… but maybe not wise enough, to be your crossfit mother!
Yesterday I completed the 30/30 challenge at Reebok Crossfit Connect Hove. From the moment I heard about it, I had a horrible hollow feeling that added up to fear. Although deceptively simple—row for thirty seconds, rest for thirty seconds, for thirty minutes—it added up to everything that terrifies me. The cherry in the cocktail of my terror was that the aim of this challenge was not simply to survive it, but to try to row 5km in that time.
I watched for a couple of days as people posted their results on the Facebook page and my fear grew and grew. And then I said I wanted to attempt it myself and felt the fear become something else.
Adrenaline.
Every time I thought about the challenge a surge when through my body: mild nausea, increased heart-rate, the vague desire to run. It sounds like fear but I knew it wasn’t fear, because this response was related to a specific event and it wasn’t fear of the unknown but fear of the known. I had a pretty good idea how this was going to feel, and I wasn’t at all convinced that I was going to get through it without disgracing myself.
So why did I say yes?
Well, I turned fifty last month and I’ve been doing Crossfit (I’m too old and too much of a pedant to turn that into a verb and say ‘I’ve been Crossfitting’) for four months. When I started it was out of fear – fear that if I didn’t do what my excellent physio Paul suggested, I might never get to run again, because I had such long-term injuries I might never make it back to the track. When I stayed with Crossfit it was out of fear – fear that if I missed even a single booked class I would never come back because I was terrified of the WODs, the weightlifting, and the sheer physical ease of the other box members. When I’d completed my first 12 weeks and looked at my results, a different kind of fear kicked in. I’d put on four kilos – and I looked better. I’d increased my 1 rep max deadlift from 47.5k to 65k and it felt relatively comfortable. I hadn’t though about running for at least a month, because the WODs consumed my waking hours and the aches from the WODs disturbed my sleeping ones to the exclusion of all else. I was scared to stop, because I didn’t want to go back to who and what I’d been.
I hadn’t achieved the goal I set in my first week: three unassisted pull-ups, but somewhere along the way I’d passed a whole set of goals that I hadn’t ever thought to set: the one about losing two inches on my waist and an inch on my hips; the one where I learned to do a strict press-up; the one where I picked up a 25 k bag of sand and carried it to the car without even thinking about it.
So the 30/30 challenge was going to own me until I owned it, and as soon as I set a time to try it, the fear became purposeful and so it was no longer fear – it was apprehension (From the French: 1. Fearful or uneasy anticipation of the future; dread. 2. The act of seizing or capturing; arrest. 3. The ability to apprehend or understand.) Apprehension can always be worked with, but fear is generally disabling, disempowering, disenfranchising.
And the main sensation I had, during the 30/30 was . . . boredom! This experience, this thing that had owned my thoughts, disturbed my work and possessed my concentration for days on end turned out to be boring! The 30 second breaks were okay, but during each 30 second row I was peripherally aware of other people in the box – lifting weights, laughing, joking and I couldn’t interact with them, couldn’t join in, because I was tied to the countdown on that little digital box. It was annoying, and boring.
And the feeling I had at the end was . . . irritation. I rowed 3876 metres which was way more than I’d hoped for in even my wildest dreams, but after the moment of exhilaration that I’d made it through, I became instantly furious that I hadn’t tried just a little harder all the way through, so I could have hit 4k. What most surprises me about the whole experience is that I seem to have been the only person who doubted I’d complete the challenge – everybody else was completely confident I’d make it.
What does that say about me and my physical performance? That my biggest weakness is between my ears and that my results in just four months prove I can achieve waaaay more than I predict, or even dream. I lack any insight into or wisdom about my own capacity and have always limited myself to what my mind can accept, not what my body can achieve. So I’m aiming to enter more challenges, try more new (and frightening) activities and find out just what I’m capable of.
And to get those three unassisted pull-ups in a row, of course!
There’s something peculiar about birthday WODs – one the one hand they’re a privilege and on the other hand … they’re horrible.
oldenoughtobeyourcrossfitmother 