Really fit.
Detective Lopez recently qualified for the 2011 CrossFit Games Southeast Regional competition.
The Regional CrossFit competition will be held at the Jacksonville Equestrian Center in Jacksonville on May 27-29. Detective Lopez will be one of 400 men and women putting their fitness to the test during three days of grueling competition.
The best athletes will move on to the CrossFit International Games Finals at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., in late July.
CrossFit is an international fitness program based on the concepts of functional fitness. It is the principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units, champion martial artists, and hundreds of other elite and professional athletes worldwide.
Detective Lopez, who is assigned to the sheriff’s General Crimes Bureau, has been a Cross-Fitter for one and an half years now. The intense twice-daily workouts have simply become habit for the 34-year-old mother of two.
“It’s been a lot of hard work,” she said of making it to the regional competition. “It’s very gratifying. Even to just make it to Regionals is a big deal.”
Her workouts run the fitness gamut from scaling a rope to Olympic weight-lifting and from pull-ups to gymnastics.
For example, she said, her training Sunday included 50 pull-ups followed by a quarter of a mile run as fast as she could go, which she completed in slightly more than 4 minutes.
Detective Lopez’s road to the regionals started on March 16 and continued over six weeks and six grueling workout routines. More than 26,000 athletes from around the world competed in 17 different regions. Only the top 60 from each region were invited to compete in their regional qualifier.
This won’t be her first time at CrossFit Regionals. Last year she participated in the team competition with two other CCSO members, including Cpl. Anthony DiSarro, who is also her coach.
Cpl. DiSarro owns the CrossFit Redline gym in Golden Gate where Detective Lopez trains. About 40 CCSO deputies are currently members of the gym and all have completed some of the workouts that Detective Lopez performed to get to the regionals, he noted.
He said making it to the competition is a big deal. He said Detective Lopez will have to be prepared for anything because she and her fellow athletes won’t know what events they’ll be competing in until the day of the competition.
Cpl. DiSarro said he’s confident she will be up to the challenge.
“She can run, jump, pull, climb; she can lift weights like you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “She’s a really balanced athlete.”
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Detective Laura Lopez will be one of 400 athletes putting their fitness to the ultimate test at the CrossFit Games Southeast Regional competition May 27-29 in Jacksonville. Photos (4) Courtesy of Detective Laura Lopez/CCSO   |
