It’s a small, small CrossFit world

The day “Water Breaks with Lori” was featured on the CrossFit.com Affiliate site, I received an email from Jaime Arashiro (that's him kneeling in the picture), the owner of CrossFit Peru. He asked if he could translate my “Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Pure Joy” post in Spanish on his site. Of course I said I would be flattered. What a complement to have someone be moved by something you’ve written, enough to feature it on their own website.

The next day, as coincidence would have it, I clicked on the CF Affiliate site to find that Jaime’s box, CrossFit Peru was being featured as the “CrossFit Affiliate Snapshot” (crossfitperu.com). I thought how wonderful it was that I could get a visual of Jaime and see what his gym and programming was all about.

And then, 1 week later, when I was attending a CF Level 1 Cert at Rainier CrossFit, I looked up and sitting just 2 rows ahead of me, a man was wearing a CrossFit Peru tee shirt! If you’ve ever attended a Cert, you’d know why I never got a chance to ask him about his experience in Peru, but I was delighted to share the story with Jaime. It made me realize how very small our world is. And how closely linked we all are.

Jaime isn’t my only far away CrossFit friend I have. I met a wonderful women and badass CrossFit chick by the name of Kim Malz from Connecticut over a year ago via the comments board on CrossFit.com. Cari and I were comparing times for the wod “Angie” and we came across Kim’s post and were blown away! I just had to email her and ask her “how did you get a time like that?” I didn’t really think she’d respond, but she did. Kim is an amazing coach and inspirational athlete, a mother of three and a breast cancer survivor. I reached out to her and it opened a door of friendship and a professional relationship as well. I’m proud to say that I designed the CrossFit Persevere logo for her box (crossfitpersevere.com). Look for Kim at the CF Games this year. She qualified and competed in ’09 and I have no doubt she’s be there in ’10.

I met Jay Roughton, owner and coach of CrossFit All In (crossfitallin.com) through Brady, and was lucky enough to get to design his logo too. Now Jay is one of my favorite “blog” buddies. I read his daily posts and give him my two cents – sometimes my many opinions might not be worth more than that! And if you were on the ball and got registered to go watch the CrossFit Games Sectionals in Monroe, WA – go and yell your lungs out for Jay. He’ll be competing. He’s a fantastic athlete with spot-on form and great fun to watch.

And these are just a few of the phenomenal people I have connected with through CrossFit. I predict that one day, CrossFit will be as common in the fitness world as “Ballys,” but for now, we remain a somewhat close-knit-across-the-gobe family that I feel so blessed to be a part of.