On Sunday at the French Throwdown, Mirjam von Rohr fainted on the final event of the weekend. After cleaning a heavy sandbag, von Rohr could be seen on the live stream passing out and shaking while she laid on the ground.
Medical staff responded quickly and took her off the competition floor in a stretcher. Luckily, it was reported shortly after that she was back up and standing in the athlete area.
A day later von Rohr has shared what happened to the extent that she knows…
Via von Rohr’s Instagram post:
What happened?
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. Preparation went really well – as I mentioned in my last post. The competition kicked off with an endurance event on the erg. I measured my heart rate: max 140 bpm – which, according to my performance diagnostics, is still in my aerobic zone. A bit unusual. Still, I managed to finish the event strong.
In Event 2, I noticed my burpees were slower than usual. But the Clean & Jerks went really well, and I even won the workout. Because of that, the slow burpees didn’t really bother me.
Then came Event 3 – after the deadlifts, everything felt brutally hard and barely manageable. I performed far below what I know I’m capable of. From that point on, this feeling stayed with me for the rest of the competition. I gave it everything in each workout, but it just wasn’t my usual level.
For example, on the bike: I pushed as hard as I could, but didn’t reach the speeds I hit in training. Sunday started with a running event – one I had really looked forward to. The first run went well, and I thought: maybe this will be a good day. But after the lunges, my lower back tightened up, my energy vanished, and I could hardly run. I tried to push through, but my body just wasn’t responding.
In every workout, I felt exhausted in the first 30 seconds, but a minute after finishing, it felt like I could go again. I couldn’t reach my true limit – whatever was going on, I couldn’t break through it. Between events, I actually felt okay. I enjoyed the competition, looked forward to each event.
But before the second-to-last workout, I became confused – I couldn’t remember the workout order. In the final event, I even had to pull out my phone mid-workout to reread the instructions – and forgot them again moments later.
What exactly happened? I don’t know for sure. But I suspect my central nervous system was overloaded. I suffered a head injury two years ago, and since then I’ve had to be extremely cautious with heavy loads and high-intensity volume. Maybe it was simply too much – the deadlifts, HSPUs, GHDs, heavy snatches – my system couldn’t handle it.
In the last workout, I got dizzy, my vision went dark, I started shaking, and I didn’t know where I was. Parts of that event are a complete blackout. It’s not the first time this has happened – but usually, in training, I stop before it gets that bad. Last year, it was mentally very hard to deal with these episodes. I struggled to accept them. Now, I’ve come to terms with it more.
Quitting was never an option – even when nothing was working. It’s okay to have a bad competition. I wanted to finish it, no matter what. But my body made it clear: it was too much.
I don’t think it was only my nervous system – there were probably other things that didn’t go right too. I just don’t know what exactly. One thing’s for sure: I couldn’t show what I’m capable of this weekend. And even if everything had gone perfectly – I honestly don’t know if it would have been enough to qualify for the Games. @claudia_glk and @lucy.mcgonigle are incredible athletes who absolutely earned their spots. 👏
I’m not sure if I could have kept up with them – but I know that I gave everything I had in each workout, given my condition. My body just didn’t deliver the performance I trained for.
Congratulations to @alinewirz on an amazing 4th place – just missing out on the Games, but such a huge accomplishment!
Von Rohr dropped to 9th place overall following the final workout. While she was not in contention going into the finale to capture a qualifying spot to the CrossFit Games, von Rohr was near the top of the leaderboard all weekend.
