Stronger Than Yesterday: 2012

I'm typically not one to share my personals, but as I look back over the past 11 months and realize how much crossfit has changed my life, I feel almost obligated to give some credit back to the sport by sharing my story.

I believe you would be hard-pressed to find a crossfitter who didn't have a running list of PR's and milestones, a personal crossfit journey. I, too, have a journey, and it is one greater than the strength I've gained, greater than the number of pull-ups I can do, greater than any quantifiable measure of crossfit success. This sport has helped me beat something that I have struggled with since I was fifteen. Something that outside of the crossfit community is more prominent than acknowledged. Kind of like the white elephant that no one talks about. Hell, something I couldn't talk about for a long time. Most people know that I was a competitive gymnast for the larger part of my life and that a series of unfortunate events brought an end to that sooner than I would have liked. Any athlete who has suddenly been forced to quit doing what they have trained their entire life for knows what it is like. Identity crisis. If I wasn't "the gymnast", who was I? I turned to the one thing I could control...my body. I became obsessed with food, the scale, and what I thought I looked like. If you know me at all, you know that there are very few things that I don't do full-out. 110% or nothing. This was no different. In the fall of my senior year in high school, I was admitted to Ridgeview Women's Center at 5'5" and 83 lbs. Anorexia had taken over my life. I spent next 6 weeks redefining my idea of perfection and reaching a weight that was deemed "safe" by my doctors. I was told that 90% of women will relapse within three years and that this was probably something I would battle my entire life. A debilitating and persistent disease.Three years later, most people had no idea about my past. I seemed normal, and for the most part, I was. The disease no longer controlled my life, but it was definitely still a part of it. It secretly dictated what/how much I ate and why I exercised. If anyone ever tells you that they actually enjoy running 26 miles at a time, they are probably lying. It's miserable. But I had accepted that I could handle living that way; that it was just the way it was. I was happy, had good friends, was "healthy". I just didn't eat "bad" food and made myself run three hours a day. I could deal.

After I finished school, I put out three information requests: two local gyms and Crossfit 540. I will let you guess who contacted me first. I didn't know much about crossfit and really had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. My first workout lasted 14 minutes. I remember leaving thinking, "No way this works, but I'll give it a month." Sometime during that month, I watched Holland Belline throw some stupid amount of weight over her head and attack a wod with such intensity. I was legitimately impressed and slightly frustrated that she could do it so much better than I could (as I stood there with my 45 lb bar). That was the first time I thought, "Okay, maybe this could be for me." There would be many more of those moments over the next year. Many PR's, new skills, feeling good about working hard. Slowly my goals began to shift from perfecting what I looked like to perfecting how I performed. I wanted to be like the RoCkStArS in the gym; I wanted to be on the whiteboard. I wanted to throw stupid amounts of weight over my head. One problem...it's hard to do that when the rx weight is 15 pounds more than your body weight. I had to choose. Crossfit, along with encouragement from some special people, gave me the confidence to make the right (and at that time scary) choice. What do they say, "Eat Big, Lift Big"? It took a little while, but for the first time in a long time, I am okay with that. More than okay actually, I want it. Crazy how only one year in such a great community has done more for me than thousands of dollars in therapy. This community is so hard to explain to a non-crossfitter yet so essential to those who get it. My crossfit family means the world to me and has been so influential in my crossfit journey. Whether it is spending countless hours working with me on the smallest of technique movements, holding me accountable to those damn front squats, being my mutual counseling partner, or cooking me dinner and always letting me have the last piece of chicken, so many people have helped me without even knowing they were doing so. The best part about this is that my experience isn't a unique one. Just like you would be hard-pressed to find a crossfitter without a list of PR's, you would also be hard-pressed to find one who hasn't been encouraged or inspired by their own crossfit family. Put a group of hard-working, motivated individuals together, and the results can't be denied. Awesome.

I find it slightly ironic that my goals these days still revolve around weight; that I still define my progress by recording a certain number of pounds every day. The major difference...my new goals aren't reached on the scale but on the bar I'm lifting. I have an ever-growing list of goals that I keep in my gym bag, and I'm still chasing those RoCkStArS. So to all of the crossfit critics out there, has your workout program changed your life outside of the gym? Mine has. You're missing out.

November 2011

Filthy Fifty - 34:12 ; Deadlift - 120# ; Power Clean - 80# ; Snatch - 65#