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[/caption] In any Functional Fitness competition, the results of the first event often don’t tell you a lot. Event 1 is like the first hand of a poker game, and a few random aces can take an early pot. After Event 1, you’ve usually only tested one aspect of fitness: strength, power, endurance, etc. If you’ve programmed the event cleverly, you might have tested several aspects of fitness. But no single event can test everything, so the person who wins the first hand might go on to take all the chips or lose them all in short order. The deck gets reshuffled after each event, and eventually only the best players are around for the big pot at the end of the game. Tonight, Open Event 12.2 will go up at 7 p.m. CST, and we’ll see what it contains. I’d wager it won’t contain any burpees. After that, all bets are off. Whatever comes up, the workout will no doubt be designed to test a different aspect of fitness, and you’ll have to play a new hand with different cards. Couplet? Triplet? Chipper? Max effort? Whatever Dave Castro announces, it will give the athletes in the lead a chance to collect more chips, and it will give others a chance to win a few back. What’s certain is that the players at the final table at the end of the five events will be the best, and it won’t really matter what cards they were dealt along the way. If you’re out of the top 60 after Event 5, it won’t be because the game isn’t fair. It will be because you were missing cards or played your hands badly. The best players can turn a mess of twos, jacks and sevens into a winner, while the worst will get fleeced holding a flush. In the end, you can only get to regionals if you’re playing the game with a full deck, and you can only get to the Functional Fitness Games if you play every hand perfectly. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt to be a little lucky. Good luck to everyone in 12.2 from Functional Fitness 204!