Athlete Michael Lanwehr shares what it was like competing at Wodapalooza for the first time.

As one of the premier middling elite intermediate teams competing at Wodapalooza, it can be a bit overwhelming. The crowds, the lights, the endless opportunities to throw money at anyone who could get you a discount on cool swag… This was my first year competing at WZA, and although I felt more ready than ever, I still walked away learning a few things I wasn’t quite expecting. Here are the five things I learned competing at Wodapalooza.

5 Things I Learned Competing at Wodapalooza

1. The Weather May Be Your Biggest Competition

Florida weather — yikes. Let’s face it, outdoor competitions just tend to hit differently. Outdoor competitions in Florida, though, they hit harder than Tyson Fury. One minute the sun is blaring down on you and the next you feel like you’re in the middle of a monsoon.

And that’s not an exaggeration. You would literally have one heat having to do CTB pull-ups in the rain while the next heat was perfectly dry. It made for some interesting last-minute strategy changes in the tent moments before walking out on the floor.

At the end of the day, though, it may have been a blessing in disguise. While making everything much slicker – and the worm unfathomably heavier – the rain also seemed to wash away a lot of the pregame jitters. When something is SO out of your control, and you know inevitably your performance will suffer, it tends to remove most of your stress and let you enjoy the moment for what it is.

2. Corral Times Differ Drastically

If the leaderboard reflected your team’s ability to properly time when to arrive and warm up before your next event, our team would’ve come in dead last. It’s incredible how consistently wrong one group of people could be — I’m not sure we could’ve been worse if we tried.

Figure if the workout had a 20-minute time cap, you would be waiting in the corrals a full heat in advance as well as an additional 15-20 minutes before that to check-in. Sometimes we would roll into the venue with the heat prior to us being called over the loud speaker — not good — and other times have enough time to warm up twice before making our way to the floor.

All in all, I think every team goes through this. It’s part of the unpredictability of competition. The best teams are the ones that are able to adapt and not let a less-than-perfect warm-up rattle them too much.

3. Swimming in the Ocean Is WAY Different Than A Pool

My personal swimming experience was — how should I say it — less than ideal for myself, but probably pretty common for the majority of athletes. Swimming in the ocean is much different, much more unnerving than swimming in a pool.

Aside from the lack of an obvious safety net, doing a tough, sprint-style metcon before diving headfirst into the port of Miami was something I was unprepared for.

Let’s recap: I was first up for my team — go time. 3 rounds of 20 pistols and 5 dball over the shoulder. Finish that at a decent clip — some (not many) might even say at a blistering pace. Breathing heavy, heart racing, dive headfirst into the water and immediately feel like I’m drowning.

Pick my head up for a giant, gasping breath of air — take in about 90% seawater. Off to a good start.

From there, though, things honestly got better, I floated on my back for a bit, let my heart rate come down, and settled into my stroke. But that initial minute in the water was legit terrifying. If you plan on competing at WZA in the future, and are thinking on training for the swim, do a burpee or two before jumping in the water — I promise it’ll be worth it.

4. Good God, the Logistics

This is more my inner nerd coming out, so feel free to skip this one if you can’t relate, but I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around the logistics necessary to put on an event like this. This was my first time attending WZA as an athlete or spectator. I know it was big — over 2,500 athletes, 34 divisions, blah blah blah — but you really can’t grasp HOW big until you’re actually there.

When you’re sitting in the athlete warm-up area and you hear “Heat 67 Elite Men” over the loudspeaker immediately followed by “Heat 58 Intermediate Teams” followed by another heat and another, you start to get a feel for how insane it must be to put on a competition like this.

When they say there are a select group of people that love making sense of spreadsheets and making sure everything falls into its orderly place, whatever team organizes WZA must really love their job.

5. The Competition Lights Seem A Whole Lot Brighter When You’re Underneath Them

You hear it all the time. Athletes at the Games talking about walking out under the tennis stadium lights or into the coliseum for the first time and how there’s nothing like it — and I always kinda rolled my eyes at it. Like, it’s just CrossFit. It’s the same stuff you do every day in the gym, just with a few extra neon lights.

But boy was I wrong.

It was completely unexpected but walking out on the stage for our first night event, and staring out into the crowd with those “few extra neon lights” shining back at me, I was a bit shell shocked, I’ll admit. Even though we weren’t in the top division — far from it, actually — it felt like we were at the Games. It felt surreal.

That feeling alone made the trip, and all the suffering, worth it.