You may have noticed that we didn’t have an extraordinary athlete for April. Well, that was partially because I had chosen Laura Hunt to be my extraordinary athlete, but then she suddenly wound up in the hospital in fear of getting a pacemaker! But as you can see she is back in the gym in full force after just a very short time. And THAT is exactly why I chose Laura.

Laura has been through a LOT in the few short years that she has been with us at CrossFit Odyssey back on January 2nd, 2017   – and by a lot, I mean, WOW! If you have never met Laura she is hard to miss. She is a 6-foot tall gorgeous blond doing CrossFit. Laura is also a biologist and works for the City of Dallas water company making sure that the water we use on a daily basis is the best it can be. She is also married to her very sweet husband, Chris and together they have 3 gorgeous little boys.

Shortly after Laura started at Odyssey she had her annual mammogram and found out she had cancerous cells. She went through rigorous cancer treatments including a full mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. She had to stop CrossFit for a short period while she was going through all of this, but it was a short time and then she was back at it. That in itself is enough to inspire most of us, but since then she has also gone through a government shut down, which included almost two months of being out of work. However, Laura is the kind of girl who made the most of it and often showed up twice a day to workout and work on getting her first pull-up! Soon after that, she was hospitalized again with what they thought was a shut-down of her heart. She was scheduled for surgery to get a pacemaker when a doctor realized that she was on two medications that didn’t work together and caused her heart to dramatically slow down. And after swiftly dodging that bullet she is now back at the gym in the full swing of things still working on that first pull-up!

As you can tell, this is a woman who is a natural born fighter! This is the spirit that CrossFit is all about. Nobody cares how many pull-ups you can do, but when life hits you hard with crazy obstacles that you think you may never overcome, you know you have it within you to fight and win. And what is even more inspiring to me is how she wins. Laura is not just a wife and mom and hard worker and CrossFitter. She also gets involved in helping make the world a better place by helping the environment, a passion of hers. She also loves nature and hiking and has traveled all over hiking amazing places and seeing this beautiful world.

Congratulations to Laura Hunt for being CrossFit Odyssey’s Extraordinary Athlete for May 2019! You exemplify a life lived to it’s fullest and that is exactly what the Journey to Extraordinary is all about!!