Quest for the Qualifiers: Discovering Potential in Mid-Life

Rear view mirrors are handy things.  You can see if there is someone tailgating you, you can see if there is a police officer getting ready to pull you over, you can see if your kids are acting up in the backseat, or even (heaven forfend) if there is kale stuck in your pearly whites.  But the best thing about a rear view mirror is that you can see where you've been, maybe not the whole journey, but certainly in the very recent past.  As they say, "you don't know where you're going unless you know where you've been."  (I actually looked this phrase up to see to whom I should attribute it but apparently its' antecedents are lost to the mists of time and the Internet so the phrase is technically a cliche -- ahhhh, knowledge) Given my last post on the grind that is my current training situation someone suggested that I take a look back to see how far I've come down the road. I suppose the easiest rear view is through pictures and I can see there ...

This post is dedicated to all my friends who hold me up when I am feeling as if I can't keep this crazy quest going.  You humble me with your generosity, thoughtfulness, humor and love.  I'm not sure how I would keep going without you. Grind :  "To  shape,   sharpen,  or  refine   with   friction," or, " To   instill   or   teach   by   persistent   repetition." The word grind has become something of a catchphrase these days, usually referring to someone who keeps at something for a long time which may or may not result in achieving a certain goal.  It's an apt description for what I've been doing over the past month as I have been recovering from a severe ankle sprain, and honestly, the past few days of the grind have been super hard.  The ankle itself has been healing nicely, something for which I am extremely grateful, but progress in the gym has definitely been set back.  I've bee...

What is that saying about "the best laid plans ... ?" I had been sitting on a blog post for the past few days that reflected on my experience with the Whole30 eating plan (no dairy, sugar, gluten (or even gluten-free substitutes), legumes or alcohol for 30 days).  It was an interesting experience for a lot of reasons, but that post got sidelined last Saturday. We were attending a local CrossFit competition to support our gym's team of awesome athletes and I was having a blast.  I've been training hard over the past 5 weeks and seeing results so I was feeling pretty darn sparky, even joking about jumping into one of the WODs.  All was well until it came time to grab a group picture.  Getting the picture required us to climb up an embankment that had a fairly high, steep ledge.  I started the climb, lost my footing and came down with my right ankle actually underneath my body perpendicular to the ground.  Given the pain, I'm fairly cert...

This is Tia-Clair Toomey, the 2017 CrossFit Female Champion, "The Fittest Woman on Earth."  She is cleaning 235 pounds which has got to be almost double her body weight and she did it on the third day of competition after having completed eight other events.  Her lift was almost perfect and she finished first in the event.  She is AMAZING. Tia-Clair Toomey is my spirit animal. She's an athlete who combines tremendous athleticism with kindness, openness and vulnerability and it's her vulnerability I most admire.  Tia-Clair had appeared in two previous CrossFit Games, 2015 and 2016 and she came in second in both of them.  For a time on Sunday it looked like she might finish in second place once again, but she didn't.  When asked about her previous second place finishes and what changed for her this year she said it was her confidence, that this was the year she came to believe she could win it all. If Tia-Clair had doubts about her ab...

I bought this shirt not too long ago because it told the world exactly how I was feeling whenever I wore it. I thought it was funny because that's how I approached my workouts and the rest of my training -- it was funny because it was true.   Interestingly enough, not long after I bought the shirt I got turned on to Ben Bergeron's podcasts, and then his recently published book, both called Chasing Excellence .  Bergeron coaches Mat Fraser, Katrin Davidsdotter, Cole Sager and Brooke Wells who are all Games athletes with Mat and Katrin defending their titles in this year's Games as the fittest Man and Woman on Earth.  He also owns and coaches at CrossFit New England, one of the earliest and most successful CrossFit gyms.  Not too shabby! Ben shares his coaching (and life) philosophies in both formats and I won't go into them in detail here (although here's the link to his most relevant podcast  Chasing Excellence Episode 6 ) but I will say that the foundati...

This is what a badass woman looks like.  Doesn't matter what the task is.  Doesn't matter what the weather is.  She just pulls the sled.  # badasswoman                                                   - Sam Farr II  Merriam-Webster defines the word badass (and I was surprised that the word "badass" is in the dictionary to tell you the truth) as: " of formidable strength or skill ."  By that definition, can I really claim that I'm a badass, or even be so bold as to say a badass athlete?  Or was Sam simply providing me good motivational coaching by praising my hard work? Having pulled that sled about 850 meters a few hours before I saw the picture, it was easy to go back in my mind and feel my breath, the stretch in my hammies and glutes, the hot and humid air.  I also remembered the t...