Brief personal history and journey towards beginning your CrossFit journey:
I was always an active kid, I played softball and volleyball. When I got to high school I was forced to give up high school volleyball due to schedule conflicts with racing and continued to play club volleyball in the winter until my Junior year. That year I decided I would give Cross Country a try and I quickly found out I was NOT a runner. Through my early years in college, I would go to the university gym and aimlessly walk around jumping on random machines but never really understanding or having a program to follow. During the start of my Senior year of college, one of my friends had started CrossFit and convinced me to give it a try. October of 2015 I walked into my first On Ramp class and have not looked back since.
What brought you to CrossFit Oshkosh?
I had been doing CrossFit for a little over a year when I graduated in December from Michigan Technological University and started working at Oshkosh Corporation as a Design Engineer. I knew a few past and present CFO members and from how highly they talked about the gym it was an easy choice to make.
Your first impression of CrossFit Oshkosh?
I was very fortunate to start at CFO the week of the CrossFit Open, it gave me a good opportunity to meet a lot of the members as we all suffered Dave Castro’s dumbbell shenanigans and complain about not having the barbell in the open. Everyone was very welcoming and supportive even though they did not know me yet, it was definitely the environment I wanted to be in.
What has been your biggest hurdle since starting?
EVERYTHING! Being tall and having long limbs does not fall into the CrossFit or Olympic Lifting wheel house but that is what makes the challenge that much more fun. I wasn’t the strongest when I started, my 1RM back squat was 135# and just recently I (finally) joined the 200# club. I didn’t have the gymnastic moves, I couldn’t do a pull up, now I can do chest to bars. Nor did I really have an engine for the cardio, this one I’m still working on, haha. I would like to think I’ve come a long way since then.
What is your favorite aspect of CrossFit?
My favorite aspect of CrossFit is continuously improving yourself, whether it be lifting more weight or getting those tricky gymnastic moves. You are not doing this fitness journey on your own, the CrossFit community is always there behind you supporting you and cheering you on.
What are your current goals in CrossFit?
- Olympic Lifting is my main focus, so putting weight on my snatch and clean and jerk is always a goal. With this comes putting weight on my squat which is always a good feeling too. Ultimately, I want to qualify for a national level meet (I have a longgg way to go, haha).
- Just recently I got chest to bars, so I said in a year (7/3/18) I want to get my first bar muscle up.
- DOUBLE UNDERS – we’ve all seen me try and it’s pretty pathetic, haha.
- And finally, everything CrossFit because I have registered for my first Granite Games, go Team Dog MILFs!
What is something we don’t know about you?
I race Super Late Model stock cars. I started racing go karts when I was 10 and it quickly became my life and evolved into racing full size cars. In 2015, I was the Super Late Model Track Champion at Golden Sands Speedway in Plover, WI. This made me the first (and still only) female to win a Super Late Model Championship in Wisconsin.