Andrew Heads to Marine OCS

After over a year at Vitality, Andrew will be leaving to report to Marine Officer Candidate's School in Quantico, VA tomorrow afternoon. It has been a pretty crazy transformation that has taken place with Andrew over the past year. Physically and mentally, I think Andrew is a completely different person today than he was back in January of 2011. There is no doubt in my mind that Andrew will do great at OCS, it will be challenging in many different ways than what he has experienced with CrossFit over the past year but he will easily adapt and be fine. His wife Emily will remain here in Charlotte and continue to CrossFit with us here at Vitality. Please make it a point to help her through this time as she adjusts to Andrew being gone. This is the amazing part of CrossFit that people unfamiliar with the program will never understand. More than the workouts, more than the changes in your body type, it is the community that makes CrossFit so unique. That is why, in my mind, CrossFit isn't going anywhere, you can't find this type of community anywhere else. I think we have a special community here at Vitality and one that is pretty unique. I watch Suzy come in here daily and smash WODs, knowing that she has a support system to help get her through Trey's deployment. Andrew will have one less stressor on his mind, knowing that Emily has a community of people that will help her get through the time while Andrew is gone. It's all these things that we need to use to help keep things in perspective. There will be a number of days that you will wake up and not want to fight the cold, dark, lonely trip into Vitality. It can always be worse. Andrew will become very familiar with being cold, wet, tired, and hungry. I frequently will offer you the opportunity to train in the rain here at Vitality but never do I offer that opportunity when it is cold out. However badly I wish I could control what you eat, I don't, and you are free to eat whatever you want. You sleep when your tired and can control how many layers of clothing you would like to wear each day. Andrew will not have these creature comforts for the next 10 weeks. So the next time you want to reach over and push the snooze button so you can get your precious extra 45 minutes of sleep that you probably don't deserve because in my opinion, your tired because of your poor time management skills that led you to get to bed later than you wanted to the night prior….don't forget about Andrew who has probably already been up for a few hours and marched nearly a mile through the dark, freezing morning in order to have 4 minutes to eat breakfast while getting yelled at. We have had a great month here at Vitality so far and I see alot of you with a great attitude and it is infectious. Keep up the good work!