Category: Thank You

Day 2 – Making a come back.

“Why is it,” he said, one time, at the subway entrance, “I feel I’ve known you so many years?”

“Because I like you,” she said, “and I don’t want anything from you.”

― Ray Bradbury

Facebook post: It’s interesting how; Say you’re having a really bad day and your usual way of coping when u get home is to eat a lot of unhealthy food, or have beer or scotch or both, or some other habit u know may not be so good for you – Take those former habits away, and you are forced to create a new routine, a new habit.. It is in that choice of a new habit that amazing things can happen.

***

Today marks 5 1/2 weeks since surgery. The six week mark and the official end to my recovery is Monday, May 13th. My diet has been good for the most part during the last six weeks. My biggest fear of gaining weight not coming true. Mostly because I worked to maintain a pretty strict Intermittent Fasting schedule of one meal a day, usually around dinner time. This was not easy sometimes sinking into extreme bouts of hunger during lunch time at work. Part of me wonders how much of my hunger was fueled by true actual hunger and part of it by simply pushing back against a long well worn habit of eating a salad at my desk. The internal alarms going off in my head telling me it is time to EAT, like punching a clock – it’s time to wake up it’s time to drink coffee it’s time to eat lunch it’s time to take a nap – with no real true indicator from my body as to whether or not it was truly hungry for calories.

Now that it is time for me to return to CrossFit I struggle with stepping back through the doors at ACF and jumping into the daily WOD. We knew this would happen. But why? Is it intimidation? Is it laziness? Fear? Both? Part of it is intimidation, knowing I’m not as strong as I used to be and certainly do not have the stamina I once enjoyed.

Part of it is laziness.

I’m enjoying these long summer afternoons at home after work with Oliver, sitting on the lawn in the settling sun and reading. Even the simplest act of throwing the ball for Oliver gives a great simple pleasure. It’s the trees and the air and the breeze and the warm spring sunlight. It’s Oliver running and jumping and performing stellar acts of doggy strength in every attempt to fetch the ball. I love to watch him go.

It’s me just being.

No where to go nothing to do no one to please or thank or run errands for. On Friday I decided I should change my Facebook status to being in a relationship. In a relationship with the word: Thank You. I employ the word about 8,883,987.25 times per day.

.25 because some Thank You’s are not always as sincere as others.

I work for a non-profit and everyone that walks through the doors, be it a volunteer or a donor or a member in need of our services or even a fellow employee deserves daily doses of honest Thank You’s because we are all there despite best varying degrees of difficulties. As an employee there is no money to be made, a below average standard of living at best, as a volunteer you are sharing the most valuable of commodities, your time and thereby in my mind deserve an extra-special round of gratitude. As a member receiving our services there are probably a hundred million different places you would rather be, but you’re not, because chances are you are sick or are caring for someone who is sick or who has just passed and you are sad.

So many Thank You’s to give.

I am an appreciative person, but doling out so many thank you’s on a daily basis can be exhausting. You tend to give so much of your self, stopping at all points in the day to offer assistance or lend a patient ear or a word of encouragement or additional set of hands to unload a car. The list of needs, the list of opportunities to stop and be patient and be helpful is truly endless. With this list can come a sense of doing good. This is true. But there also comes a point of feeling like a stone with no more blood to give. It’s called being burned out.

My struggle lies in feeling burned out but not knowing what to do about it. It’s not the fault of the people around me that I feel this way. It’s nobody’s fault but my own. But here it is. In all its glory, this feeling that I just don’t want to do what I’m doing anymore and also feeling trapped, not knowing where to go, or what to do, and as an added bonus feeling intensely lonely in all this angst.

Digressing.

Why is it I’m having a hard time getting back to the one thing I do love: CrossFit? I’m not sure. Probably a little bit of all of the above, sprinkled with intimidation and baked with a final dash of laziness. I don’t want to give up the time. The time to do what I want to do in the quiet of my home with Oliver dutifully, silently at my side. Where the only task asked of me is to be fed some kibble and throw a ball and sit with me in the sun or the shade and listen to the birds and the wind and watch the setting shadows.

This, I can do.

But the world waits for no one. And every one needs a Why. So, I must find my Why. And when I find it, I must start doing it. But where to start…

Perhaps the best place to start is the place closest to home. A place where I have immediate and instant control, my body:

Goal No. 1. Complete the Whole 3o Challenge – Join your peers from ACF and from now until June 5 partake in the Whole 30. Get lean. Get strong. Stop the bullshit.

Goal No. 2 – Start WODing at least four times per week. Beginning tomorrow, Wednesday 5/8. Mix it up, stop feeling obligated and create an adventure, meet new fellow CF’ers, hit the noon class, a late 8:30, maybe a morning mayhem, anything… just get yourself through the front door again. And again. And again.

Goal No. 3 – Track all food and workouts here. Every day. Every. Single. Day. Write something. Here. Log it on Double Under Dogs. Be accountable. Do what you love, write.

If I can stick to these 3 Goals, every day, from now until June 5 – then a shift will occur. For just like my post today on Facebook, there is no try, you just do. And by choosing new habits, you slowly but surely start steering the ship in a new direction. With making the right choices, with making healthy choices and creating a new routine and defining a different type of day, you will chart a course in an unimagined direction towards a new and bountiful horizon full of knowing Why.

What’s found.

“Accept who you are; and revel in it.” ― Mitch Albom

Yesterday I received an email that began as follows:

Dear Mary,

Thank you for giving me the chance to read your work.  I am pleased to tell you that you have been selected to participate in this spring’s Writers Workshop.  Your manuscript stood out among a competitive pool of applicants. Congratulations.

If you read this blog you know two things, how much I love the following:

  1. CrossFit, and
  2. Writing.

This past week I received recognition for my hard work in each. In one week. Within days of one another. An award in one and recognition by acceptance into a workshop for another.

This kind of thing simply does not happen in life. It doesn’t! You wake up, you go to work, you go home, you spend 22 minutes throwing the tennis ball for your giant German Shedder, and if you’re lucky you make a nice dinner and watch Biggest Loser and go to bed. There’s some detours and holidays tossed in there but for the most part you hit repeat for the next day and the next and the next.

“You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears. You forget yourself. You feel part of something larger.”— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on experiencing ‘flow’

If you have enough left in the day you throw your energy into something that’s really important to you, that makes your heart sing, that warms you from the inside out and gives you a sense of calm, a sense of purpose, that fills you with unconditional love for all things near to you and far. You see beauty and feel compassion and your heart swells with possibility.

When I write, time stands still.

It’s not all pixy dust and unicorns. There are the dark days of work; the toil and getting up and getting out and putting one foot in front of the other. I talk about these days often, sometimes from the isolated moments in the parking lot at ACF just before finding that last push from within needed to get out of the car and go through the doors. I fight with this familiar voice in my head that says, ‘Just go home, you deserve a rest day, pick up a gallon of Oreo ice cream on the way, you have definitely earned it.’

There are even darker days with writing. I’ve only known CrossFit for a year and half, I’ve known writing my whole life.

Writing is not what I do. Writing is who I am. I am always writing, jotting things down on pieces of paper, typing notes in my phone, or even simply and silently in my head – telling myself to try and remember this moment for later. There’s even the token notebook by the bed. Whatever it takes. The thoughts are endless and they are usually followed by, ‘Remember this, write it down. There’s a story here.’

The drive to write comes from a drive to ultimately someday compile it all in a friendly way and get it out there, get it published. Why? Because I want to reach people. I want to be that voice that reaches through the pages to you in that single solitary moment and let’s you know you are not alone. The voice that lifts you up or makes you laugh, or helps you remember, or forgive, or finally make that tough decision. A voice of a stranger who is now a trusted friend; private and knowing.

There is a quote painted on the wall at ACF that reads: ‘No, it doesn’t get any easier and you wouldn’t want it to either.’ I think of this often. It reminds me that whatever you are going through, chances are someone else has gone through it too and may even be going through it right now too. It is in the struggle to keep going that we find ourselves. It is in the will to find the energy to dig deeper and work harder and the desire to change for the better, that we come to know who we really are, and hopefully you’re happy with what you find.

I. Strength:

3 Hi-Hang Cleans + 1 Push Jerk x 5 Sets

* Rest 60 Seconds

** Heaviest Possible

Completed: at 55lbs., 65lbs., 75lbs., 85lbs., 95lbs. Damn I like Hang Power Cleans, even with the squat thrown in. The Oly shoes make it extra awesome as they make the feet and body feel secure and stable.

II. Conditioning:

20 Minute Partner AMRAP:

Partner A) Row 400m

Partner B) As Many Kettlebell Swings (53/35) As Possible.

* Both Partners Moving At The Same Time.

** Score Is Total Distance Rowed + Kettlebell Swings completed.

Completed: with Kim, as we had a WOD date today.  Awww. 3,809 total meters rowed. The worst part being the non-stop KB swings at 35lbs. Which were not totally non-stop, as I averaged two breaks per round.

Athlete of the Year. Thank you. Open WOD 13.1

“You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings.” 
― Elizabeth Gilbert

It’s a strange thing being nominated for and then winning an award. Throws you into a tizzy of activity, and your whole routine gets amped up. For me it did anyway, suddenly I wasn’t just going to ACF for my daily WOD. Suddenly I began to put pressure on myself, excited about the nomination, wanting to win. Getting a manicure and pedicure.

Last week I didn’t feel like just another member anymore at ACF. I felt special, different, a little bit removed. This can be good and bad. I tend to think about things too much as it is. Generally I’m more comfortable blending in. Which is funny considering I do not blend, as I stand head and shoulders above most. But at ACF everyone is used to my height, so aside from the occasional joke from one of the coaches I’m just another member there to do my best. I relish this. Out in the real world, out in public, people tend to stare or point. Strangers will even come up and ask me questions; How tall are you? Did you play basketball? Once while standing in line at the grocery store with a former boyfriend who was 3 inches shorter than me, the woman in line in front of us turned around and stared at us. She looked me up and down. She looked said boyfriend up and down and then she said, ‘Well, you know what they say, we’re all the same height horizontally.’

True story.

I suppose it’s not that I don’t like to stand out, I would just like to be noticed for things other than the most obvious. Wouldn’t we all. To me, walking up to someone and saying, ‘You’re tall’ is the epitome of stating the obvious and being lazy. Wouldn’t it mean so much more if we took the time to notice little not so obvious things about one another, positive things, and then pointed them out? You’re very patient, you’re a good listener, you have a nice style about you.

Way back when in 1998 in a bar in Denver I was out with a group of friends shooting pool and drinking beer when a black gentleman came up to me and said, ‘Wow, you’re really tall, did you play basket ball?’ Having had just the perfect amount of beers and feeling confident I replied, ‘You’re really black, did you?’

He looked at me and didn’t say a thing.  My friend Kerry started eyeing the Exits.

After a moment the gentleman smiled and then high-fived me and said, ‘Right on, can I buy you a drink?’

Back to being awarded Female Athlete of the Year by my ACF peeps: Pretty freaking awesome. Being recognized for something you work so hard at, is really quite something. When you’re working hard, when you’re really working hard, and you’re forcing yourself out the door against being tired or hungry or the dishes still sitting in the sink and the bills not getting paid… when you’re pushing yourself just one step further, one moment more even when you think you can’t… You really don’t think anyone is actually noticing. It’s dark, you’re tired, it’s late, or too early and it’s cold and you just want to eat some Trader Joe’s curried chicken straight from the bucket and crawl under the covers. But somehow you don’t. You push through the powerful pull to stay and you keep going.

So when you actually do get noticed for something so incredibly positive and in your mind not obvious at all… well, it’s like being blessed.

Thank you ACF.

OPEN WOD 13.1

WOMEN – includes Masters Women up to 54 years old
Proceed through the sequence below completing as many reps as possible in 17 minutes of:
40 Burpees
45 pound Snatch, 30 reps
30 Burpees
75 pound Snatch, 30 reps
20 Burpees
100 pound Snatch, 30 reps
10 burpees
120 pound Snatch, as many reps as possible

Completed: 114 reps. Happy to have the first Open WOD in the books. Mediocre score, but this is my first Open and I’m happy just to learn strategy. After judging on Saturday and being a part of the absolute raw energy and excitement of a lot of athletes pushing themselves towards their very best, I feel energized for 13.2.