Dave Castro’s 20.4 Clue, Rogue Invitational Details

Dave Castro's 20.4 clue is an old legend. Rogue Invitational details are out. 20.2 winners have been finalized. CrossFit Open video review process deets.

Wednesday, October 30th, 2019

Good morning and welcome to the WODDITY podcast for news about CrossFit. We are a daily podcast, Monday through Friday, doing CrossFit news in five minutes or less.

My name is Ben Garves and today is Wednesday, the 30th of October, 2019.

Dave Castro’s 20.4 Clue

Dave Castro has posted his weekly “clue” for what the CrossFit Open workout is. This week, it’s a page of a book featuring The Man and the Owls, a Native American legend from the Yokut people of central California. I’ll read it for you:

A Waksachi man and his wife were traveling. They camped overnight in a cave. They had a fire burning. Then they heard a horned owl hoot. The woman said to her husband: "Call in the same way. He will come and you can shoot him and we will eat him for supper." The man got his bow and arrows ready and called. The owl answered.

He called again and again and the owl answered, coming nearer. At last it sat on a tree near the fire. The man shot. He killed it. Then his wife told him: "Do it again. Another one will come." Again he called and brought an owl and shot it. He said. "It is enough now." 

But his wife said: "No. Call again. If you call them in the morning they will not come. We have had no meat for a long time. We shall want something to eat tomorrow as well as now." 

Then the man called. More owls came. There were more and more of them. He shot, but more came. It was full of them all about. All his arrows were gone. The owls came closer and attacked them. The man took sticks from the fire and fought them off. He covered the woman with a basket and kept on fighting. More and more owls came. At last they killed both the man and the woman.

This clue could be more epic nonsense from Castro, but it could be an on-the-nose warning that the rep scheme and time domain we’ll see is one that sets a rep and time window, if you hit it, you earn more reps and time. We did something similar for 19.2 in February.

Rogue Invitational Sanctional Details

Kristan Clever has joined a growing group of legendary athletes sharing pictures of their invite to Rogue’s Legends event at the Rogue Invitational. So far the list has included Chris Spealler, Julie Foucher, Tanya Wagner, and Mikko Salo. This prompted me to zip over to Rogue’s website and get you formal list of big-name athletes who competed last year. Turns out they’ve updated their site and they now I have so much information, I’m basically a secret agent. Except this is public information. So...an agent. Except I don’t work for them. So...I’m just a boy. With a podcast. Standing in front of an audience. Asking them to follow me. Notting Hill fans? Anybody?

Anyway, Rogue’s website now has details about how their invite process will work this year. They will be sending invites to the top ten male and female athletes from the CrossFit Games, along with what they deem “a select number of additional athletes from the top ranks of the sport. The final competition spots will be filled via an online qualifier.”

Their online qualifier will be three workouts, running from January 10th through the 20th. They’ll take the top five men and women from the qualifier and put them on the floor to compete alongside their invited athletes. Registration starts on December fifteenth. You can find the link in my show notes at WODDITY.com.

Their updated list of competitors includes the obvious top tens, but also Cole Sager, Patrick Vellner, Chandler Smith, Ben Smith, Kara Saunders, Annie Thorisdottir, Brooke Wells, Sam Briggs, and Sara Sigmundsdottir.

On the Legends side of things, Rogue has invited past champions like Jason Khalipa, Graham Holmberg, Mikko Salo, Rich Froning, Tanya Wagner, and again, Sam Briggs and Kristan Clever, along with other outstanding names like Dan Bailey, Josh Bridges, Annie Sakamoto, Becca Voigt Miller, Julie Foucher-Urcuyo, Margaux Alvarez, and Stacie Tovar.

You know we’ll be watching, and WODDITY has a request out to Rogue for a press pass to report live from the event.

20.2 Winners Finalized

CrossFit released an official announcement yesterday that scores for 20.2 event winners have been finalized: Kristin Holte and Frederik Aegidius have earned event wins and the $2,020 prize that comes with it. Along with the announcement was an interesting little tidbit: CrossFit internally refers to the workout as “small circles” for the constant cycling you’re doing between movements. It’s worth a laugh.

CrossFit Open Video Review Process

The organization also released details about how their video review process works. They’ve noted that at the end of the Open, all qualifying athletes will have all of their workouts go through video review. I thought this would be a good thing to note, just in case you’re worried about transparency in the process.

And that’s it for news about CrossFit on Wednesday, October 30th. Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe. Every time you do, a barbell gets its wings. I’m Ben Garves. We’ll chat tomorrow.