POST 14.1: TRUST IN THE SYSTEM, ALL OF IT.

This month has been extremely busy for me and I have been unable to post much – for that, I apologize.  I promise I will be posting Monday night, weekly, at least for the next five weeks.  I now have a lot of people a few hundred miles away from me that have watched me grow and develop over the past year.  If I feel like I owe it to anyone to get back to writing regularly, it is them.  These past few weeks I have finally felt “settled” and calm, after a personal roller coaster year filled with total lows and total highs.  Through it all however, I have tried to place as much trust in my ability to exercise, in the program I have been following, in my coach, and in my gut feelings.   In all honesty, that doesn’t always come easy for me.  I am a thinker – an over thinker most times – and I am always analyzing how I could or should be doing things different than how I am doing them.  Obviously, in constant pursuit of perfect results.

Sometimes trusting in the system is the hardest thing to do – especially at this point in the CrossFit season.  The Open has kicked off and all those nervous, questionable thoughts seem to rush in, no matter how prepared you know you are.  Last year, I was never faced with all that seriousness because I had not been training with intentions of making any kind of run in the region.  I had simply found a fun and competitive sport and was just happy to be there.  This year, I feel like I have expectations to meet – from myself and others – expectations that I have been working hard to meet.   I know as long as I trust in the system and my ability to work, things will take care of themselves.  These Open workouts have a way of making people crazy.  Although a very meaningful part of the season, as a rookie, I think I need to understand that loyalty and trust in the system as a whole is the most important thing. Coach K preached for four years about the great Coach John Wooden’s “pyramid of success” – and though I could never even remember half of it, I always remembered that at the center of the foundation was Loyalty – Be True To Yourself, Be True To Those You Lead And Those That Lead You.  If all of us competitive exercisers can keep any piece of mind in the crazy Open season it NEEDS to be that.  Trust and believe in the work you have done up until now and are continuing to do each week.  Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves.

14.1 Recap:  I guess I have to do this, although I really don’t want to because I want to forget this workout as quickly as I am able to.  I was obviously not around the sport in 2011, so this was my first experience with this piece.  It is one of those workouts that looks pretty innocent, until you’re in the eye of the storm.  10 Minutes of light snatches and double unders really didn’t shake me up, but I knew those rounds were going to be fast – so there was going to be A LOT of them.  Double unders are one of my more favored movements in competitive exercise and well, I snatch often.  I knew the workout was going to be a straight test of lung capacity and basically a cardiovascular race of “who can go the longest without hitting a serious oxygen deficit”.  I also knew that being one of the taller girls in the sport I had a lot more distance to cover with the barbell, so I would automatically need to be more efficient.  I completed 358 reps of 14.1.  That was two snatches shy of 8 full rounds.  I feel like I executed my plan as best as I could.  I was able to complete all my double unders unbroken and broke my snatches up beginning in the third round, as planned.  I feel all of the heart rate and aerobic capacity work that coach implemented into my weekly programming this past month really helped me out in this workout.  I didn’t seem to hit “the suck” as we like to call it, until about the 8 minute mark.  At that point, I could already see the light at the end of the tunnel and it was not that difficult to just hold on.  My execution was good enough for 25th in my region.  Of course, as with anything, I have been replaying this silly workout over and over in my head thinking up places where I could make up time and gain more reps.  This is where the trust comes in.  I know this is only a small first step in my plans for this year.  It is time to turn the page and get back to work – 14.2 is only days away.

*You can find this post and other posts by my peers and I at:

http://www.3sixtyathletics.com/360blog/