I remember when we had the idea to open this gym. We had been doing CrossFit for a little while & were totally in love with it. I was home with Nona one morning & I was doing my usual morning research (watching videos), on the CrossFit website. While I was killing time, I stumbled upon the affiliation page. I thought that it would certainly cost a billion dollars to open an affiliate - after all, I come from the corporate fitness world. I read a little, & realized that it would actually be a doable thing. When Christy got home we discussed, & almost immediately decided that this was what we wanted to do. Not an hour later I filled out the forms & purchased the affiliation for CrossFit Alexandria.

The next day I got a surprising phone call. It was from an odd area code, so I thought I should answer. When the person on the other end of the phone announced to me that they were Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, I was fairly surprised (understatement). Coach & I talked for about an hour & I remember thinking the whole time what a genuinely nice & personable guy that he was. I met Coach a few months later at the Quantico certification & was again struck by how genuinely nice & personable he was. He even knew my name before I had ever spoken to him & remembered the phone conversation that we had months earlier.

This last weekend we had the honor & privilege of hosting a CrossFit Level 1 Certification Seminar. We were called in at the last second to take over for Bolling AFB, because of a beauracratic snafu. Needless to say, building a new pullup bar in a 48 hour period is not the most relaxing thing in the world. But I have to admit, all the work was worth it when I watched Coach make his first few marks on our huge chalkboard.

Having Coach here, in our tiny little gym, is one of my proudest moments. He was, again; personable, genuinely nice, hilarious, & every bit worthy of the title “Coach”. He makes me proud to be associated with what he has created.

I was; however, even more proud of the fact that we had 10 of our members receive their CrossFit Level 1 Certification. Let me say that again - TEN of our members received their CrossFit Level 1 Certification. The fact that in a little over 10 months we have gone from opening our doors, to having 100 members, to having 10 of them get certified - is mind blowing to me. Christy & I never could have seen this coming.

On top of our 10 members that received certifications, Patrick (Alexandria co-owner) & Ben from CF Capitol Hill were here, & my friend Chris, from Los Angeles, flew in for the weekend. We had quite a little crew representing us this weekend. I want to say thanks to all of the trainers that were here conducting the cert. They were professional, intelligent & a pleasure to work with. I also want to thank Pat Sherwood in particular, for making our job as hosts easy, & for rolling with the difficulties of pulling off a cert in 2 days.

The next time you see - Robert (aka Ro-Bear), Brittany, Mike (aka Fox Nuts), Sean, Meaghan, Jaimee, Shannon, Kristen (aka K-Mac), Lauren, & Steve (aka The Ranger) - congratulate them & ask them how much they liked doing burpees in a dust storm. And, if their trying to coach you, shut your hole & listen - they officially know what they’re talking about.

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WOD 080512

20 minutes AMRAP of:

5 Burpees

10 Pullups

15 BW Squats