CrossFit WODs and WOEs

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

On January 30, 2013, registration for the CrossFit Open began. I registered. *gulp* This past week has been a roller coaster ride of WOD (Workout Of the Day) highs and lows. At times I feel like I'm going to crush the open workouts, and other times I feel certain that I will be crushed by them. 

I became interested in the CrossFit Games two years ago. As a family, we sat around the t.v. fascinated by the demonstration of strength and ability. It was about that same time that my husband/trainer began teaching me some Olympic lifts (cleans and dead lifts). Back in August, I tried a week of CrossFit and blogged about my experience here. With my husband's encouragement, I began seriously considering entering the Games myself. And not with a small amount of trepidation, I did. 

So, here I am. For the past month or so, I've been practicing CrossFit specific moves. It's been tiring and frustrating. And rewarding. The snatch, which was once my nemesis has become a friend. I wish I could say the same for the clean. I still can't seem to conquer the technique. Double unders... ugh. Every time I practice them, my mind flashes back to the women in the Games who do them with the ease and grace of antelope, bounding across a field-- completely effortless. Me, I feel more like an elephant trying to jumprope-- yikes.  

I've gotten angry, frustrated, devastated, and I've felt like quitting. As a matter of fact, at the beginning of a WOD this week I quit. It was a common benchmark WOD "Fran." This was my first time. I made the mistake of listening as a friend told me Fran had been done in 2:26. After doing only 7 thrusters in 1 minute, I quit. (It doesn't take a math genius to see that my time was going to be catastrophically far off.) Mad and frustrated, I resumed the workout because quitting is unacceptable. And I finished it.