CrossFit! CrossFit! CrossFit!
It makes me super-sad that I could post this same post from three years ago and only change that 34 to a 37.
:(((((((((((((((
Two years ago, I did my best Principal Richard Vernon impression. But it was kinda justified.
A mere year ago, I had a giant temper tantrum at the gym because, amongst other things, I couldn’t string any double-unders together. Well, a few weeks ago, I did FIFTY in a row during a WOD. I am a temple of rad.
Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.
[This post is going to be lousy with #firstworldproblems. I know a girl (she’s 11) who has a prosthetic leg, so all of the words henceforth can go in the chapter of the Avid Bruxist narrative titled Complaints About Shit that Doesn’t Matter in the Grand Scheme. There’s my disclaimer. And yet…]
In February, five friends and I registered to do the Tough Mudder Mid-Atlantic, a 12-mile course with 25 obstacles, obstacles to be overcome by doing such things as swinging across monkey bars, climbing over giant piles of logs and/or hay bales, and getting electrocuted.
The things I was worried about were myriad:
Turns out I worried about the wrong things.
Friday evening, my gang and I drove 280 miles to Germantown, MD, where we had booked two hotel rooms for two nights. On Saturday morning at 7:20, we received a text from the Tough Mudder management telling us that, because of traffic delays, we needed to use an alternate route to the site. OK. Odd that there were congestion issues before the first heat had even run, but OK.
Our start time wasn’t until 1:00, so we had breakfast, got dressed,
ran to Target for last-minute gear, and headed to the course (about 20 miles away) at 11:30. Plenty of time, we thought, to get there, get registered, and get psyched up.
Approximately five miles from the course, traffic stopped completely. We sat there for half an hour and then, using our handy telephones, navigated our way to a back entrance.
This time, we got to half a mile from the course before we were stopped. One hour later, we were still a quarter-mile away (correct my math, but I think that’s a quarter-mile an hour). That’s when the skies opened. After another 45 minutes, we arrived at the parking lot, which was 20 acres of nothing but mud. We watched even SUVs having to get pushed out by already muddy Mudders who had completed the course.
Hope sprung eternal, tho’, and several members of Team ‘Lisa grabbed IDs and the it’s-your-fault-if-you-die-doing-this-bullshit waivers we had signed and sprinted through the rain to the registration tents.
The final heat of the day was scheduled for 2:40. It was 2:35. As we ran back to the car to check on parking progress, we heard them over the megaphone announcing last call. We could do it! We were sure!
But, woe!, the attendants were (probably wisely) not allowing cars into the mudbath/parking lot. We were ready to ditch the car on the side of the road, but right then, a group of Mudders came out saying that site management had closed all the obstacles, and if we were to start, we’d basically be doing a 12-mile mud run.
The obstacles are the point.
Fuck.
Team ‘Lisa conferred and decided we would just get up at sick:30 in the morning and do the course the following day. We were Tough Mudders; we would prevail!
In the middle of the night, TM management sent another text saying that, due to safety concerns (flooding from the storm on the course), the Sunday event had been canceled.
Well, see, but the part about safety concerns wasn’t true.
I mean, even at that moment, it rang false because, um, the nature of the event is to slog through a 12-mile flood, but later, news reports indicated that Mother Nature was not the problem. TM management pointed the finger at uncooperative local authorities, who in turn blamed TM management for overselling the event. But the upshot was the mayor pulled the permit.
Shit show.
On the part of TM, I think it was a case of good ol’-fashioned hubris. They’ve been the popular jock strutting around the fieldhouse of mud-runs for a long time. They stopped showing up for practice, didn’t listen to the coach (sanctimonious jerk, though he was), and got their asses handed to them in the Friday night game.
As for the police department and mayor’s office, a.k.a. sanctimonious jerk coach, I do believe there was a lot of hitching up of pants and saying, “You big-city folks might do it that way where you’re from, but not in my town.”
Since then, TM management has backed off the “safety” charade and said essentially, “Even though local authorities were being badge-waving pissants, the responsibility lies with us to make a good event for you, and we failed.” (Which is true. They’re projected to take in $75 million this year. How ’bout you’ns invest in some goddamn ombudsmen?) They’re offering refunds(!), which they never do, or free transfers to upcoming events.
Team ‘Lisa is determined to triumph, so we’re requesting entrée into Tough Mudder Carolinas late next month. (That would give me seven weeks to generate some real good worries.) Alas, TM Carolinas is not on the list of approved transfers that was sent out today, so who knows if they’ll let us in?
All in all, I’ve gone through a lot (of #firstworldproblems) in the last few months. The chapter title for the summer of 2012 will be Wherein Our Heroine Learns to Deal with Disappointment.
I guess we all need struggles, right?, to learn and grow and change… That’s what life’s about, right?, learning and growing and changing… So I guess I should be thankful, right?, for all the learning experiences…
Nah. Summer 2012 can eat a dick.
Former boss/dear friend/reader/Avid Bruxist cheerleader Margo started her campaign three years ago. Actually, probably earlier than that, but she made it explicit then. I’M TRYING, MARGO. YOU KNOW I’M TRYING.
(And failing.)
Two years ago, CrossFit made me feel bad about myself. That’s interesting—it still does! (Running.) And it also makes me feel really proud of myself! (Olympic lifting.)
One year ago, I missed an opportunity and was sad about it. There’s more to that story… and all I can say is phew. Sometiiiiiimes I thank God fer unanswered praaaaaaayers.
Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.
Day 1
My arms are sore. The day prior, five friends and I flipped a giant tractor tire a mile. (It’s a workout created by my sister-wife. She dubs it “the enTIRE mile”.) Upshot is my forearms are Meredith Baxter Burny, and correcting Tulip on our walk is a chore. I decide that, instead of physical corrections, I’ll use mind control. I say, “Tulip!” real short and concentrate real hard on being the boss of her, and wonder of wonders, she drops back six inches letting the leash go slack.
I have to do a lot of mind control, probably about as often as I’d been doing tugs on her collar, but my forearms are saved.
Day 2
I spend most of the day crying. Emotional upheaval, probably not helped by the fact that I’m not sleeping enough. I’ve been walking the dogs between 9:00 and 10:00pm to beat the heat, but when I get home, I’m wound up and don’t go to bed until midnight. Tonight I skip the dog-walk so that I can get to bed at a reasonable hour. Lights out at 10:37pm.
My brain wakes me up at 4:15am. Stupid brain.
[My friend asks, “Aren’t you scared to walk that late at night?” Um, I’m walking 190 pounds of pit bull. Nope, not scared.]
Day 3
More mind control. I think it’s working. I have to choke up less on the leash when we go by the house with three big Rottweilers in the yard. At home, I look online at Rottweiler rescues. I need to stop; I have a problem.
Tulip has 120 Facebook friends. No adoption prospects.
Day 4
On our late night walk, the pack gets agitated. I look around to find a loose or stray dog (it’s too dark to see if it’s wearing tags) about 20 yards away. Redford lunges, and when he can’t get at the stray, he redirects on Violet and Tulip. Tulip snaps back. I’m able to separate the dogs and hustle away from the strange dog. People pooh-pooh pinch collars—they say they’re cruel or whatever—but those things are the only reason none of us has to go to the ER.
Day 5
I have scheduled a walk with the adoptive “father” (he’s only 22!) of Tucker, the boy dog that was confiscated with Tulip. In the pictures, Tucker and Tulip look alike, though he’s clearly mixed with something other than pit bull. It’s possible Tulip is his mom or sister. I’m hoping she remembers him and they have a grand ol’ time together.
We arrive at Duke’s east campus. Tucker walks up with his person. Tulip is excited. She tenses up. She sniffs at Tucker. He hesitates. She says not-nice things to him.
(sigh)
We walk anyway. It’s fine. But damn.
Day 6
I go on a tubing trip down the Dan River that lasts three hours longer than I expect. Tulip is in the crate for almost eleven hours. When I get home, she has jumped around in there and managed to slide it across the room, but she’s otherwise OK. I’m too tired to take the dogs for a walk.
Day 7
Tulip is CRAZY. Between the long stint in the crate and not being walked since Friday night, she has a lot of stored-up wiggles. She gets them out by running laps through the house and tossing her deer antler to herself and then chasing after it.
We go on an extra-long walk. I use a combination of physical corrections and mind control.
Well, three years ago, I was duct-taping my puppy. Really sad I don’t have photographic evidence of that.
Two years ago, I published my first password-protected post. (See the FAQ page for qualifications for password access.)
I celebrated my first CrossFit-iversary one year ago today! (Shit, I should do a post about how totally beast—ha ha—I’ve gotten in the last year. Maybe tomorrow. Retrobruxist Friday is a lazy day.)
Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.
Sometimes people call CrossFit a cult. That’s pretty dumb. I want to say, “Do you know what the definition of cult is?” I guess when people join a group and use a certain lingo or jargon, it has the audacity to make other people uncomfortable, and all of a sudden, it’s a cult.
It’s the jargon. People don’t like jargon. If CrossFitters talk about WODs and AMRAPs and metcons—Well, I don’t understand! Gack! It must be a cult!
Eleven years ago, I took this seminar called the Landmark Forum. If you look online, you’ll find their website, which is pretty cheesy—lots of phrases like “extraordinary life” and “design your future”—and other websites full of bloviating and the cyber-equivalent of people getting red-faced and throwing their hands in the air. Negative stuff.
I personally found the Landmark Forum both eye-rollingly self-helpy… and extremely helpy for myself. Swear to god, I use what I learned that weekend pretty much every day of my life.
But, in essence, the structure of the seminar is to call people on their bullshit six ways from Sunday, and people don’t like that. We like to wallow in our bullshit until we can’t smell it anymore, and then just call it ‘reality’. (Don’t get me wrong: I still have bullshit, but I can often spot it and work through it in a shorter amount of time than I used to.)
Anyway, you’ll see it called a cult, which, again, is super dumb because the corporation (yes, it’s a business—they make that pretty goddamn clear) that puts on the Landmark Forum is like: Here’s our course, and here’s how much it costs, and we have other courses you can take if you like that one. And here’s how much they cost.
As with CrossFit, if someone does the Landmark Forum and comes out talking about rackets or enrollment conversations or “empty and meaningless”, well, he must be getting brainwashed.
But every organization uses jargon. Every organization has vocabulary specific to the industry and acronyms that save time.
At my place of business, we talk about AYP, Gifted Service Provision, and Site-based. You non-teachers tell me what any of that means without looking it up. Kids have 504s, IEPs, and PEPs; they’re labeled EC, AIG, AU, ADD, ODD, and OLT (all right, that last one just means Obnoxious Little Turd).
I bet I wouldn’t understand half the vocabulary my friend, a doctor, uses with her colleagues in a given day. Or you with yours because you’re a lawyer and, to me, tort reform is what I’ve had to do to my fruit dessert recipe since going gluten-free.
Or because you’re an IT guy, and even though my brother-in-law has explained it a million times, I just don’t understand how fax machines work. You put a picture in a phone, and it breaks into ones and zeros and gets reconstituted in another phone two thousand miles away?!
No.
Not possible.
Elves.
Even outside the workplace, organizations use their own lingo. I bet your church does, and your family. There are things in the Scott family lexicon that an outsider would never understand. Tell me, what are ‘wooly bears’? What is something that might be ‘wapsed’, and where might it be ‘wapsed’?
And stuff you might understand, but if you didn’t know us, it’s possible you’d think we were mentally impaired. Like, we say we love our chother because when my sister was little, that’s what she said instead of ‘each other’. If two people speak the same words simultaneously, my siblings and I will certainly say, in a deep southern drawl, “Y’all must have ESPN!” because Mrs. Harris, our sophomore high school English teacher, seriously didn’t know the difference between extra-sensory perception and the highest-rated American TV sports network.
One of my groups of friends has a whole language we call The Worst. We say things like “also too”, use a lot of flat vowels, and waggle our fingers at the sky while proclaiming, “Their body temperature is quite low.” Because all that stuff means something to us.
But we have no charismatic leader; nobody’s driving a wedge between us and our families; we’re not forking over our life savings to the organization; and we certainly don’t think our bat-shit way is the only path to salvation.
So, can we cool it on calling groups cults?
Except Scientology. That shit is a cult.
P.S. If you’re curious, wooly bears are fuzzy footie pajamas that zip from ankle to neck, and something that might be wapsed is a wet towel. Where? On your bedroom floor.
And you’ll get in trouble for that.
Don’t know who Tulip is? Start here.
Day 1
MI
NI-
POO
DLE
for breakfast playdate!!!
(He pisses—no joke—eleven times in my yard. And that’s only the ones I see. I wonder if it drives Redford crazy when he goes out there and finds this fucking Napoleon has planted his tiny flag all over Redford’s territory.)
As I’m walking out for work, dude drives up in a pick-up asking if I’ve seen his little white dog, and I let him know Mini-Poodle just left. We chat for a minute. His name’s Jorge. I tell him how well my dogs get along with his. He says, “I know, I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw it happen, I was like, ‘Oh my gahd, those are big dogs!'” He apologizes for Mini-Poodle’s trespasses. I tell him not to worry about it. Oh, how my attitude has changed about that little muppet.
Day 2
Gark! So many corrections when we walk! In a 25-minute loop, I correct Violet a dozen times, Redford only twice, and Tulip an average of every sixth step. Not joking. So frustrating. She’s learned other things. Why can’t she learn this?
Probably because I stopped walking in circles. I’m too tired. I’m tired, and I’m in that feel-bad-don’t-sleep-feel-bad cycle, and I’ve never been less inspired to start a new school year, and I don’t want to walk in fucking circles.
I go to the gym. None of my friends are there. Everything ass to knee is still burny, or as we say, Meredith Baxter Burny, from too many back squats on Saturday. And for the first time ever, I turn around and walk out.
Day 3
I’m at work for a long time, so when I get home, we do the 2.5-mile loop which we haven’t done in weeks. Twice the walk, twice the corrections. Tulip’s real bad at this.
Day 4
I keep taking Tulip into the yard on-leash to try to get the dogs to interact, but Redford and Violet are always so hot after our walks that they just stand on the deck waiting to go into the air conditioning.
Day 5
I decide to try the reintroduction before our walk. Redford runs laps around the shed. Tulip really wants to join him. At one point, Tulip approaches Violet, and I realize I’m too terrified. This is never going to happen.
Tulip and I walk circles in the driveway. She actually does pretty well and sits when I tell her to.
Day 6
To raise awareness of Breed-specific Legislation and the harm that it can do, CCB posts on Facebook pictures of all the adopt-a-bulls with the caption “I am Lennox. End BSL.”
A couple people comment on the photo of Tulip that they want to adopt her. I don’t get my hopes up because people say stuff like that all the time. Except that I do get my hopes up. Kind of a lot.
Day 7
We go to Auntie Wa’s house for dinner, and Tulip does this for about 45 minutes:
When we get in the car, she does this all the way home:
We need to go to Auntie Wa’s more often.
Neither of the people who commented on her photo follow up about adoption.
Day 1
Cousin-dog Barley comes over for a playdate. She, Redford, and Violet are in the yard. I let Tulip onto the deck. She waaaaaaaags and runs to stick her nose through the slats to greet Barley. Barley wags too, then there’s a moment, a hesitation, which Tulip interprets as Barley challenging her innate worth, and there are teeth and snarling and barking from both sides.
Tulip goes in her crate.
(sigh)
I need help with this.
Day 2
Tulip and I are chilling on the deck in the afternoon when, what ho!, a squirrel!, running up the big oak in the back yard. Tulip catapults herself off the steps and sprints the 20 feet to the tree, then begins circling the trunk, leaping and barking. It isn’t a hunnert-yard-dash, but I’m freaking out. I call her back, take her inside, and shut her up with me in the spare bedroom. She’s panting. I lie down on the couch, pull her onto my chest, pet her, shush her. She won’t stop panting. Is this what a pulmonary thromboembolism looks like? Do I get her to the emergency vet? Is there anything they can do for her if I do?
For twenty minutes, I try to stop her from panting, when finally I realize it’s 90 degrees outside, my air is off, and I’ve got this pit bull pressed up against my warm body. Maybe she’s just hot.
I set her to my side and pet her head gently. Within three minutes, she stops panting.
Christ on a cross. I can’t feel my legs.
Day 3
We do the neighborhood loop real slow, as I have legdo from Monday’s and Tuesday’s workouts. Takes us almost an hour. As usual, Tulip doesn’t go #1 OR #2.
Nelly comes over to meet Tulip. She’s just put down a deposit on a place that allows dogs, and she’s been wanting a dog since she was six. Tulip shnurffles and kisses Nelly and luxuriates on her lap. Nelly says she loves her and she’ll let me know if the apartment deal goes through.
Later, while I’m on the phone with my sister, Tulip squats on the doormat and pees?!
I take her out to the yard, where she pees some more and poops. I guess she really had to go, and I wasn’t reading the signs. I think back; she might have been pacing while I was on the phone. I suppose I need to pay closer attention. I wish she’d just go on our walks.
One of my bits when I hosted the Monti StorySLAM on Tuesday (oh yeah, I hosted the Monti StorySLAM again last week) was that Coach Dave kept harassing me about signing up for an Olympic weightlifting meet, and you could all go ahead and wipe that skeptical look off your faces because that didn’t mean this fatty would be trying out for the Olympics. It simply meant a competition of three attempts each at the two Olympic lifts: snatch and clean & jerk.
I hemmed and hawed and made excuses about not having lifting shoes. Then my birthday rolled around, and my family got me
So then I dug my newly-clad heels in about the world’s least flattering garment, the singlet. (Just google ‘singlet’; focus on the athletic ones, not the sparkly ones you see at Pride parades.) Well, then this gym in Cary scheduled a “developmental meet”, which means yes on shoes, not necessarily on singlet.
I still hesitated, but Coach Dave, he’s a wily bastard, and he knows me. He said, “It’ll give you something to blog about.”
I guess some people, when they sign up for a competition, follow some sort of plan to prepare. I went strict on the Pretend It’s Not Happening program. Coach Dave watched some lifts, Coach Phil at CrossFit RTP helped me work on my snatch for an hour and a half [insert punch line] last week, and my buddy Liz gave me some pointers and wrote me out an extensive list of tips on yellow legal paper. Other than that, I just kept CrossFittin’ and whistlin’.
Meanwhile, my support team was rallying. My dad was thinking about driving down the mountain for the meet. My friends were conspiring about a banner. My sister was going to bring her kids. But on Thursday, when I realized I was starting to hyperventilate a little bit about the whole situation, I sent out the following email:
So, with going to Boone last weekend, the stray pit being put to sleep, the StorySLAM, and getting a foster dog, it’s just all too much. I’m still going to go and participate in the meet this weekend, but I’ve decided that no fucks shall be given by me that day. Therefore, I would not mind if you saved—nay, I would encourage you to save—your fucks for giving to some other event which might require given-fucks.
And that worked. I did not give a fuck. Until Saturday when I walked into the place. It was so quiet in there, and there were people in chairs watching, and the women in the first session (tall, skinny ones; itty-bitty ones; really fit ones) were putting up some big numbers on the board. Like, way more than I could. I mean, I knew calling what I was doing “competing” was fallacious, but I didn’t want to look like a charity case.
At that point, I got all weepy, and poor Coach Phil had to shush me and tell me it was gonna be OK.
The situation was bad. Earlier in the week, I would’ve been satisfied to hit a Personal Record at the meet. Now I had a new goal: not to shit myself on the platform.
I weighed in, 77.2 kg (170 lbs), and rolled around on a foam roll for a while. Coach Phil helped me warm up. My cheering squad did not heed my emailed advice.
Snatches first. There was one woman in my session whose three lifts were all smaller than my opener, so she went. Then I was up. I hit my opener at 33 kg (72.6 lbs) and my second lift at 36 kg (79.2), but I missed my third. I can’t even remember what it was…37? I got it overhead but crumpled underneath.
Several more women (all of them at least 20 pounds lighter than me) went, lifting enormous amounts of weight over their heads.
After that came the clean & jerk. I hit them all: 42 kg (92.4 lbs), 46 kg (101.2 lbs), and 49 kg (107.8 lbs). (Phil had wanted me to do 51 kg (112.2 lbs) because it would’ve been slightly above my PR, and I should’ve listened to him. Those clean & jerks didn’t feel very hard.) Most importantly, I did not shit myself.
Again, the real weightlifters came next and lifted some real weight.
The organizers totaled everything and called up the winners by weight class. As I was the only competitor in the Over 75 kg group,
The lesson, children, is this: Sometimes it pays to be the fatty.
[Ed. note: I feel a follow-up post bubbling in my Broca’s area. But for now, to bed!, for I rise before daybreak.]
A couple months ago, I got a bee in my bonnet about putting a fire pit in my yard. Whenever I get excited about a project, I have to say I’m going to do it five or six times before I actually do it. So I did that. I’d say, “I’m thinking about building a fire pit,” and my friends would say, “Yeah! Do it!” and a few weeks later, I’d say, “I’m thinking about building a fire pit.”
Ten days ago, I decided I would have some folks over for New Year’s Eve, but my house is really small, and it was going to be too cold for the deck. So I built a fire pit. Impending events are very motivating to me.
I got online and checked out some plans and videos. I thought maybe I’d make it flush with the ground—I just liked that aesthetic—but when I asked for advice, one of my friends said to build a little wall around it so people would have a place to put their feet. That’s what I planned.
I bought a ton of Appalachian river stone from the Rock Shop. (My knight-in-law delivered it to my house in his truck.)
On Thursday
While I was digging, a guy driving by slowed down.
Him: You diggin a well?
Me: Fire pit.
Him: You doin it yourself?
Me: (flinging dirt into wheelbarrow) Yep.
Him: You all right.
The soil in my yard is hard-as-shit red clay. I didn’t want to end up installing an ersatz vase that would hold rain and become a mosquito hot spot, so for drainage
Another neighbor, Albert, who lives across the street with his 98-year-old mother and has about six teeth altogether in his head, came over.
Albert: You plantin a tree?
Me: Nope. Making a fire pit.
Albert: You gon have somebody do it for ya?
Me: …I’m doing it myself.
Albert: How you know to do it?
Me: I just got on the internet and looked at some plans.
Albert: Innernet. I don believe in the innernet.
Me: …
Albert: That innernet datin done me wrong.
I thought about saying, “Me too, Albert. ME TOO.” But I just wanted him to go away so I could get back to work, and I’ve already dealt with one neighbor of an inappropriate age and tooth-count asking me out and sending me Valentines(!), so I didn’t say anything and he wandered away.
The next day, I mixed 80 pounds of concrete in my wheelbarrow and started ringing the pit with stones. Albert came back.
Albert: I wanna be invited to your first barbeque.
Me: It’s not that kind of fire pit. It’s just going to be to sit around.
Albert: Oh. You jus gon sit around it?
Me: Mm-hm.
Albert: Jus to sit around.
Me: Yep.
Albert: Fire pit.
Me: Fire pit.
Albert: I have confidence in you.
Me: Thanks.
My knight-in-law came back with a couple of his trusty squires. One of them spent a lot of time trying to break the rocks by throwing them onto the other rocks and losing Lego pieces in my yard; the other was quite helpful with sorting the rocks by size and shape.
I kept laying in the rocks. When I got to the top of the hole, my aching back and low blood sugar won over and I was like, screw the wall, I’m done. The knight-in-law took off the top layer of grass and soil, and
Third day, I mixed up another bag of concrete, cemented in the lip, and covered it with sand. Hello again, Albert.
Albert: You done a hellified job.
Me: Thanks.
Albert: How you gon cook the meat?
Me: …Not planning to cook on it. Just going to make a fire.
Albert: In your fire pit.
Me: In my fire pit.
And guess what! That night,
Some of the stones around the top are loose because people stepped on them and I probably didn’t use enough concrete and WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME? I’M NOT A MASON. And anthropologists in the future will almost certainly look at it and say, “Based on the engineering, we estimate this malaria bowl was made by Homo ergasters.”
But it’s mine. It’s my fire pit. I built it. I done a hellified job.
Also, “hellified”: favorite new word. Thanks, Albert.
