100 in 100: Emily Oberlee- Day 27

Emily Oberlee didn't move to Westborough for a gym. She'd been living in the Netherlands, then back home in Michigan, and a job finally brought her family to Massachusetts. When she went looking for a place to train, she was after something bigger than a workout — she wanted a community, and a chance to meet people in a town where she didn't yet know a soul.

Nearly seven years later, she's logged more than 1,700 classes — almost all of them at 5 a.m. — and she puts it about as plainly as a person can: she can't imagine not being here.

Fitness was never the question. "I've always been active in some capacity," Emily says — her parents took her to gyms and racquet clubs as a kid, she played sports, she'd done triathlons, she ran. But her running had plateaued. She could feel that she'd lost strength, and she knew she needed to start lifting. She'd just never done CrossFit.

A coworker, Heather Schmidt, kept telling her the same two things: move to Westborough, and come to CrossFit. So when Emily and her family finally found a house, that's exactly what they did. "I've been so happy ever since."

The workout got her in the door. The people are why she stayed. Show up to the 5 a.m. class and you'll find her there with the same small crew — and she'll nod to the 6 a.m. group filing in right behind them.

Here's the part most people don't expect. Emily travels a lot for work, and she still doesn't skip. From a hotel gym halfway across the country, she Zooms into the 5 a.m. class and trains right alongside her crew.

That's what consistency actually looks like over six-plus years: not perfect conditions, but a standing commitment she protects from two time zones away. Her record bears it out — 5 a.m. is her start line nearly every day, and she's quietly become one of the most familiar faces in the room. Year after year, her name turns up on the community's award ballots: for mindset, for coachability, for being the kind of member who makes everyone else feel welcome.

And the gym noticed. In the 2025 Prototype Open, Emily co-captained a team with Lisa Zancewicz — and the name they picked says everything about how she trains: Team Consistency. They won.

She's also a tracker by nature. Emily keeps a handwritten training journal — paging back to see the last time she hit a lift and deciding whether she can add five pounds. For her, progress isn't a vibe. It's something you measure, on purpose, day after day, over a long time.

Take the clean — a lift she's talked about loving precisely because she keeps getting stronger at it. Her logbook tells the same story across the board: