Three women from Cornwall are preparing to take on Europe’s fittest in one of the biggest competitions of fitness racing – which most people know as Crossfit.
Chelsea Cawley, 26, Karen Powell, 41, and Laura Parry, 31, have all embarked on one of their biggest challenges yet – the European Championships which will take place in September.
The three Newquay residents will be representing Cornwall in the finals in Essex in front of a large crowd.
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They will be using strength, agility, flexibility, endurance and speed to compete against la crème de la crème of fitness racing, also known as functional fitness.
“It’s the first year it’s been held in the UK so it’s a big one. It’s exciting,” Chelsea said.
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“There are male and female categories and there are novice, intermediate, elite and masters categories. I’m in the novice, Karen is in the masters and Laura is in the elite.”
The trio registered for the event back in November and did online qualifiers in early 2021.
Karen started her fitness journey on the other side of the planet. The 41-year-old mum now owns KaPOW Healthy Living gym in Newquay.
“I fell in love with functional fitness about 14 years ago in New Zealand when I lived there,” she said.
“When I moved back to the UK five years ago, there was nowhere for me to train with my three children. I desperately had fallen in love with this sport when I Iived over there and I wanted to continue it here – so I opened a place four years ago.
“I never got into this process to be an athlete. I got into it to lose some weight and to find myself again as a woman after having children. Along the way I found that I was okay at it and I just kept training really, really hard, worked with some incredible coaches and then I just started competing.”
Karen competed for the first time two years ago. In September she will be competing in the championships in the 40 to 44 year old, female category.
She said she will be “absolutely terrified” before the competition, but is really looking forward to it at the same time.
Karen added: “When I’m training, I’m quite strict with programmes that we create and follow. A lot of the skills that are involved, from weight lifting and gymnastics, challenge us in a physical and a mental capacity.
“I’m always super proud of myself that I can do those skills under pressure, with the fatigue and under a time cap sometimes.
“We train five to six days a week. We try to split our training and do an am and a pm session. It does take a lot of time, you do sacrifice quite a lot. Sometimes sunsets don’t happen, barbecues with friends might not happen, but a lot of the time when you do what you love you don’t feel as though you’re sacrificing what you’re doing.”
Laura, who is going to compete in the ‘elite’ category, remembers that she hated the very first time she trained.
“I’ve always been sporty, I used to play rugby and football, I was in the military for five years,” she said.
“I had my kids and I thought ‘I just need to go and lift some weights’. I went to the gym, didn’t like it. I didn’t like it and I thought ‘these people are fit, they’re strong, I can’t do it’.
“And then I thought ‘I need to go again’. I messaged the coach and I said ‘I’m just going to try again’ and I just got addicted. I started to go three times a week and I started to think ‘this is quite good, I can do this’ and then I started to lose weight, tone up. My kids would come in with me and they’d play and they’d watch. There were kids’ classes and they loved it as well.
“From three days I went to five days, then I started to compete and it just went from there, really.”
Laura has now been training for about four years and has successively taken part in several competitions.
She said she trains for an hour and a half five days a week, has one recovery day and one running day.
“Rest is just as important though, you don’t want to overtrain,” she explained.
“I like gymnastics quite a lot – something I didn’t think I’d come in and do, especially when I first started.
“I like to race the males quite a lot, it gives me a bit of drive, it just gives me something to work towards.”
As for Chelsea, she has been training for six years and doing functional fitness for two years.
“I started, like most people, because I was overweight and unfit and I just wanted to change how I felt about myself,” she said.
“When I found functional fitness, I found a community that came with it and really for me a group of strong women. Typically when you go to a gym, you just find the men. It gave me a sense of personal power, being able to lift these weights and do things that people don’t expect women would be able to do.”
Chelsea explained that, despite being exhausting, Crossfit is really rewarding.
She said: “I get bored quite easily, but with functional fitness there are so many movements that you have to learn and do and I’m constantly finding things I’m not very good at and working on them, so that’s fun for me.
“To begin with, it’s more about building that base rather than just killing yourself every session. As you go further into it you can really start going harder and for me that’s something I really enjoy, pushing my limit and see if my mind gives up before my body.
“Training is about mental health and the personal power that comes with it.”
Laura, Chelsea and Karen have set up a Gofundme page to help pay for the entry fee of the European Championships, as well as the accommodation in Essex.
Chelsea said: “Due to Covid, the cost of competing has more than doubled, meaning it will cost each athlete around £500 to go and compete.
“We’re not sponsored athletes, sponsored athletes would get the entry fee paid for and possibly the accommodation. We’re fronting that to take Cornwall to the European Championships in three different categories.
“We’re raising a bit of money to help us do that and anything over what we need is going to go to Winston’s Wish which is a charity that helps bereaved children and families.”
So far, they have raised £110 out of their £600 target.
You can donate here to help Chelsea, Karen and Laura.
Readers can enjoy a free one-week trial at KaPOW Healthy Living using the code KAPOWWEEKTRL when booking a session via www.kapowfitnessnewquay.com
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