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One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Good morning and welcome to the weekend edition of the Morning Chalk Up. This is Jessica Danger, filling in for Justin while he brushes up on his Gaelic, to bring you a quick wrap-up of the major news items throughout the week.

Today’s edition is brought to you by Competition Corner.

Don’t miss out on the 8th edition of the 2019 CrossFit® French Throwdown in Paris, France.

A fitness festival open to all and your starting point to the CrossFit Games. Qualifiers start on 19th of April.

For more details and registration, head over to Competition Corner.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“CrossFit has created one of the strongest platforms so that girls and women are proud of not simply what their body looks like, but what their body can do.” — Elisabeth Akinwale 

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

Morning Chalk Up is based out of Santa Ana, CA. We’re in a historic building in the heart of the city so we spend hours and hours every day inside, hearing the building settle and the white noise of traffic outside. Bella, Justin’s White German Shepherd, keeps us company and we count down the time until we get to WOD.

But lately, when we step outside, there’s a super cool phenomenon: The painted lady migration.

In North America, the painted lady butterflies spend the winter around the US-Mexico border. They fly north in the spring, in groups so dense they fill the sky. Their wing dust coats your car. They are orange and black and are often mistaken for the more well-known monarch butterflies. But there’s a key distinction. Painted ladies are typically smaller than monarchs and, when you look closely, they have a little bit of a different shape.

And that’s kind of what the coverage of the Open has been like. CrossFit Media is the monarch and we’re the painted ladies. 

Morning Chalk Up headed to Diablo CrossFit in Pleasant Hill, CA for the 19.3 Open announcement. Tommy Marquez and Justin LoFranco ran a live pre-show that included interviews with Craig Howard, Lauren Fisher and Alessandra Pichelli.

And we’re going to do it again. Tuesday, Armen Hammer and Justin will leave for Ireland to provide the live pre-show for the 19.5 Open announcement, hosted by Filthy150 in Dublin. We’ll take what worked from our coverage during 19.3 and do it again, leaving what didn’t work behind so that we can continue to bring you the best CrossFit coverage possible. We’ll do the same for Brazil CrossFit Championship and again for CrossFit French Throwdown.

Like the painted ladies, we’re a little bit smaller and the shape of our coverage is just a little bit different, but we too are on our way to a new place. We plan to keep bringing you more coverage, and we’re moving en masse with voices from experts in the field like Armen Hammer, Tommy Marquez and Op-Eds (keep em coming people) from major players in the industry. We’ll continue to bring you more athlete interviews, more critical commentary and more access to all the fittest news.

We’re pumped to have you with us on the ride. 

May the muscle-up gods be ever in your favor this weekend,

Jessica Danger

Managing Editor

TOP STORIES
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The CrossFit Games Clamps Down on the Open Leaderboard
Tommy Marquez

Have you noticed the penalties CrossFit has been levying at the top of the leaderboard each week? As the Open is now a direct qualifier for the CrossFit Games, top performers are being asked for their videos so CrossFit can verify their scores.

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How are 2018 Games Athletes Performing in the 2019 Open After Week 3?
Scott Henderson

We’re in the fourth week of the Open and unless Dave Castro introduces a two part workout next week, there will only be one more scored event after 19.4 for athletes to jump up the leaderboard. Here’s how last year’s CrossFit Games athletes are fairing in this Open.

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What’s That Blue Line on the CrossFit Games Leaderboard?
Justin LoFranco

If you’ve been spending any time on the CrossFit Games leaderboard in the last week, you probably noticed a solid blue line hovering around 30th place. This recent introduction to the leaderboard shows who would qualify for the 2019 CrossFit Games if the Open ended today. So why does it keep shifting?

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From Boyfriend to Teammate to Coach, Speegle and Gordon More Than Make it Work
Tommy Marquez

The dynamic of having a significant other for a coach can be complicated, but it hasn’t swayed Alex Gordon and Dani Speegle, who currently sits third overall and is on track to earn her first trip to the CrossFit Games. Speegle admits: “He knows me better than anyone, my strengths, my weaknesses, my attitude on good and bad days, when I’m tired and need to have a lighter training day,” and perhaps most importantly, “and when I just need to eat and stop complaining.”

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Your Chestee Now Comes With a Little Brown Bag
Jessica Danger

The Chestee, the only patented sports bra with built-in collarbone protection and every woman’s favorite bra for cleans and front squats, has just launched a new line in Bloomingdale’s. Select Bloomingdale’s in Florida will host a few release events through March, coinciding with the Chestee’s five-year anniversary.

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Today’s edition is brought to you by
COMMUNITY

19.4 is here. There is only one more live announcement left people. We’re in the homestretch now. As you plan your strategy to nail those bar muscle-ups, take a look at this six things to get you going.

  1. The burpee standards are different this year. Make sure you know them.
  2. Read through these strategies and have a plan going into the workout.
  3. Eleven-year-old Mason Alderman is ready for 19.4 after his 95 pound snatch PR. 
  4. Practice that celebratory dance for that first bar muscle-up.
  5. Be prepared to re-do it if you need to, just like Noah Ohlsen keeps doing. 
  6. And then celebrate with a new King Kong bag designed by Annie Thorisdottir. Or, go out and get a pineapple pizza. 
Oh and let’s not forget…

How Big Tobacco Hooked Children on Sugary Drinks (Andrew Jacobs/New York Times)

We’re Inching Toward Equality for Women in Sports (Christine Yu/Outside)

Professional Trainers (Greg Glassman/CrossFit Journal)

“On the Minute: Episode 14” (Morning Chalk Up/YouTube)

Prominent Doctors Aren’t Disclosing Their Industry Ties in Medical Journal Studies (Charles Ornstein/ProPublica and Katie Thomas/New York Times)

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