In barren Winter Park, Colo., sits CrossFit Thin Air, an affiliate with a mere 1,800 square feet of space but a very big back yard: it sits on 80 acres that includes about 3 miles of a cross-country ski-trail system.
“We have a lot of fun with the outdoor stuff,” co-owner Dave Zink says.
That fun includes nighttime runs in the snow, hill climbs and mountain biking at 9,000 feet.
Zink, a lifelong endurance athlete, began competing in kettlebell lifting more than six years ago.
“Along that path, I started to run into people who were getting into CrossFit,” he says. “I started doing main-site stuff here, and about the same time (my wife) Karen and I built this garage gym, if you will. Had no idea at the time we were going to do CrossFit with it. (It was) just a place to work out.”
Despite a small space, Zink maximizes it with his engineering background. Storage devices on the ceiling and wall de-clutter the space, and there are even wall-mounted, collapsible squat racks.
“We love what we’re doing,” Zink says. “It’s that personal feedback from somebody that says, ‘Hey, this is working for me. Thanks.’”
For more info on becoming a CrossFit affiliate, click here.
14min 6sec
HD file size: 321 MB
SD wmv file size: 169 MB
SD mov file size: 79 MB
Please note: For smoother viewing of HD videos, please download the entire file to your hard drive before watching it (right-click and choose Save Link As...).
Additional reading: Too Cold To Run? by Emily Beers, published Nov. 16, 2012.