Adventures in CrossFitting

I received a disturbing email from my coach, Jennie, yesterday. It read: "Emergency! The new girl crushed our 2K meter row records! Get to the Fort STAT and let’s show her that the veterans RULE! :)"

From that moment, it was on, and I quickly assured Jennie that I would be at there that night to regain the title back from the newbie. When I arrived, I immediately went to check out the times on the board. There were only two times that were relatively close to my previous 8:31.5. One was a newbie (8:42.3) and the other was a veteran (8:40.5).

I do admit that I was a bit relieved. I was still in first place with my old time. Now all I had to do was defend my title. The only problem was that I was worried about the fact that I had taken the past three days off and hadn't rowed in awhile. Regardless, when Bill yelled at all of us to head upstairs to the rower, I drew in a deep breath and set my sights on reaching 8:25.

Before we started rowing, Bill gave us some tips about pacing ourselves. I stored the information in the back of my mind, ready to implement his suggestions when I reached the allotted checkpoints. I would keep a steady pace until I reached 800 m, at 800 m I would speed up to the point where I was rowing just a 500 m pace, and at 500 m I would go "balls to the wall," as they say at the Fort.

As soon as I heard the "3-2-1-GO!," I was off, and let me tell you, it felt good. I was focused, determined and maintained a good pace throughout. I was able to pick up my pace at all the allotted check points and finish in 8:23.1, two seconds better than my original goal. When I finished, I was (tired but) happy with my time and with my improvement since the last time we did this workout in April, despite my recent lagging diet and lack of gym time.

And yes, I was also pleased that I beat the veteran and (especially) the newbie. It's not that we vets don't like newbies. We want all of the newbies to do well. *Looking down* We just don't want them to do better than us…