Camille!!!

WOD Wars was this weekend! OMG is it was so freaking fun!!! The weather didn’t exactly cooperate–we went from being warm and sunny all week to a freakishly cold and rainy day all say Saturday. It was weird, but it somehow worked anyways. Ironically, my team “FourFitters” had to forfeit because we lost one of our members to work travel. So we judged instead.

On Friday night, my lucky butt got to go to the airport with Nathan and Brad to pick up Camille Leblanc-Bazinet (featured athlete for the event for YTFS) from the airport. If you haven’t heard of her–she is one of the most well-known crossfit games athletes. She is known for her ridiculous Fran time (not even sure what it is, probably about 4 seconds…lol jk) and for being both badass and gorgeous at the same time. Not an easy feat.

My first impression was “OMG she is tiny!!!” which is how I felt when seeing Stacie Tovar and Elisabeth Akinwale. I’m about the same size as Akinwale… i’m not small by any means, but I’m about average. 5’8”….In my head I thought all of these women had to be kinda big to move weight like that! So Camille comes down the escalator and the first thing we go is grab her some iced coffee. She is wearing black leggings with short boots and a reebok games pullover and is packing light lugging only a red backpack with a rolling reebok duffel. Brad asked me if we should carry her luggage and I went “Nah, she’s a crossfitter.” lol

The first thing she wants to do is train–she gets excited when she hears that we are immediately heading to the box. On the way there, her personality really starts to come out–she drops a few F-bombs while telling stories of her past experiences at events. She is completely silly and laid back and totally everything I hoped she would be! Brad and I have to run to the Judge’s meeting (which we missed about the first 10 minutes of) while Camille gets ready to do her daily workout.

I just realized I’m being WAY too detailed… Sorry. I also can’t decide which tense to use. Oh, grammar….

I watch her do snatches in the background while we finish up the judges meeting, then Alex and Brad and I change and join her for back squats.

And she totally helps coach us while we work with her!!! How cool??? We ended up doing 5 sets of 2 reps at 80% or something. Alex and I did 245 while Camille did 255 and Brad did like… 325 or something insane like that. Which was funny because we’re totally twice her size.  Jeez, I really was crooked that day for some reason.

Then we did a met-con from one of Camille’s coaches:

6 min Row for meters

rest 4 minutes

6 min AMRAP

6 power cleans @ 95

9 burpee bar overs

12 ring dips

I actually outrowed her by a few meters–hurray for me being tall and excited about working out with a crossfit celebrity! The metcon was a different story. I am awful at ring dips and was pretty much doing them 2-3 at a time with a skinny purple band. Alex was a bit slow on them too, but RX’ed them. Brad was badassing his way though the workout but his rings kept coming loose and one was hanging about 4 inches lower than the other! lol, he used them anyways because they wouldn’t stay when he tried to fix it.

Once we were done, Camille gave Alex and I some ring dip help. We were both kipping them the wrong way–she showed us the most efficient kip to use, so I will be spending some time working on them this week. YAY! It wasn’t something I hadn’t already been told before, it was just something that never really clicked until now…

Post-WOD smiles 😉

That night we got to eat with her! Nathan, Brad, Jay, Alex and I went to Blue Monkey–which I had never been to before. Camille asked us what a loaded potato was. Interesting that she didn’t know! Then she ordered soda water with lemon and lime and carne asada. I was really happy/relieved to see that she wasn’t super obsessive about her diet.

The next day was SUPER crazy! We had to change the order of the WODs because we were trying to avoid the rain–which didn’t really happen. there was a running wod (which unfortunately for me, was the only one I was judging) and it definitely occurred in the rain. I had my trusty pink raincoat, though.

I didn’t do much for judging except run a stopwatch and write times on my hand and try and keep track of a clock…. the workout that I judged was tricky because athletes bought themselves time for a clean and jerk max by getting double-unders in the first part of the workout.

Anywho. JUNK Brands brought in Jenn Jones, who I didn’t get to meet unfortunately, so my box had her and Camille do a few workouts for the crowd. The first was our Box signature workout “The 540” which we had Froning do at an event held here last year. Only they added 5 muscle-ups in between each of the movements.

The 540

50 OH lunges (45/25)

40 pull-ups

30 thrusters (95/65)

20 burpees

10 cleans (135, 95)

All grayscle photos courtesy of Kim Singer Photography.

Here’s a video of it:

Also they had a “grace-off” at 135lbs. (30 reps of Clean and Jerk)

After the event was over a few of us stuck around to watch Camille train again. She was doing her gymnastic WOD which was this:

5 x gymnastic complex with 25lb weight vest.

3 bar muscle ups, 5 strict pullups, 5 kipping pull ups.

5x chinese planks front and back with 35 and 25lb dumbbells for 1:40 seconds.

5x shoulder taps in a handstand with 25lb weight vest.

She chatted and signed posters in between her sets. She also showed us how to work your lower back to help prevent injuries:

After that, she and Brad and Nathan and I went to dinner at Mojitos. After some table side guacamole, enchiladas, and queso we went and got dessert. YES, we went to Coldstone Creamery after that and had ice cream!!! Camille got the chocolate peanut butter cup one. She turned her nose up at my Birthday Cake Remix, saying that the only she sweets she liked we peanut butter, chocolate, and some canadian word for cobbler. I forgot what she called it.

We got to ask her lots of questions about what she thought of the games this years. And of other athletes, lol! Here’s  a basic summation of all the things I learned from Camille over the weekend.

• Her three favorite things (in order) are 1. train 2. eat and 3.sleep.
• She loves her husband Dave Lipson and thinks he is quite underestimated as an athlete (I totally agree).
• Lots of people think she is full of herself, but she’s just honest.
• REALLY honest. She’ll tell you if you are fat. She doesn’t sugarcoat things.
• She works really hard as a Chemical Engineering student, and doesn’t get a lot of credit for it.
• She genuinely wants to help the world and is very passionate about that, which is why her clothing line donates clothes to kids in need and why she studies Chemical Enineering.
• Camille prefers the way Americans cheer for and support talented athletes vs Canadians.
• Mobility and repetition are the keys to becoming a great crossfit athlete.
• She is curently working with Via Prive for her Fall clothing line–coming SOON!
• She thought Dave Lipson was a douchebag when she first met him 🙂
• Camille is MADLY IN LOVE with Crossfit and training for it. She probably snuggles with a kettlebell at night if Dave isn’t around.

Here’s the autograph I got:

What a cool weekend! I’ll have to post about food later 😉