Quintina Morgan is competing against some of the best in the West. The 28-year-old will test her fitness at the Canada West CrossFit Regional Championships, Friday through Sunday in Richmond.
Regionals will bring together the top CrossFit athletes from B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, and they'll perform brutal physical challenges over the course of three days.
The CrossFit events, involving a series of plyometrics, powerlifting, calisthenics and other exercises, are designed to test an athlete's core strength and conditioning using the person's own body weight.
Quintina qualified for regionals when she finished fifth out of 1,900 women at the recent Western Canadian CrossFit Open. It entailed a five-week challenge she accessed from the international CrossFit organization and performed at CrossFit Prince George, the gym she co-founded with her husband Travis in 2012.
After finishing in the 130s last year, fifth place is a new personal record for Quintina.
She and other athletes executed each week's assigned workout in front of video cameras and then posted their scores on the CrossFit website (crossfit.com).
"Everybody does the same workout and we're measured by time and how far you get during a certain exercise," she said. "You're ranked and a running total is kept. The lowest number of points wins. The lower the number, the better."
At the same time, Travis, 34, finished 34th out of 2,600 men in the Open.
He too is competing at regionals in Richmond.
"I started doing CrossFit in 2007 and I didn't think regionals was for us," he said. "I just did it for health and fitness and then Jon [Gibson, their training mate] made it to regionals and we realized we could do this."
Gibson, 24, ranked first overall in Western Canada and 14th in the world after successfully completing the Western Canadian CrossFit Open.
The top two men and women from regionals advance to the world championship CrossFit Games in Carson, Calif., on July 25.
There are four different regional events held around the world for the next four weeks to determine the top qualifiers.
"You'd have to be top five or six in each event [to qualify for the Games]," said Quintina. "I've met my goal just by making regionals."
Travis, a Prince George chiropractor, first saw CrossFit at a professional seminar in 2007. He later did a workout and his hands were bleeding afterward. But he was hooked.
"Quintina had our first baby and we started doing CrossFit in our basement," said Travis. "We needed a pull-up bar and I wanted to do a wellness program at my office. It started busting at the seams and we broke it off to CrossFit Prince George."
The gym, located in the Nicholson Centre, is expanding to include more space to keep up with demand from CrossFit athletes, which numbers around 100 in Prince George.
Quintina admits she was not much of an athlete seven years ago.
"I wasn't athletic at all but we were just hooked," she said. "I could barely do push-ups. Now the kids do it."
For both men and women, the movements are the same, but the weights are 30 per cent lighter for the women.
The couple, who are both certified coaches, work out two to three times a day, six days a week. Sunday is a rest day.
"We are definitely competitive with each other," said Quintina. "We can redo a workout and see how we do each time. You can always find a way to go a little further and harder."
"Seven years later, we're still hitting personal bests," added Travis, who used to be a competitive, nationally-ranked wrestler.
"I'm fitter now than I ever was as an athlete training at the Olympic training centre for three years," he said.
