Our strength work yesterday involved doing 5 sets of 5 floor presses. Now, we've seen some people move impressive weights at the Fort. Last night all I could do was stare in amazement as Big Mike did 150kg's for 5 sets of 5!! After all, you don't get the nickname "Big Mike" by being a small guy.

The WOD  yesterday was
8 rounds for total reps
:20 push-ups
:10 rest
:20 sit-ups
:10 rest

José came out of the gates with the fastest push-ups I have ever seen. It was almost as if it required no effort whatsoever - he was floating. Just when I thought I was doing being impressed, he started on his sit-ups. You want to see someone HAULING? Watch José do sit-ups. Before he started the WOD, I joked with him that he needed to get 253 reps, which would have beat RTL and Josh by 1 rep. José told me he was just shooting to get 200. Well, he completely crushed 200 and got just over 260 reps! Nice work!

When it comes to legit push-ups for the ladies, nobody beats Melissa! Excellent, excellent job yesterday!

We had a lot of people come check out the Fort yesterday! Dawn, Suzanne, Jeanne and Susan, it was nice meeting all 4 of you ladies! Hopefully I'll see you at the November ramp-up!

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For our strength work yesterday we worked our way up to a new one rep max for the clean & jerk. This is a thing of beauty when executed with skill. Are you feeling less than skilled? Well then my friend, find your way to a Saturday morning Power Hour. The 8AM Saturday class is an open gym style class designed to help you not only with your Oly lifts, but any other strength/skill movement that you want to work on. That's right folks! We're changing the name of our 8AM Saturday class from the "olympic lifting" class to the "Power hour" so people don't feel limited to working on only the snatch & clean and jerk. BOOM! Lift some weights!

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Hey guys! Just wanted to point out that until further notice the Friday 6PM class will be disappearing. Until we have at least 4 people who want to commit to this time on a regular basis, we'll leave it off the schedule. As it turns out, there are MUCH cooler things to do at 6PM on a Friday night.

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We had our 3rd annual meatzza-off and it was the best one yet! The recipes were creative and even more delicious than last year. Would you believe I completely forgot to take pictures of the meatzzas?? This was kind of a 2-part problem. The first problem was that the meatzzas came out of the oven and were devoured within 4 minutes. The second problem was that I was one of the people devouring them as fast as possible. All eating and chatting means there are no pictures!

Our voting system got skewed slightly....I think Phoebe helped us out by adding about 2 dozen random votes. What I'd like to do is to have everyone who was there cast votes in the comments on the blog. I'm going to try and remember everyone's meatzzas....if I forgot yours let me know right away!

Please vote for the winner!

Brian & Catherine's Veal/Basil
Garth's pulled pork
Bill's Buffalo Chicken
Sammie's Pepperoni
Michelle's Taco
Mark's Bacon Explosion mini meatzzas
Steph's pulled chicken
Kristin's Almond Meal Crust
(I forget whose) Thick Meat crust with orange peppers & Pepperoni

Thank you to everyone who came and shared the beautiful day with us. Whether you brought meatzza, dessert, wine or just yourself, it was great to spend some time with you!

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Yesterday was another fun Team Saturday WOD. We worked in teams of 4 to complete:

John was visiting us from Indiana. He's Mark's brother-in-law and he does CrossFit out of his own garage. It was pretty cool to hear his feedback on what he thought of the Fort! Not surprisingly, he thought everyone was great!

John brought his luck from Indiana and helped power his team to sweet, sweet victory!

Yesterday was also the Barbells for Boobs fundraiser down at CrossFit Chicago. CrossFit Fire had a strong showing there with a ton of competitors. Nicole took first place with her amazing time of 2:03! We also had Ryan the Lion set a PR by over 1:30! I'm proud of you guys for your amazing support of the community! Fire has members at almost every CrossFit event in our area.

I have to brag just a little....Katelyn had her first swim meet yesterday which is why we couldn't make it to Chicago. She took  home a 2nd place and a 3rd place ribbon!

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For time:
100 wall ball shots (20/14lb)
3:00 rest
100 box jumps (24/20")

Wasn't that a great way to end your week? The October ramp-up finished up with this class as their first "real" class, and I'm pretty sure they loved it.

Bill reported that there was some funny "Jamie" incidences in class. Jamie F stopped when she got to 80 wall ball shots and asked, "that's 80, should I keep going?" Bill didn't say anything, but just turned his back and walked away without writing Jamie's time on the board. I guess she got her answer, AND she finished the whole thing!

Our other funny "Jamie" incident was with Mrs. Michelau. She was bargaining with Bill to see if she could either use the 10lb ball and do all the reps, or the 14lb ball and scale down to 80. Bill just wrote "rx" on the board next to her name, and that was that. She did the RX reps AND used the big 14lb ball. Great job!!

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I think an easier name for these would just be: George's Cookies.

REVISED: 10/26/11

1/2 c butter, melted
3/4c agave nectar
1/2 tsp Dextrose
4 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt
1-1/2 c unsweetened finely shredded coconut
3/4 c dark chocolate chips
3/4 c natural peanut butter
1 c sifted coconut flour

Mix together butter, agave, eggs, vanilla and salt until well blended. Stir in coconut, chocolate chips, peanut butter and coconut flour. Using a medium size scoop or large tablespoon, spoon dough onto greased cookie sheets about an inch apart. (will not spread like normal cookies) Bake at 375 for 14-15 minutes. Cool slightly before removing from cookie sheets. Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

The cookies I baked on my "stone" turned out much better than the ones on my cookie sheets. The bottoms stayed nice and consistent on the stone, but got very dark on metal cookie sheets. Just FYI. I only have 1 stone, and I'm too impatient to wait.

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