Mountain View Kupuna, 69, Reaches CrossFit Games Quarterfinals After Six Months

Three days after her 94-year-old father died last August, Patricia Hubner walked into CrossFit Hilo Iron Gym and asked to start training. Six months later, the 69-year-old Mountain View resident was heaving a 55-pound barbell off a padded gym floor and onto her shoulders, grinding through a 20-rep set of front squats at the CrossFit Games Quarterfinals.

Hilo Iron Gym owner Charmalei Bence was there to count every rep.

Hubner had spent the years before that August morning caring for her ailing father, anchored to his needs and to her two adult sons who also live on Hawaii Island. When he passed at 94, the grief came with something unexpected: time. She made a decision almost immediately. "Three days later, I showed up here because I had time now," she said.

Motivation ran deeper than a free schedule. Watching her father's decline shaped a private vow: what happened to him would not happen to her. That resolve carried her through five sessions a week at the Hilo gym for six straight months, an intensity that would be demanding for an athlete half her age.

The retired kupuna credits CrossFit's structure for pushing her past what she would ever attempt alone. "What CrossFit does for me are things I know I would not do on my own," she said. "I know building muscle is really important, and you know you can try to do it at the gym all by yourself, but I have no idea what I'm doing, and here I'm building muscle, and I feel like I just have to follow the directions, I don't have to think about it because if I overthink it, I won't do it. I do things I would never do, like barbell stuff — never in a million years would I just walk into a gym and say: 'I want to do Olympic lifting.'"

Qualifying for the CrossFit Games Quarterfinals places Hubner inside a competitive tier that the vast majority of CrossFit participants never reach, at any age. The six-month timeline from first session to quarterfinal competition makes that achievement sharper still.