Mental Set-back then Snatch PR

Saturday May 2, 2009: Sleep 7.5hrs, 3.5hr nap

As I believe I've mentioned in earlier posts I had told myself that I wasn't going to go to the CF regionals this year as my life can be quite hectic between my husband and I in our first 6 months of business for two separate businesses. However, here I talked about the change of events which now has me competing in the regionals. When I signed up I knew I was going to show up and compete but more than anything I wanted to just keep my training focused yet relaxed and go have fun. Well, Saturday I had a bit of a set back.

You see, I have a history of being quite a headcase regarding training and competing. I was a collegiate distance runner for Kent State University from 2000-2004 and ended up quitting the team with eligibility left in cross-country and track for 2005. You can read more about my youth athletic experience here but mostly I was by no means ever tagged as a "natural talent" growing up and through much of high school. However, by my senior year I had trained consistently enough that I was winning races and earned a college scholarship.
Long story short I became wrapped up in the idea that "more is better" for training and spent much of my collegiate career battling injuries and left in the pool or riding the elliptical machine like a maniac. When I was healthy enough to race I would get myself so worked up that I had to prove myself that by the end of it all would run faster in practice than competitions and completely break down pretty much having anxiety attacks and screaming negative things about myself out loud in the middle of 5 and 10k track races. I was an embarrassment not only to myself but most importantly to my team. Thankfully I do have some positive memories from those times, but in the end my perspective was completely warped and I didn't know what else to do but walk away. I spent my last 3 semesters of college living the more "typical college life" and while I've completed a marathon, half-ironman and some dinky road races since I haven't taken part in any "serious" competition since; particularly not any at which I had a shot to do well.

Recently some of the compulsiveness started to sneak back in. As you may have read my training has been fairly lax over the past few months and yet I continue to improve week after week. (Oh, the beauty of CrossFit training.) However, especially since I'm trying to focus my training towards skills I have only recently started doing consistently (muscle-ups and double-unders) as well as adding in some heavier stuff since a distance running background doesn't exactly prepare you for heavy anything, the majority of my workouts are done on my own. On days that you've been up since 4:45am and coached at 6,7,8, and 9am, stayed through 1pm for open gym and back in the evening for more classes talking yourself up to train can sometimes be a challenge. I love CrossFit and I love to train, but I am human and sometimes lack personal motivation. When this happens I tend to get frustrated at myself and it can be a downward spiral.

Saturday after putting on the morning workout I wasn't feeling up to working out myself so I told my husband Corey that we'd come back later. Well, I went home and slept for nearly 4 hours that afternoon. When I woke up I cleaned the apt and kept fighting to find motivation to get back in the gym. I never did. Instead, I completely melted down and took much of my personal frustration out on Corey. I yelled at him for not being more supportive and motivating me when I feel lazy. (He is MORE than supportive of all I do and was unable to read my mind to know my lack of motivation, as I expected of him. I'm sure other significant others out there are nodding their heads at this point.) I also got mad at him for not giving me more guidance with my training even though, 1) Again, I never asked and 2) I have been doing my own programming as well as the gym's for quite awhile now.
In the end, we had a good discussion and I got a lot off my chest that I had been internalizing. I never did workout, but I went in Sunday with a much fresher perspective. It's now Wednesday that I'm catching up on this and I can say that I've been in a much better place since.

Sunday May 3, 2009: Sleep 8.5hrs
Strength/Skill Work: Snatch Didn't keep exact track of weight/reps at each but started at 45 and worked up to 79lbs. This is a 4lbs PR. I hit this weight 3-5 times. Then went up to 84lbs. I had about 5 misses here. I'm a head case. I snatched 79lbs easy every time, but I couldn't get my head wrapped around the 84lbs to put it overhead. Next time...

WOD:
5 rounds of
185lbs deadlift, 3 reps
20 double unders
5:39

Felt solid. Need to hit some heavy deads this week.


One of the blogs I follow, Rizzzzo's World, had a pretty cool post about athletes having a good support system. I can't emphasize enough how supportive my husband, co-owners and clients of CrossFit Asheville oh and my old trainees back in NY. (I haven't forgotten about y'all and miss you much!) Even though my family doesn't really understand this whole CrossFit thing they are great. My mom and sister are both coming to the regionals so they will get a true taste of all the CF madness. I can't wait to hear what they have to say about it all. haha Looking forward to it and thank you to all!