It’s the end of October and what a month!
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We have a few causes we push up really hard in our priorities and ever since we opened our first box in 2010, we have supported Barbells for Boobs. We use Grace, the CrossFit benchmark girl, as the workout to represent our cause, and we raise funds and awareness for screening mammograms. We push HARD about health and fitness being preventative for almost all forms of cancer, including breast cancer. The message is so simple, and short. But the outcomes from complying with the message are so broad and long-standing.
Every year, someone we know is diagnosed with breast cancer. 1 in 8 women will receive this diagnosis in their lifetimes, and the older we get the more prevalent it is. We have family, friends, athletes, and coaches who have all been diagnosed with and beaten cancer. We have friends who weren’t so fortunate. Our message fits perfectly on our platform of health and fitness. And so we will continue these efforts every year. This year things hit closer to home a couple of times which may have derailed the organizational efforts for our Grace event! So next year, we’ve had volunteers offer to help us make next year even better! We’re not so bold as to see there’s always someone who can probably do a better job than we did …and it’s such a good cause why not make it better next year!
Our fundraising efforts were really impressive this year! Here’s how we did:
To Barbells for Boobs: $2,370.00.
Direct donations through their donation site, checks that we will send in made out to Barbells for Boobs, and proceeds from the Barbells for Boobs T-shirts, collectively totaled the number listed here.
To GMRx’s 501c3: $1,060.00
The bake sale, the raffles, and donations directly toward our local foundation total the number listed here.
Many thanks to all of you who donated and baked and helped work our event. We’re grateful for your support.
Our Grace event was also a huge hit. We think the demographic we train is even MORE nervous about performing in front of a crowd than when we trained younger athletes!
Many of our athletes were still wringing their hands the night before trying to decide their load. Some have advanced to the point they did loads above their age group! And some, for the first time ever, did Grace for the cause. The energy, excitement, and PR’s stayed high and kept going all morning!
Our Google Photo Album is up and almost fully loaded – do check it out. Or on Facebook – photos are there too. We’re still uploading videos and the photo booth pictures!
Finally, we are still working on uploading the data from Grace. We have prior scores and are also working on breaking our athletes down into age groups. This data is not only motivating to our membership base but also pertinent to our cause of improving not only the health and fitness of our athletes but setting the bar of expectations higher as we discuss what seniors “should be able to do”. We are watching our seniors rise to the higher expectations we set and we know this is the direction our country needs to move toward in the future.
Once again thank you to everyone who participated, worked, donated, and attended this event. We were graced with the presence of some our old Rebel family, both in participants and visitors – and that was truly wonderful. To all of the athletes who chose to do Grace in class so they could watch the event – thank you!