What happens at Crossfit

I've been having a rough week and if you're not new to my blog then you already know this. The week has been long and hard and I have dealt with it mostly by making poor food choices and then regretting them. What I haven't been doing is working out, not even a little bit. My last cross-fit class was last Wednesday and despite having sufficient cross-fit equipment at home, I haven't quite gotten around to motivating myself to using it. So it's probably not a coincidence that I have been feeling fatter and sadder than usual. Sure what's a girl to do without her healthy dose of endorphins. 

It's been a little over a week since my cross-fit class ( and lot longer since my last confession) and I found myself driving towards Cross-fit Tipperary this morning with an equal sense of dread and anticipation. The dread was partially because I didn't know what the day had in store and also because after a week of doing nothing more taxing than running up stairs I was worried that a good cross-fit class could break me.
I arrived just before the class began to see the workout of the day ( we call them WODS) written on the white board. It was a variation of Fran (popular benchmark workout for cross-fit) if someone was feeling particularly cruel. 21/15/9 of chin ups, hang clean jerks, deadlifts and russian swings. You do 21 of each movement and then 15 and so on. With 17 minutes to complete the whole thing, it's normal to feel like you're going to die. I had it easier than some because I can do very few strict chin ups, I'm guessing because I don't get to train on a very regular basis, I'm not as strong as a lot of the more regular gym goers. Anyway this meant that I got to do these sort of jumping chin ups while standing on a box. Plus because I was struggling a bit, I only had to do 15(then 12, then 9) of those and the hang clean jerks. All well and good and you might imagine this gave me an advantage but foolishly I loaded my bar with 30kg. I've been trying go heavier all of the time to get stronger but I'm also known to panic when I see everyone else using heavier weight than me. As it happens, this being 10kg heavier than I'd ever used for multiple repetitions of this sort of movement, I struggled. That's probably understating it, I floundered around doing sets of two and taking far too long a break before doing some more. While I found everything else manageable (even russian swinging a 20kg bell) this slowed me down so much that I didn't even get close to finishing. The workout ended with me sweaty, tired and a bit annoyed with myself.

Lots of people think if they had a do over that they could do better, work harder and so on but buyoed by something or other, I don't know if it's madness or determination, I headed back to the gym at 5 with the idea that if I could only do the workout with a slightly lower weight that I could surpass myself. I excitedly set up my bar and bell before warm up even began to the bemused glances of my fellow crossfitters. We did not have a pleasant workout on the board so it's rare to display such enthusiasm for it especially 10 minutes before class even began. I, however, had the feeling that I was going to knock this one out of the park so I was itching to get started. We did some swinging and clean and jerk for warm up and I think I might have been too ambitious with my 20kg because I felt breathless during the short breaks but I didn't die and I think that's always the main thing. Then the main act began. I loaded up my bar with 5kg of weight (2x 2.5kg plates) bringing it to 25kg, 5kg lighter than this morning. Even though this was heavier than I could normally manage, I felt confident after this morning that I could finish this frenzied fran in the time given. It wasn't the first time I found myself back at 5 for second helpings but it was definitely one of the few times that I wasn't asking to do something different. Often repeating a mornings class can be even more mentally exhausting than physically because you know exactly what lies ahead.
I got through it. I wont lie, I grunted a lot and sweated and covered myself in chalk. I thought I was done many times before I finished and I think I may have even peed just a tiny bit during a particularly tough set of clean and jerk but I didn't stop because I wanted to finish so badly. I wanted to kick my own ass because I felt I was the only competition that mattered (to me). I certainly didn't finish first but I wasn't last. I didn't lift the heaviest or take the least breaks but I finished with 50 seconds to spare and let me tell you it felt awesome. Walking out of the gym on legs so wobbly that I could have passed for bambi but I was on a high.

Tonight my shoulders feel so tender that I know I wont be doing any nonchalant shrugging come Saturday but I'm still smiling and remembering what I love about cross-fit. I'll get in tomorrow for one more class to fill me up with enough endorphins for the weekend and I'll try and remember this feeling in the hopes that it will keep me going until I can next get home.