Congratulations to Sarah Septien for being selected as October’s Athlete of the Month. Sarah has shown a great amount of growth since first stepping in the doors of Mission. She is usually crushing the WOD’s during the zero dark-thirty class (5am). If you do get an opportunity to WOD with her, pray it is not a running WOD! You can always find her after class working on extra stuff to help her get better. For those reasons and many more is why Sarah is deserving of Athlete of the Month.
Started CrossFit: 2014
Favorite WOD: Annie, or anything containing DU’s because I can crush Landon (My husband)
Least favorite WOD: Nonexistent
Favorite lift: SQUATS
Least favorite lift: bench press
Story: My story? Crossfit is my story. Crossfit has become my way of life. It is where I met my husband, it is where I met lifetime friends, It is what dictates my schedule, what time I go to bed, my macros, my activities, what I talk about during the day, the jokes I tell, what I search for online, and that is just for starters.
Ironically though, it was not always like this.
Even though I have always participated in sports and competed in them, from swimming to dancing to soccer to tennis, I never really used to like lifting weights, specially while in High school and College where I focused on tennis.
Tennis for many years was my sole priority. It was the reason why my family and I moved from Cancun, Mexico to Texas. After a lot of training and hard work, I ended up playing competitive College Tennis for SLU in MO. Unfortunately, during my college career, I suffered a couple of serious injuries that required surgical treatment, so after graduating I decided I wanted to finally take some time off to focus on other things.
To my surprise, something felt off. I soon realized that “the grass was definitely not greener on the other side.” Not exercising made me feel somewhat “empty”, like something was missing.
I had always had the camaraderie of a team, the pressure of competition, the endorphins of an elevated heart rate, the muscle soreness, the burning of blood rushing through your veins. Now all I had were the aches and pains of not doing anything, so I decided I had to do something about it.
I joined some climbing, yoga and acrobatic classes as they seemed fun and challenging but unfortunately, they only seemed to captured my attention for a brief period of time because something was missing. Yes, they were fun and challenging, but hey didn’t have the “it” factor.
It was not until I came across CrossFit that I found what I was looking for. CrossFit combined competition, hard work, and camaraderie which is what I was used to and craved. Even though lifting weights had never been my thing, doing so gave me a sense of empowerment, of invincibility, of achievement, and it also gave me an avenue to set never-ending goals of becoming better, faster, stronger, which ultimately made me fall deeply in love.
That being said, the biggest catalyst to my CrossFit career has been joining Mission CrossFit. The combination of knowledgeable and caring coaches with the friendly yet competitive “WODmates” have made me grow so much this past year and a half, even more that I ever thought possible. I joined Mission with the hope of continuing to improve my CrossFit career, but it has done so much more than that and I am very grateful for it!
Thank you MCFSA !!