Last Saturday, I was fortunate enough to get invited to compete with Telluride Crossfit at the Glenwood Springs Crossfit Summer Team Challenge. This was my first Crossfit Comp and I can’t tell you how much fun I had! IT WAS AWESOME!! We did five workouts over the course of six hours, and I’m going to go ahead and say I felt GREAT the whole time. Talking to some of my teammates at the end of the day, not everyone felt the same. I had one athlete turn to me during the awards ceremony and say, “Alright, I’m ready to hear what you have to say about nutrition….cause I feel AWFUL!” I saw another girl at the comp pass out because she hadn’t eaten anything all day. So, I wanted to show you guys what I ate in order to fuel a full day of Crossfit. This is by no means the only way to eat during a comp, but hopefully this will give you some ideas for your next big event!
We actually didn’t find out we were competing on Saturday until 4 p.m. on Friday. I was tired from training and working all week and thought I was headed home to chill for the weekend. Then I got the call from Andrew while I was at the grocery store, and IMMEDIATELY had to shift gears! Here is what I bought in an absolute fit of panic to pack food for the event:
Kipper snack
Sliced turkey
Proscuitto
Coconut water x2
Apples and bananas and dried figs
Dark chocolate
A couple packets of nut butter
Eggs for hard boiling
Avocados
Bell peppers + baby carrots
I went home and microwaved a really big sweet potato, hard boiled four eggs, ate a bunch of the sweet potato, some coconut butter, an apple and salami. Can you say nervous eating?
The next morning we ate breakfast as a team at The Daily Bread in Glenwood Springs. Because I overslept and was in charge of waking up coach, we ate breakfast kinda close to competing. Still nervous about the 31 Heroes WOD going off at 10:30, I ate a veggie omelet with herbed home fries, fresh fruit and black coffee. To be honest, this was WAY too much food right before the workout. I never eat white potatoes, but again I was a little nervous about not being carbed up (something I would have been more on top all week had I known we were competing for sure). And as I would have guessed, this all kinda sat in my stomach. Going into the competition, I was seriously regretting eating all of that. But once the workout started, I didn’t think twice about it. I kept it all down, and felt as good as I possibly could have considering how nasty running with a sandbag and climbing rope is.
After that first workout, I had a scoop of the Stronger Faster Healthier chocolate recovery drink and a banana and some more black coffee. The SFH stuff was DISAPPOINTING! It tasted like chocolate milk that had gone bad 
But I got it down. Our next workout was 90 seconds of heaving a 77lb atlas stone. We did this shortly after our first workout, so I didn’t have any whole foods between these. After the atlas stone WOD, we had a bit of time before our 1 rep maxes, so I made a point to sit down and eat some food (and drink water, obviously).
I packed WAY too much food for this event. That’s typically how I roll. As an easily digestible snack, I had 1/2 a microwaved sweet potato, honey almond butter and a couple ounces of proscuitto. It was SUPER satisfying.
Next we did the one rep maxes. Our team had to do a 1RM for jerk, clean, snatch and thruster. I took care of the snatch and got a new PR!! But I did all of my warmup lifts WAY too fast. To say the least, I was a little nervous so I ripped off 65-75-85 then 95 in about ohhhhh four minutes? I looked up at the clock and saw we had 11 minutes left to hit our lifts, so I took a deep breath and tried to calm down before hitting 100. I got 100 solid, but was unable to get 105, even though I tried about five more times. Stupid.
After this I had a scoop of Progenex and a coconut water. I gotta admit, that Progenex stuff is tasty, but doesn’t have the best ingredients I’ve ever seen. I sipped on black coffee lightly throughout the rest of the day.
Our next workout was two rep max weighted pull-up. I’d never done weighted pull-ups before, and this was probably the worst event for me. I did get two with 15 lbs, but I was hoping to do WAY more than that.
Between this and the very last WOD of the day, I had two ounces of plain beef jerky that I grabbed at a gas station in Grand Junction and, you guessed it, more sweet potato.
Our last workout of the day was a baseball style team WOD of toes to bar, deadlifts, burpees, and dumbbell swings. My only goal was to keep up with Andrew, and I because I’d worked on linking my toes to bar earlier in the week, I was able to do it! This was one of the funnest workouts I’ve ever done! So fun I’m glad it was only 12 minutes long 
To wrap up the day, I had a chicken skewer from the food wagon at the comp, my chopped bell peppers, baby carrots and 1/2 an avocado. I think the chicken had a sunbutter sauce on it that was AWESOME! Glenwood Springs was kind enough to have beer for all of the contestants afterward, but I was too scared to drink any. I haven’t had beer in so long, I’m afraid it would blow me up (literally). It sure sounded good, but I had my heart set on margaritas 
At The Pullman in Glenwood Springs, we went out as a team and celebrated! I had roasted bone marrow with red onion jam, a big beet arugula walnut salad, short rib tacos and two jalapeño grapefruit margaritas. Everything tasted like heaven and the margs pretty well did me in. It was the perfect end to a perfect day
So, as you can see, comp day food is a little different from what I recommend folks do day in day out. I still believe in training low and racing high, meaning training pretty low carb and then topping everything off with yams, sweet potatoes, figs, etc. when it’s time to compete. Like I say, I’m not sure this would work for EVERYONE, but it worked great for me. Anytime I started to feel a little tired, woozy, I’d sit down and eat some food. I can’t wait to compete again!! The only thing I would have changed would have been breakfast. Next time I’ll skip the potatoes and fruit and stick with what I know works for me (read: eggs + bacon + coffee).
