There was a Vankleek Hill face on one of the teams at the Ninth Edition CrossFit Summer Palooza competition over the summer at the Universtié du Québec à Trois-Rivières.
The two-day event took place July 8 and 9 at the Center for Physical and Sports Activity (CAPS) of the Universtié du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR), in which four teams from the Lachute crossfit club participated : Apex Fit, Buns and Guns, Generation XYZ, and Smurf Fit. The Buns and Guns team featured veteran competitor Annabelle Legault of Vankleek Hill, who assists with coaching crossfit athletes at the Lachute club.
“The competition took us out of our comfort zone, which was good,” added Legault, regarding the action over the two days.
The Summer Palooza 2023 saw more than 400 athletes gather at the university sportsplex, along with a large number of supporters. competitors formed more than 100 teams from Quebec, Ontario and the Maritimes.
“This was the only event of this scale to take place in La Belle Province this year,” said Raphael Gauthier-Marchand, owner of Syn3rgy Performance, which organized the competition.
CrossFit involves high-intensity interval training in both cardiovascular and strength exercises. CrossFit competition takes those interval training exercises as the basis for timed competitions among participants.
This year, the competition consisted of mixed teams of four competitors: two women and two men each. The weekend included six events for all teams which were ranked in three categories: RX Standards, Intermediate Standards and Scaled Standards. Each team had to participate in six events spread over the two days. Participating in the category Scaled, team Generation XYZ was missing a team member and did not make the cut. In the category Intermediate, Smurf Fit finished a close second. Apex Fit sweated their way up to ninth place, and Buns and Guns placed 17th overall in a large field of competitors.
A portion of the registration fee was donated to the Quebec Cancer Foundation with $2500 raised by the end of the competion.
