Anna Tunnicliffe set to compete at the CrossFit Games

by Anna Tunnicliffe on 22 Jul 2014 Twice Rolex Sailor of the Year and Olympic Gold medalist, Anna Tunnicliffe (USA) alternates between sailing aboard Alinghi in the Extreme Sailing Series, and chasing a serious ranking in the world of CrossFit.

She skipped sailing aboard the Extreme 40 Alinghi in the Extreme Sailing Series in St Petersburg, Russia. But she will be back aboard as tactician for the next regatta in Wales

Born in England, Tunnicliffe moved to USA at the age of 12, and pursued a promising track career before giving that away in favour of sailing, where she won a Gold Medal in the Womens Singlehander in 2008 and won the Womens Match Racing event at the 2011 ISAF World Championships in Perth. She represented USA in that event at the 2012 Olympics but did not make the medal podium.

CrossFit is becoming increasingly popular amongst sailors as a way of physically preparing for the sport, as it is less monotonous than other physical training processes and better replicates the physical sailing activities on board a racing boat.

July 16th, 2014, Pittsburgh, PA

The big game is almost upon us. Starting in one week's time, are the 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games, in Carson CA. All of our training has been leading up to this event, and it's hard to believe that it's finally here.

Over the past few weeks, along with all the training, I have joined up with two new awesome companies, RX Smartgear, and FitAid. Both companies have very similar values and philosophies to me, and I couldn't be happier to be a part of these teams and to have them as part of my team!

Training has been going well. I had a two-day visit from Emily Friedman as she started her trip across country. It was awesome to have her back here and get some wodding in! She never stops! In addition to Em, Chassity Martin, first time regionals athlete from Virginia came up for a few days of training. Again, it was great to have a different face to be wodding against. The training has been hard and at times makes me think I'm never going to get there. But the point of training is to make it harder than you could possibly imagine so that when you show up on the main stage, you have seen it all before and much worse. It should make the main stage 'easy.' Brad and I have been really working on my weaknesses as well as trying to improve my strengths … there's always so much to do in CrossFit!!

We leave Saturday to head out to California to get used to the time change and the climate change (slightly dryer conditions.) Athlete check in is on Monday and we start competing on Wednesday. They have announced a few of the events so far although not going into great amount of details. For instance, our first event is called 'The Beach.' All we know is that it starts on a beach, but we don't know where and we don't know what we will be doing. There is another event announced called the Triple 3's. It entails a 3000m row, 300 double unders, and then a 3 mile run! I must admit, I'm pretty excited for this event. Other than that, there have been two other events released, one being a max Overhead Squat, and 2 events called Sled 1, and Sled 2 which involve pushing a sled 100yds.

There are quite a few people from CrossFitMtLebannon heading out to watch too. The community that we have at our box is unlike anything I have ever encountered, and I'm so lucky to be a part of such an amazing family.

In non-CrossFit news, Alinghi won the latest Act of the series in Russia extending our lead on the leaderboard with four more events to go. The next event will be in Cardiff at the end of August and I'm looking forward to getting back on the water again then!

I'll write an update once we are in California and share some links as to where you can watch the Games and check out scores, etc. Until then, if you want to check out what has been announced, articles and videos that they release, you can check it out at games.crossfit.com

Finally I would like to thank my sponsors Inov-8, Skins, NormaTec, SpiderTech, and Theromega Sports for your continued support! #committed. And my two new sponsors, RxSmartGear and FitAid.

Cheers,

Anna