Tell us about yourself:
I’m a 41 year old mom to a wonderful and compassionate 12 year old son Rowen, and have a beautiful, brilliant, and incredibly kind partner Ciera. I’m originally from northern Colorado, but ping-ponged from coast to coast for over a decade due to work until my family landed in LA. Eventually, we were able to move out to Ventura County in 2023.
What do you do for a job?
I’ve been working as a video game developer for somewhere around 15 years with a few stints in architecture and product design near the beginning of my career. I’ve mostly worked within the Lighting and Technical Art disciplines (landing somewhere between the artists and engineers), but about a year ago became an Art Director. I’ve worked for many of the big companies, on a lot of genres, styles and hardware platforms, as well as doing a fair amount of freelance client and contract work. One particular thing I’m most proud of is that I’m self taught which is fairly rare at this point. I originally went to college and studied civil/structural engineering, but ended up with a degree in Urban Design/ Landscape Architecture.
Tell us something people might not know about you:
Most people tend to assume I’m a ‘jock, but I’m very much a nerd. I just happen to really like being physically active. I’m obsessively into geek culture, and things like anime, scifi/ fantasy, punk, emo, and hardcore music. My partner Ciera and I are also avid toy and nerd culture collectors and have a fairly sizable collection. Fun fact, I have Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD ;p
What brought you to CrossFit in the first place?
I played a ton of sports growing up and continued to be active throughout my adulthood, but my activities were almost exclusively focused on speed, strength, or agility skills. This meant I never really developed any meaningful endurance, conditioning, or gymnastics skills. Seeing as I was feeling both very stuck in my training, and needed to make new friends after moving I thought I’d give it a go.
What was your first impression? How has that changed?
I always thought Crossfitters were intimidating, crazy cultists who enjoyed pain and suffering so I stayed away. Turns out we are nice crazy cultists who push their boundaries while being super supportive of each other.
What was your first “Bright Spot?”
Getting both my first bar muscle up and finally getting double unders were both mind blowing. I thought each would take me years. Once I got them I really felt like with enough time, effort, and coaching I could eventually achieve the goals I was looking to accomplish.
What are you working on now?
What am I not? Lol. I have so much room for improvement. I’m always trying to work on my conditioning and general endurance, but right now I’d say my gymnastics are a major bottleneck and my weakest skillset. I’ve been going back to basics with increasing my volume and technique for strict handstand push-ups, butterfly pull-ups, and toes to bar. I’m doing progressions for both types of strict muscle ups, and handstand walks. Lift wise, by the new year I’d like to have hit a 400lb deadlift, 365lbs squat, 250lb clean, and 200lb snatch. If I hit 1 or 2 of those I’d be over the moon.
What’s your favorite BeachSide CrossFit memory?
That’s hard. I feel like the community and friends I’ve made are the real joy of it all for me. If I had to be more focused on myself specifically, I’d say the Open this year. 26’ was my second year doing CF and first open and I didn’t think I would do as well as I did and made the quarter finals. Quarters were almost better because it just clearly laid out all my weaknesses in front of me which is a clear path to what I’ve been working on since
