Can West Regional Repercussion: Even a machine can rhabdo himself

By: Emily Beers

                CrossFit teaches us to be prepared for anything. For twenty-four-year-old Jeremy Meredith, this meant qualifying to the CrossFit Games as an individual one day, and heading to the hospital the next, with unmistakable symptoms of Rhabdomyolysis. Here’s how it played out.

The warm-up area on Friday in Vancouver:

It’s full of some of the most ripped, jacked men this country has to offer. Happy women in the stands whisper things like, ‘This isn’t a representative demographic of the real world.’ Each and every one of these guys is a beast.

And then there’s Meredith. He’s a different kind of species entirely – a machine among men. When he’s around, he looks a bit like a BMW5 Series facing off against a line-up of Honda Civics. Civic fans love their Hondas, calling them names like reliable and affordable, but they certainly aren’t putting money on their beloved Civics in a race against a BMW5 Series.

The point is, when you’re watching a group of CrossFit men warm-up to compete, Meredith is the one you instinctively put on your money on.

Event One:

Meredith comes in from the run, sprints to the wall and is the only competitor in the entire competition to bust out thirty unbroken handstand push-ups. He hits the ergometer in first place, and with the help of his long limbs, more or less cruises to the finish. His time: 8:39.

Event Two:

His 245-pound thruster looks easy, to say the least. He goes on to hit a 255-pound thruster, locks it out, and doesn’t move his feet. It looks like he has even more in the tank, but his judge calls him on taking too long to get the 255-pound thruster up. Meredith settles for 245-pounds, and second place in the event.

Everyone watching knows he is stronger than that.

Saturday in Vancouver:

Meredith is wearing a t-shirt that says Building Organic Machines.

It occurs to me that he needs a new t-shirt. The building process is over. The machine is built. And it appears to be a well-oiled one.

At the end of the day, after winning the fourth event of the competition, The Machine remains in second place by two points, behind Lucas ‘Teen Wolf’ Parker.

Sunday in Vancouver:

                For the first time all weekend, The Machine exposes a weakness. It’s a slight muscle-up misalignment.

The problem certainly isn’t due to a lack of horse power. Watching Meredith attempt muscle ups during the Amanda event feels a bit like the pain of witnessing Rich Froning climb a rope at the 2010 CrossFit Games – nothing a quick thirty second technical tune-up couldn’t fix. ‘There’s plenty of time to fix that small problem before the end of July,’ onlookers say.

Then the sixth and final event begins. The Machine seems to run out of gas a little bit. The Machine looks tired. The Machine almost looks human. He ends up placing tenth in the event, just enough to keep him in second and salvage his Games berth, over Tyson Takasaki.

The Machine isn’t sure what went wrong. “I just had no steam. I don’t know what happened,” he says just moments after the event. “We have to figure out what happened because that was bullshit,” he adds.

Back Home on Monday

His right arm is swollen. “Like double my left,” says Meredith, who can’t flex or extend his arm beyond 90 degrees.                

The same goes for Tuesday, except now the stiffness is accompanied by dark-colored urine.

Meredith takes a trip to the hospital. He’s a CrossFitter. He’s heard the warnings. He knows what’s wrong. He has rhabdo.

He figures it’s a relatively mild form of rhabdo: “My kidneys don’t hurt at least, just my arm is killing me and is hardly functional,” he says.

******

On Friday, Meredith reports that he’s on the mend. “I can extend almost all the way, and I can pick things up and put them down again,” he explains.

As for the cause of the rhabdo: “I would say it’s probably from the 100 pull-ups and 100 kettlebell swings [on Saturday],” says Meredith, who, despite the damage, went on to compete in the final two events the following day.

Back to the T-Shirt Dilemma:

I take my original assertion back: Jeremy ‘The Machine’ Meredith doesn’t need a new t-shirt, after all.

At least, the women who were watching the Canada West Regional competition don’t think he does.

Shirtless was the overwhelming consensus among the female fans in Vancouver.