What can we say about Thursday?  It’s kind of a boring day.  Wednesday is exciting because the work week is half over. Friday is exciting because, well, it’s Friday!  Poor Thursday is stuck in the middle.  What do you say that we liven it up a little bit.

From now on Thursday will be known as P.R. (Personal Record) Thursday.  I want everyone to think back on the week that we have just completed, and let everyone know about a PR that you had.  I know that there are a lot of them out there because I have seen them in the gym.  These PRs could be a max weight lifted, a new fastest time in a workout, or a goal completed.  Shoot, it doesn’t even have to have taken place at Wine Country CrossFit, tell us about the big sale you just closed at work.  Share your successes with your fellow CrossFitters.

I’ll get us started.  Two days ago, I did the Army’s APFT with the 9:00 class.  I had a PR in the run.  I ran under an 8 minute /mile pace for the first time ever when running more than a mile.  I credit my PR to finally learning to POSE run properly.

I’m also going to use this post to call out a couple of PRs that I witnessed recently.

First, Rocky got his first muscle up a bit more than a week ago!

Second, Jamie cleaned 100lbs this morning in the 6am class!

Alright guys, take it away from here, what have you done that was a PR this week?

Ummm yeah, that's a PR!

My goal as a teenager escaping the inner city was to become the best raft guide and kayaker possible. That goal became a vehicle for international travel, world-class adventure, and extreme athletic pursuit. Without question that goal took me far, but had I made it specific and measurable back in the 70’s when I was 15, it would have taken me even farther.

The Gorge Games are widely known as the Olympics of adventure sport. At the start of the extreme kayaking race in 2001 I lined up at the top of a course filled with waterfalls and pushy rapids. Next to me were accomplished paddlers, most of them half my age. Before the gun went off I told myself I would pull in right behind Brooke, and follow her to the finish. That is exactly what happened, and in the process I beat 10 women, most of them half my age. A good accomplishment you might say, but what if I had told myself before the race that I was going to beat everyone, Brooke included? Did I sell myself short by settling for 2^nd?

We need specific and measurable goals, and we also need not sell ourselves short in striving to be the best. So what does this mean in CrossFit? Are you here to get strong, to learn the pull-up, to gain confidence, to find yourself as an athlete, to discover what your limits are and how to blow them out of the water? Maybe it’s to deadlift twice your bodyweight. We don’t know unless you tell us.

Goals are powerful motivating tools when we declare them to our friends, family, community. There is power in making public your intention. Just so you know this is for real, I’ll go first: My goal is to have consistent double-unders by Christmas. Now, I don’t like working on them, and they piss me off cuz I used to be able to do them, and somehow I can’t anymore. It might be cuz I stopped practicing them. I’ve declared it, and you as a community can hold me to it.

We will post a board that allows you to publicly state your goals. Be courageous, and let the world know what you have in mind. Go big, and don’t settle for less.

-Beth Rypins