Our local Whole Foods donates its parking lot space for the competition. In this overly bright photo from above you can somewhat make out two competition stages: one, a set of rigs, is toward the left, and farther to the right there are weightlifters preparing.

I believe each team had five different workouts to complete between 8:30am and 3:00pm. Simply watching that amount of work was exhausting; I was only able to stay long enough to catch our teams conquer the snatches/overhead squats and a separate intense set of pull-ups, weighted box step-overs, jump rope double-unders and more. (If those terms mean nothing to you, as they did to me a year ago, just trust that each workout is an exhausting ordeal on its own, let alone paired with 4 additional physical challenges.)

None of my photos are amazing; there were too many spectators and we were kept too far from the athletes. However, I like this photo below: the shirtless man on the rig toward the left is our gym’s owner, Nate, and the woman facing him doing pull-ups is his girlfriend, Val. Facing Val, closer to the camera, is Laura, their teammate, waiting to tag in for Val.

 

For every Yeti competing, there were probably three more standing around to cheer and support. For that reason, it’s fun just to show up and visit with friends — but it also makes me feel as though, should I ever step out of my comfort zone and try something as terrifying as a CrossFit competition, I’d have an entire team of people behind me, win or lose.