Boston Marathon Finish for O'Keefe, Moniz, and Marsh Proves Hard Work Pays Off

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Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up premium subscriber edition.

In today’s edition:

• Matt O’Keefe, Sammy Moniz, and Cooper Marsh took on the Boston Marathon, finished it in tough conditions, and raised tens of thousands of dollars for charity in the process!

• Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr leads a pack of hungry Games veterans who missed the 2023 season and are on a comeback mission in 2024.

• Morning Chalk Up staff members took on the Quarterfinals workouts all weekend and gave you some behind-the-scenes access. Check out the “aftermath” of their efforts below.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I would smile more and drool less.” - Scotty Freymond on how he would approach Individual Quarterfinal Workout 1 in a redo

INDUSTRY

Matt O’Keefe, Sammy Moniz, and Cooper Marsh Complete Boston Marathon; Raise Thousands for One Summit and Boston Scores

On Monday, April 15, a sea of runners shuffled up Heartbreak Hill, past Boston College, and down Kenmore Square in Boston, MA, on a 26.2-mile course for the 128th annual Boston Marathon. 

• Three of those people, HWPO Training’s Matt O’Keefe and Sammy Moniz, as well as Lab Management’s Cooper Marsh, were among the 30,000 to toe the line and finish. 

Some background: Having grown up in Massachusetts, (in O’Keefe’s case, in Boston proper, attending Boston College), the three spent their childhoods with an understanding and a familiarity with the Boston Marathon. All their lives they’ve been aware of the reverence it incites in everyone that spectates, supports, and participates. 

O’Keefe had run it twice before, some twenty years ago now, but Moniz and Marsh were marathon rookies leading up to Monday. 

• “I have wanted to run Boston for at least a few years now. It’s always been a bucket list item being born and raised in Massachusetts and having seen my uncle run it many years in a row. That desire grew even more after the bombings as the city rallied around one another and the race grew even more special,” Marsh tells Morning Chalk Up. 

For O’Keefe and Moniz, the inspiration came from a close friend and founder of One Summit, Adam LaReau. HWPO Training had worked with the non-profit – an organization that helps pediatric cancer patients and their families – as a part of HWPO Give and was invited to take part in the marathon as a way to raise money and awareness for the organization. 

“We saw this as an amazing opportunity to showcase how we live, how we train, and to be a partner with One Summit for it, it was just an easy decision,” O’Keefe tells Morning Chalk Up.

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SPEED READS

2024 CrossFit Games Quarterfinals Leaderboards (unofficial, as of 7 p.m. PT, April 22, 2024)

• North America East
  1. Jeffrey Adler (20) | Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr (6)
  2. Roman Khrennikov (31) | Alexis Raptis (23)
  3. Jayson Hopper (35) | Emma Lawson (24)
  4. Austin Hatfield (44) | Danielle Brandon (46)
  5. Dallin Pepper (51) | Paige Powers (63)

• North America West
  1. Patrick Vellner (23) | Alex Gazan (25)
  2. Justin Medeiros (41) | Emily Rolfe (32)
  3. Brandon Luckett (42) | Abigail Domit (36)
  4. Samuel Kwant (44) | Arielle Loewen (45)
  5. Chris Ibarra (50) | Rebecca Fuselier (73)

• Europe
  1. Jonne Koski (24) | Gabriela Migala (21)
  2. Victor Hoffer (48) | Laura Horvath (38)
  3. Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson (56) | Manon Angonese (56)
  4. Lazar Dukic (67) | Emma Tall (57)
  5. Moritz Fiebig (82) | Emma McQuaid (61)

• Oceania
  1. Ricky Garard (11) | Madeline Sturt (13)
  2. Jay Crouch (11) | Daisy McDonald (45)
  3. Bayley Martin (26) | Briony Challis 51)
  4. Ben Fowler (41) | Julia Hannaford (52)
  5. Zac Thomas (60) | Jess Green (55)

• Asia 
  1. Ivan Kukartsev (25) | Seungyeon Choi (13)
  2. Anton Yakovlev (44) | Dawon Jong (22)
  3. Morteza Sedaghat (45) | Evie Hollis (26)
  4. Mevlut Agir (81) | Anastasiya Dodonova (27)
  5. Ilyas Kuliev (82) | Anna Ivanova (48)

• South America
  1. Agustin Richelme (23) | Victoria Campos (32)
  2. Joao Pedro Barcelos (30) | Andreia Pinheiro (38)
  3. Kaylan Souza (33) | Emily Andrade (64)
  4. Bruno Marins (33) | Amanda Fusuma (65)
  5. Guilherme Malheiros (61) | Gabriella Luque (83)

• Africa
  1. Kaelan Henry (13) | Christina Livaditakis (16)
  2. Ruan Duvenage (20) | Gemma Rader (17)
  3. Callum Deeble (36) | Gilmari Reyneke (42)
  4. Michael Van Tonder (41) | Tanha Bouffe(43)
  5. Darren Zurnamer (41) | Reegan Finkel (47)

• Reminder: The top 40 men and women will qualify for Semifinals in each region. For full age-group leaderboards, refer to the CrossFit Games site.

• See Morning Chalk Up's full Quarterfinals coverage and learn all the details about qualifying for the next stage of the 2024 CrossFit Games season.

📢📣 Last Call for Teen Mentors: The Pit Teen Throwdown, host of the 2024 Teen CrossFit Games, has set up a mentorship program for teen athletes to receive advice and guidance from those with Games experience. If you’re a Games athlete and interested in helping the next generation in the sport, learn more and get signed up now!

🎟️ 🎟️ CrossFit Asia Semifinal: The Far East Throwdown, the 2024 CrossFit Asia Semifinal, will take place May 17-19 at the BEXCO Exhibition and Convention Center in Busan, South Korea. Tickets are available now!

✍️📋 Rogue Invitational 2024 Volunteer Applications: In case you missed the announcement, the Rogue Invitational is going international in 2024, and you can be there, behind the scenes, for all the action in Aberdeen, Scotland. Get more information and apply now. 

MEMBER EXCLUSIVE

5 CrossFit Games Athletes on a Comeback Mission in 2024

Typically, when looking ahead to the upcoming season, we focus a lot of our attention on the athletes whose performances filled the headlines for the previous year. 

In 2024, though, much of the buzz surrounds a handful of athletes who were absent from the big stage in 2023.

Today, we’re highlighting those athletes and adding our thoughts about their upcoming season.

Let’s begin with the woman everyone has been waiting to see:

1. Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr

Here’s a quick recap of Tia’s past 12 months:

• Sat out the 2023 CrossFit Games due to pregnancy.

• Finished second at the 2023 Rogue Invitational by 10 points.

• Finished 2,610th in the 2024 Open due to injury in week three.

As we can see, Tia has not had the smoothest road, but closing out the online portion of the Games season, she seems to have things well under control with two first and two second-place finishes in four workouts total during Quarterfinals (unofficially).

Now, as we head into the Semifinal stage, all eyes will once again be on Tia as the community waits to see whether she can bounce back and reclaim her dominant spot at the top.

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CROSSFIT QUARTERFINALS

4 Morning Chalk Up Writers Took on the 2024 CrossFit Games Quarterfinals — Here Are Their Reactions

Four Morning Chalk writers — Teaganne Finn, Scotty Freymond, Nicky Freymond, and Julia Papworth — took on the 2024 Indy and Age Group Quarterfinals…these are their stories.

As we have in years past, we are using their experiences this season to highlight the workouts, strategies, and maybe even what happens if it all goes sideways.

On Friday, each writer/athlete shared a brief background on their current fitness and then described their initial thoughts and strategies for one of the CrossFit Games Quarterfinals workouts they would take on this weekend.

Workout 1, Scotty Freymond 

4 Rounds for max reps of:

1 minute of snatches
1 minute of rowing for calories
1 minute of dumbbell box step-ups
1 minute of rest

About five minutes before I started, my friend put an idea in my head: “What if you didn’t do any snatches? Like, zero.” 

“Now that’s interesting,” I thought. 

Knowing that the row is where I’d get the most reps, maybe extra rest leading up to it wasn’t such a bad idea. I will consider that after the first round, I thought. But I didn’t want to start the workout with “3-2-1…Rest.” That’s no fun.  

So, I hit my original plan of eight snatches in the first minute. That left almost 20 seconds to transition to the rower, where I got 23 calories. I got right to the step-ups and completed 18, for a total of 49 reps in the first round. My goal for the whole workout was 160, and this pace had me on target for 196. 

My inner dialogue went back and forth like a pickleball while I sat on the box: 

• “You are crushing it. Yeah, but you’re going to die. No, I think you can hang on. Actually, you better slow down.”

Slow down, I did.

HIGHLIGHTS

Celebrating a PR, hosting a fundraiser, this, that, or otherwise? Send us a tip.

• 🎂Happy birthday to Dusty Hyland and Rachel Elery.

• Nice work to Nico of CAF La Fortuna in Costa Rica on the 87-kilo/192-pound snatch.

• 🏏Congratulations to Arjun, professional cricket player and athlete of the week from CrossFit Grandview in Columbus, OH.

• Great job to Jasson of CrossFit La Verne in La Verne, CA, on the 158 kilo/350 pound clean and jerk.

• 🙌Congratulations to Molly of Risen Strength CrossFit in Gainesville, FL, on her first bar muscle-up.