After submitting her scores for the 2024 Rogue Invitational qualifier, 28-year-old Dana Paran didn’t think her sixth-place finish was enough to get her into the competition in Aberdeen, Scotland.
This is partly because the number of invites from the online qualifier depends on how many CrossFit Games athletes accept their invitations. Further, Paran didn’t know if her scores would actually hold up.
- “We all know how strict Rogue’s video review is. I just hoped I recorded everything correctly,” Paran told the Morning Chalk Up.
But once everything was finalized, Paran was shocked to see her name as a qualifier on one of Rogue’s Instagram posts.
Paran now joins Tayla Howe and Taylor Williamson as the women on the roster without individual CrossFit Games experience. (Though Williamson is a multiple-time Games champion and podium athlete in the Team Division.)
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Asthma Diagnosis
Paran didn’t put pressure on herself because of what happened at the 2024 North America East Semifinals last season.
Here, Paran struggled to breathe during the first longer workouts of the competition, and she was in last place at the halfway mark.
- “The entire weekend was so mentally hard…I had [similar] symptoms three weeks before Semis, and was like, ‘I think I’m just tired.’ And it kept getting worse, but I was like, ‘whatever,’” she said.
What she was experiencing was not just fatigue, and Paran started to sense that something wasn’t right.
Paran booked a doctor’s appointment after Semifinals, only to find out that she has asthma.
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Since then, she has been adjusting to her diagnosis and relying on an inhaler when she has flare-ups, which seem to get aggravated in the cold.
Ultimately, Paran’s new reality led her to take the Rogue Invitational qualifier less seriously than she normally might have.
- “But I feel like it actually helped because that pressure was off,” she said. “And I just put everything I had [into the workouts] and I was like, wherever I end up, I end up.”
Dana Paran’s Path to the 2024 Rogue Invitational
After finishing 23rd at the 2023 North America East Semifinal, her first Semifinals, Paran went all in CrossFit.
She resigned from her in-person coaching job to become a full-time CrossFit athlete and began working with coach Anders Bødker at Kriger Training, a Norwegian-based company.
Though Paran had never worked with a personal coach before, she made great strides leading up to the 2024 Semifinals.
- Although the 2024 Semifinals certainly didn’t go as she had planned, Paran was still able to finish strong, thanks to three shorter workouts. She finished 22nd overall, still an improvement from her 2023 finish.
She credits this to improved gymnastics and endurance, two of her biggest weaknesses before last season.
- “[Kriger Training’s programming] is a lot more detailed…That has [also] been good for teaching me how to attack workouts and recover better because they really focus on recovery,” said Paran, who is known for her strength.
Paran hopes her strength efforts will pay off at the upcoming Rogue Invitational, which she’s noticed typically features tests of power output and even more strongman-type skills.
- “I hope it’ll be good for me, and I hope I can show my strengths, which is strength,” Paran said.
Ultimately, though, Paran is not putting pressure on herself and is taking the Rogue Invitational like she will the rest of the season: one day at a time.
And maybe, just like the recent online qualifier, this approach will pay off and Paran will surprise herself again.
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Featured image: @m_akbaar / Instagram
