What the Heck Have I Done?

Well there's nothing like the public declaration of a commitment to strike fear in your heart and get the ugly voices rocking in your head.  I had originally planned on starting this blog much earlier this year, right after the CrossFit Open finished in March as a matter of fact.  The idea was to document my trip down the road from weekend athlete to competitive CrossFitter.  I wanted to inspire,  and empower readers with my journey while I kept myself honest and accountable for the changes I was trying to make.

You'll notice, if you check your calendar, that this isn't March, it's June and this is my first blog post.  It took a challenge from my coach to sit down and get some words down (OK Sam, I did my homework for this week!) because I have been foot dragging like crazy.  With my conscious mind I said I was waiting until I had something important to say, but Sam knew the truth.  I was afraid.

Some background ... When I decided late last year that I wanted to break into the top 200 female CrossFit Masters athletes I gave myself a deadline for the CrossFit Open of 2020 because that's when I would be turning 60 and it would give me time to develop strength and skills I don't currently have.  It would mean transforming how I ate, I slept, trained and recovered from workouts.  It would also mean a lot more as I have most recently discovered.

Some more background ... I did not grow up playing sports, spending time in the gym or thinking about physical fitness much at all (except during that horrible time of year when gym teachers forced us to participate in the Presidential Physical Fitness Award program.  Trust me when I tell you that a one mile run was the equivalent of waterboarding to this pudgy bookworm!)  Competing was something better left to Monopoly games with my sister (I was a bad winner so we didn't play often). I was also the unwilling participant in other high school horrors like square dancing during gym where boys got to pick their partners -- suffice it to say I wound up on the bleachers more often than not.

The result of teen age angst, weight gains and losses through my twenties, thirties and forties, sporadic attempts to get in shape (Jane Fonda videos, Lucille Roberts, Weight Watchers and Couch to 5K) is a woman in her late-fifties with a complicated, pretty warped sense of self.  So many attempts, so many "failures."  I found CrossFit back in 2008 and fell in love with the barbell, the community and the workouts.  I became a coach and actively worked on my fitness in a sustained fashion for the very first time.  Unfortunately, the ugly voices in my head that told me I would never succeed, that I was an imposter and that I would never fit in, remained ever present.  I could never quite get myself to believe I was an athlete, that I was a true, for real CrossFitter.  By 2011 I had left the sport and by 2013 I ballooned up to 250 pounds.  The voices got louder and despite success in the corporate sector I became truly unhappy and depressed, I felt I had somehow lost the best of myself.

Fast forward to 2017.  Over the course of four years I've made tremendous changes in my life.  Quit my job, found a new CrossFit community that I love (shout out to CrossFit Thermal in Conshohocken, PA!), dropped a serious amount of weight and discovered what contentment and peace of mind felt like. (Spoiler alert:  content of future blog posts will come out of that four year transformation!) I also got an itch to see if I could do something I never tried.  What if I fully committed to a goal totally outside of my comfort zone?  What would happen?  Could I do it?  Could I change my behavior, thought processes, decision making and choices enough compete, "like for reals?"

Fast forward (I know, the special effects in this post are dizzying!) I'm in the middle of a set of front squats preparing to lift some heavy weight when a voice in my head says, quite loudly and forcefully, "You have no business here.  Who are you to do this?  You are still fat, you are old, you will never change and what you want is beyond you.  You are a failure, you always fail and you are not worth the effort to try.  You do not belong here."

I was crushed.  Not by the voice but by how easily I succumbed to it and how quickly I believed all it said to be true.  I've since come back from that workout and I know now what that voice is.  It is fear. The same fear that kept me from writing and the same fear that sniffs around the edges of my training on a daily basis.  I share this fear with you so that I can bring it out of the dark and into the light and I share it because if I don't, I know that I cannot overcome the biggest obstacle in my way -- my mind.

So, this blog is not about inspiration and empowerment (although if you get some of that I'll be a happy girl!). It's about gaining clarity, being open and frank about my struggles, celebrating the wins and learning how to be mentally strong at a rather advanced age.  Can I become one of the top 200 CrossFit Masters athletes?  Dare I dream for more?

Let's find out ...