Grand Rapids Team Finishes 14th At CrossFit Games

A team of four representing the 8th Day Gym gutted out 11 grueling workouts over four days in Madison WI to finish 14th in the world.

The CrossFit Games are known for determining the fittest people in the world because of its widely varying events challenging competitors in a wide variety of workouts, ranging from weightlifting to gymnastics and this year, swimming and kayaking.

The team representing 8th Day consisted of two men and two women and battled it out with teams from as far away as Norway to earn their 14th place finish.

The competition took place in and around the Alliant Center in Madison, Wisconsin from last Thursday July 27 until Sunday August 1.

8th Day, comprised of married couple Michael and Heather Paas, Ryan Schaffer and Zoe Jones notched four top ten finishes in the 11 events to avoid the 20 team cut after Saturday and move onto Sunday's final.

On Sunday, the team just missed the cut of ten teams for the final two workouts, despite a third place finish in event 11, which was a mixed skill event consisting of medicine ball sit ups tossing a weighted curd over a hay bail, and clean and jerks using something called a worm. (Yes, it's a weird and wild event.)

8th Day Gym is located on the corner of Market and Cherry in downtown Grand Rapids where they endured not only the pandemic, but a huge construction project which has cut off three of the streets leading to the gym, which caused a parking nightmare.

That's right Team 8th Day has proven that if you can survive downtown parking problems, you can survive anything.

Congratulations, Mike, Heather, Ryan and Zoe, you represented West Michigan well!!

You can watch Team 8th Day winning their heat in their final event below.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have been a proud member of 8th Day Gym since 2015. In fact -- I'm the one sucking wind at 1:16 of the video below. Yeah, I won't be winning anything anytime soon, but that's not the point is it? Now get outside and move your body!!