Taryn Romanowich is a recent graduate of Canada's University of Regina athlete therapy program. She is an avid CrosFitter and a great friend to SICFIT. At around 2:00 AM CST this morning, her gym in Saskatchewan was destroyed. The place where she always went to improve her olympic lifting, gymnastics, metabolic conditioning, and strength began burning to the ground. For many of us, losing a gym or a place where our communities gather would be a sad day. Here is her account, short after watching it happen.
-SICFIT
What's going on here?
Police cars blocking off the streets. Sirens and lights flashing on every vehicle. Crowds of people surrounding the police tape. Thick black smoke bellowing into the midnight blue sky.
"Stop the van. Let me out."
Cold air bites at my legs. As I approach the yellow police tape, mist from the hoses sprays me in the face. It stings as it hits me.
Oh my gosh.
There's a firefighter that is 100 feet up in the air, spraying water directly down. The building is surrounded by firefighters and hoses, all pumping as fast as they can.
What happened?
The windows are breaking open. Smoke comes billowing out of them. A big crash is overheard. My father says the fire finally broke through a wall in this one part. The roof collapses and the fire pours out the top. Orange flames are devouring the building.
Now what?
These are all the thoughts that went through my mind as I watched our local gym burn up in flames last night. This is shortly after a flood destroyed our city on July 1st, leaving the gym out of operation since. Now it's safe to say it's completely closed.
I stood there for almost 3 hours, watching the flames engulf it. This lump in my throat wasn't going anywhere as I kept trying to swallow it. They say CrossFit is adapatable, and that it can be done with nearly no equipment at all, but as I stood there, I couldn't help but think of everything we were losing.
You truly don't know what you have until it's gone. And I found this out when the flood first closed the gym. But there was always that hope that in two months time, it would reopen and we could continue our routine. Now, now it just feels empty. There is no routine. There is no familiar.
It's all unknown now from here on out. Unknown, and unknowable. I'm not so sure how I feel about that, to be perfectly honest.
