Not because there was anything wonderful about the WOD, but because the temperature when I drove to the box this a.m. was 5 degrees. That’s ridiculous! I almost expected to see snow.
It was also a chilled out Wendler, with Coach Barney’s new platinum bonce shining like the sun and some kind of weird hippy music going on (don’t ask me, all I can tell you is it’s the stuff I turn off if I’m nearest to the volume dial) but I managed a 57.5 kilo x 6 max out which I’m happy with as it’s above body weight. Hoping for a bit of an increase in my one rep max on deadlifts too, at this rate.
As for the WOD – couldn’t have been simpler:
• 20 weighted lunges
• 100 metre sprint
x 5 (2 minute rest between rounds)
Calf strains and lunges are not good company, so I knew bronze would be my maximum and that even a paltry 7.5 kilo baby bar was going to really weigh heavily. I also knew I was going to jog, not sprint.
Well, I knew that until round two. Then I got fed up with jogging while everybody else sprinted. I didn’t exactly sprint because I could feel the calf muscle crepitating (a writerly word if ever there was one) but I found a pace between jog and sprint where the muscle stopped crackling and I used it for the next run. Then I got back into the lunges and discovered that I’d developed a neural misfire and both my legs were trying to step forward at the same time. (Want to know what that looks like? It looks like a really naff broad jump.) I could get my left leg to step forward and my right to stay still, but not the other way round, so the fourth round I had to do lunges entirely on one side.
I will admit that I was downed by this. In my head I was imagining ‘losing’ lunges the way I’ve ‘lost’ box jumps and not getting the neural script right ever again, but I ran the 100 metres, came back in, picked up the bar for the last round and boom! – straight back into alternate leg lunges. My time was slow, my weight was light, I got DOMS within about 3 hours of the WOD, but I’m a profoundly happy wodly bunny today – there’s nothing like thinking the worst and having it disproved to raise your spirits.
Sooooo … back home, whilst whacking my way through the undergrowth of the Skills and Employment Report to find something meaty for a client’s blog (oh yes, my life as a ghost blogger is SUCH fun!) I diverted to Facebook during my tea break and came across this profoundly (to me) interesting and unimaginable point of view. Balpreet Kaur is not only one of the most honest and large-spirited individuals I’ve come across for a long time, she’s clearly also a world-changer in the best way, in that the best way to change the world is one person at a time. However (and isn’t there always a however?) I’m completely at sea with the philosophy she lays out so simply.
I don’t actually have problems with my body (image), never have had. I was blessed with a physical form that other people liked, it was attractive enough to earn me money just by my standing still draped in garments (okay, really small garments, but hey … still garments) and it wasn’t just that other people liked it, I did too. If I could have got through life standing still I’d have been blissfully happy. My problem is that my physical appearance and physical capacity have a mismatch: I’m clumsy. I fall over a lot. I can’t do basic things like connect a bat/racket/hand and ball. I don’t remember physical skills.
I’ve always tried to ‘improve’ that aspect of my physical being, or, as Balpreet so delightfully puts it, body-tool because I always felt that I was letting myself down and that if I worked hard enough I could get my movements to match my appearance. And the truth is it never happened. Crossfit is the closest I’ve come to normal coordination and I’m still a considerable distance behind ‘average’ and a massive distance behind ‘Crossfit average’, which seems to me to be almost superhuman. But I strive and strive. So Balpreet’s assertion that changing the body is a form of rejection (regardless of one’s belief in any given divinity) is fascinating.
Do I reject my body? No, absolutely not. At the age where many women are supposed to be hating the way they look more than ever in their lives, I accept and like the way my body is changing: grey hair, wrinkles, sagging bits and all. I am very happy in my own skin. Do I reject my physical form though? Ah … that’s a nasty one. Yes, in truth, I do. I hate being clumsy, I loathe being unable to pick up techniques and follow along with exercises, I despise my own inability to remember physical performance patterns.
And so, although I know I’m not going to stop striving to achieve a more graceful, swift and powerful way of being, because the alternative is not stasis, it’s degeneration (failure to maintain neural pathways leads to degradation of physical performance, ask any stroke victim) I’m opening my mind to a new idea that my approach to this is to face my own body with hostility and shame, and that nobody ever performed well under the eye of a hostile watcher, even if (especially if?) that eye is their own.
• Bruises – both knees
• PB – nope, but I don’t care, happy bunny etc
• Wishlist – nope, Balpreet’s given me more to think about than just my wishful thinking, for once!
Today I wodded solo. In the rain. At 06:30. That must be a kool-aid phenomenon!
The second run was slow, partly because I could feel the calf muscle starting to pull, but partly because I was just totally flat-lining – wodding alone is weird, without anybody else to focus on, even if it’s just the peripheral focus of seeing the blur of really fast athletes like Dean and Rob or hearing the bouncing bars of massively strong ones like Sean and Will, leaves me nothing but me to engage with. And that is much tougher than wodding in a group. Usually I’ve got athletes ahead of me to aim for, sometimes there’s even a newcomer behind me to encourage, but all on my own there’s just my performance, my laboured breathing, my footfall, and Barney yelling encouragement to me and me alone.
oldenoughtobeyourcrossfitmother 