“I can’t slow down now.”
In the middle of the 5k event at the 2019 NorCal Classic Carly Lucas found herself in first place.
Short and stout, with tree trunks for legs, she wouldn’t be a first choice to win a race, but then you don’t know Lucas.
She’d worked hard for this. Months of 4 a.m. wake-up calls and 5 a.m. workouts, followed by 10-hour days at the fire-academy and an evening workout session. Get home, get ready for bed and then do it all over again.
Yet just a day before, Lucas wasn’t even sure she belonged in the elite division of the 2019 NorCal Classic, her first professional CrossFit competition filled with three days of burpees, running, biking, rope climbs, barbell cycling and gymnastics.
“I didn't want to look like an idiot with a lot of really good athletes,” recalled Lucas.
But now she was out in front, running with the men and not looking back. She finished second in the event, beating some of the biggest names in the sport, like Chyna Cho, a member of Crossfit Mayhem’s Crossfit Games championship team this year.
While Lucas flashed her potential in the 5k, her performance over the weekend was uneven, placing last or near last in events that included gymnastics movements like legless-rope climbs, muscle-ups and pull-ups. In multiple events, Lucas raced out to a first-place lead, only to watch as her competition passed her by.
“Those were moments where I sat there and it was just kind of embarrassing,” Lucas said. “You just feel stupid and like you shouldn't be there.”
She finished 14th out of 18 competitors. Her strengths were clear, but weaknesses more glaring. A strong engine, metabolic conditioning and brute strength were not enough to overcome her shortcomings in gymnastics.
Still, Lucas described the June competition as a turning point that further inspired her to pursue competing at the highest echelons of the sport.
“Being next to some of the biggest athletes in Crossfit and to feel like you have chance against them, that’s pretty cool,” said Lucas.
Like many twenty-somethings, Lucas, now 23, struggled finding her place. Home-schooled on and off growing up, she realized in high school that following what everyone else was doing wasn’t going to work for her.
“Everyone's like, oh I'm going to this big university and I started to realize all these stupid things, everyone thinks they're the best things, like going to big colleges and parties. In the end what are you doing this for?” said Lucas.
She left her high school a semester early to take part in an exchange program in Chile. That set off a period of life Lucas described as a “vagabond lifestyle,” where she bounced from place to place. She came back from Chile and went to a Christian outdoor school in Colorado for a year and a half. After that she returned to Sonora and took classes at the local community college to prepare for nursing school. While home she worked a season as a wildland firefighter and didn’t like it, but also realized she would never be happy working inside a hospital. By spring of 2018 she knew she wanted to pursue a career in municipal firefighting so she attended Alan Hancock college in Santa Maria, CA's five-month fire sciences program.
After graduating she sent out to Washington to renew her EMT license in a month-long immersive program before heading back to California’s central coast. The next three months starting in October of 2018 she lived out of her car, working a part time job in a fire department on the north-side of the county while also working at the Alan Hancock Fire Academy an hour south.
Unwilling to settle for something that just pays the bills, Lucas, like many millennials, yearns for passion and meaning in her career.
“I want a job where you're in people's lives, physically, actually making a difference. I think that's always been a big thing for me. And I never really knew exactly what it was. It wasn't like I grew up knowing I wanted to be a firefighter.”
With a low-income working two part-time fire jobs, Lucas has pursued her passion for firefighting and Crossfit simultaneously.
Her normal wake up time is four in the morning, then a workout from 5 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. From there she’ll have a full day at either the fire academy or department, then another training session at 6 p.m. After that, she prepares for the next day, and tries to go to bed by 8 p.m. to make sure she gets eight hours of sleep.
After more than a year of commitment the rewards are starting to show. Lucas was offered a full-time firefighting job in Ventura, she has since declined in hope of receiving a full-time offer to begin firefighting in San Jose in March.
“I've had guys that are in it try to scare me away by saying, it's super competitive. You're going to try for years and years to get that full-time job. You're going to test everywhere and it's going to take forever,” said Lucas.
In Crossfit she’s also flashed more of her potential, placing 98th in the world last month in Crossfit Open workout 20.3.
Lucas says she is excited for what could be if she is able to shore up her weak points in the sport.
“Once I fix them, I'll be coming out with some of the top athletes,” said Lucas. “In the back of my head I know that I have a lot of potential. I just got to fix these small problems.”
With a hectic schedule that is often overwhelming, Lucas has struggled with consistency, something she knows is paramount to her success.
“I think that's the biggest difference between someone that achieves something and someone that doesn't,” said Lucas.
Leaving her insecure lifestyle behind for a full-time well-paying job as a firefighter will help her maintain consistency.
“The way I've been living lately, it's been so hard,” said Lucas. “I haven’t lived in one house for more than three to four months. I am excited to have that stability; in a way it will help me live a more free life.”
Training alone day-in and day-out is wearying. Still, Lucas is trying to hold herself accountable. One area she has put that into practice is her muscle-ups. She does 40 each week and has seen significant improvement since her failure to complete repetitions of the movement in June at the NorCal Classic. And she is still as strong as ever, boasting an over 305 pound back squat and 395 pound deadlift.
With the additional money from being a full-time firefighter Lucas plans to invest in coaching for her gymnastics, power and Olympic weightlifting.
In the meantime, she has qualified for the Down Under Crossfit Championship, a sanctional event whose winner qualifies for the Crossfit Games.
But for Lucas, reaching the dream of becoming a firefighter has meant putting the dream of becoming a professional Crossfitter temporarily on hold. Lucas is taking a “step back” to “build a bigger foundation” and is unsure if she will make the trip to Australia for the Down Under Crossfit Championship.
“As you get older you realize that if you want something, it doesn't matter what excuse you make, but if you want it, you have to get past excuses and just do it.”
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