National Champion Under Development

Andrew Astalos, an athlete at Motor City CrossFit, has recently astounded us with some of his performances in the world of speedskating. At 13 years of age, in the middle of Michigan's winter, he elected to skip his family's long- planned Caribbean vacation and instead travel to Lake Placid to compete in the U.S. National Long Track Speedskating Championships.

It's a good thing he did, because that weekend, he not only won the national championship in his age division, but he broke every single national record in his age class doing so. Then, to top it off, he traveled to Milwaukee the next weekend to compete in the North American Long Track Speedskating Championships, where he also won every race in his division and, based on his times, would have placed second in the next division up.

What makes these achievements even more incredible is the fact that Andrew is primarily a short track speedskater (think Apolo Anton Ohno), which is a very different type of racing than long track (think Dan Jansen, Bonnie Blair, etc.). And, given the fact that there are only two indoor and three outdoor ovals in the country (the closest of which is around a seven-hour drive from his home), Andrew rarely gets to practice his long track technique.

I don't dare take any of the credit for his successes (Andrew was a great athlete to begin with), but his parents have told me time and time again that they believe his CrossFit training is what made the breakthrough difference for him this year. One thing I can say for sure is that he's got a ton of explosive power now, and his endurance in the longer races has gotten many times better.