It’s been a great year at The Foundry! We thought it would be fun to round-up some of the awesome events and milestones that have occurred over the past year. In no particular order…

The Granite Games – The Foundry sent a group of athletes to St. Cloud, Minnesota to compete in the 2013 Granite Games in October. Alecia Taylor nearly fainted after the 50 kCal Air-Dyne sprint, but beat every single female athlete (including 3-time Games competitor Elisabeth Akinwale) to get 1^st place in the event!

Badass Skills from the Ladies – Four Foundry ladies got their first muscle-ups in 2013 – Tiffaney Florentine, Kumuda Pradhan, Jenni Hartman, and Amelia Boone.

2013 CrossFit Games Open & Regionals – We had many members participate in the 2013 Open, and our team ranked 55^th out of 223 teams.  Jon Colborn qualified to Regionals ranked 11^th out of 3,635 males in the North Central region. He competed at Regionals through an injury and made us proud! Expect big things out of him and The Foundry team in 2014.

Announcement of West Gate Location – Our new location at 125 S. Jefferson in Chicago is opening in January 2014, and will be just as amazing as our original.

New Full-Time Coaches – Noah LaPorte, Rachel Gitles, and Andrew Sapoznik were added as full-time coaches in 2013, and bring some fun flavor to the already awesome staff at The Foundry!

Dedicated Programming – We added the Endurance and Competitors program to give athletes a chance to focus on particular goals. Watch these athletes crush races, PRs, and the Open in 2014!

Trodo Box League – Teams from The Foundry have had a podium finishes (3^rd in November and 2^nd in December) in the Trodo Box League Games in 2013, and we aim to add more hardware in 2014.

Whole30 Challenge Success – many of our members had success with cleaning up their eating and losing weight during our Whole30 Challenge, and Stephanie Perkowski was our 2013 winner!

WOD’ing for a Cause – The Foundry raised money in 2013 for the South Loop Food Pantry, Mammograms in Action, the Autism Tree Project Foundation, and Movember. Many of our members donated their time and money (and a little bit of sweat) to help others in need.

It’s been an amazing year, and we are looking forward to what 2014 brings. Keep working hard, and thank you for being such an amazing community of athletes.