Christmas Abbott Takeover

Every May, Gulfport CrossFit does the Hero WOD Desforges to honor the life of Josh Desforges. Josh and owner Pat Burgess served together in the Marine Corps. Scott Simmonds, a member at Gulfport CrossFit accidentally booked a trip out of town during that weekend and found himself in a bind.

So Scott reached out to CrossFit Magnitude, in Pembroke, MA. “I made an outrageous request, let me do the WOD,” Scott said. “Owner, Chris O’Brien did me one better. He offered to program the WOD during my visit.”

Come May 20th, Josh’s birthday, the Massachusetts box was packed in. Even though they’d never met before, members joined Scott to tackle this brutal five round workout.

“All they knew was that this WOD, on this day, was important to me and important to people in a gym 1000 miles away. Their support is inspiring and illustrative of the community that is CrossFit.”

“How I Overcame my Negative Body Image” by Beki Berrey

I was the tender age of eighteen when I gave birth to my first child. She was born at the end of the summer and even though it’s been 25 years now, by my memory that Sonoma County summer was the hottest summer of my life.

For 42 weeks, my petite 5 foot 2 inch frame carried a baby girl that weighed nearly ten pounds at birth (9 pounds 13 ounces, to be exact). Do you know what feels great when your skin is expanded to capacity? Scratching it. So I drug my nails across my belly and relieved my discomfort. Do you know what happens to skin when it’s stretched like that and scratched? I didn’t. And no one told me.

I wished I could do what I always hear and “wear my tiger stripes proudly”. But having been put down for them my entire adult life has made it difficult. My daughter’s father, who was abusive, told me that no one would ever want me. I was young and it was an abusive relationship (he physically pushed me multiple times, threw things at me and threatened to hit me frequently, all in addition to the verbal abuse) so I believed him.

I never showed my tummy. And I kept it covered up for many, many years.

It was an outcome Reed had never considered.

“I never underestimate Camille or any of these other competitors because you never know what they’ve been doing in training compared to you,” Reed said after winning Event 3 and besting Leblanc-Bazinet by four places and just under 3 minutes.