Rising Above Part 3
This is Part 3 of a 4 part series. read parts 1 & 2 Here.
After I got my invitation to Finals, I doubled down even more on training. I changed my nutrition, started treating my body as an athlete should. I discovered in this a way to love my body and a reason to value it as I never had before. It was a new step out of the negative body image I’d had my whole life, and it happened not because I lost weight but because I finally believed I was worth it. Then the weight loss followed.
The week before Finals, I tried to control or predict every variable. I watched the weather obsessively because I don’t do well in the heat. I hydrated constantly. I passed on every food that wouldn’t fuel my body for competing, choosing the healthiest food I could. I failed to get enough sleep between Daylight Savings Time change and the 2016 election, and I fretted about how that would affect my performance.
Finals were another experience altogether. We flew into Austin, TX to compete with the best of the best in CG. I could barely sleep the night before, partly because I was so nervous, partly because we were all staying in one big house together and one of our housemates snored like a freight train (he’s a nice guy so I don’t hold it against him), and partly because I’d been hydrating so hard that week I had to pee every five minutes. My only goal was to finish the same place I’d qualified at, or better, but I had no idea what to expect.
The morning of the competition, we walked up to the Circuit of the Americas before the sun rose, my heart thudding so hard it felt like it was shaking my entire body. I looked at the amazing athletes around me and all my progress of the past year vanished from my mind. I saw myself once again as the quiet girl who wasn’t really good enough.
Everything was hard, much harder than Prelims. There were things I’d never done before. One event required you to throw a 15 lb sandbell over a really high wall . . . ten times.
I had to throw backwards to get the sandbell high enough; I wasn’t strong enough to throw it while also looking where I was aiming. The first couple cleared the wall, but I was tired. Sandbell after sandbell hit the wall or missed the mark altogether. I started getting dizzy from following their path up and behind me. I finally maxed out on time for that event. I was so ashamed. All these other women could clear the wall with apparent ease; I felt like I was the only weakling there. I wanted to fade back into the background again.
Halfway through the day I hid in the bathroom to cry. After calling my husband at the time and son (they were back in NC), I soldiered on through the final two events. The last one was an obstacle course. Towards the end of the first lane, we were faced with a tall wall to climb with a rope. I’d never done anything like that before, but somehow I made it to the top, muscles trembling, and then threw myself off the other side, knees buckling under me on the soft padding of the landing zone. I smiled as I stood up and kept running.
People who’d done the course earlier in the day had advised us to roll under low walls in the next lane, but when I stood up, I was so dizzy I had to stop at the base of the balance beam and wait for the world to stop tipping before I walked across. I triumphantly made it across the cargo netting with tips from other athletes to guide me. I repeated the mantra “Don’t fall, don’t fall,” with each hand placement on the monkey bars and amazed myself by getting all the way across the first time.
Eventually I made it to a giant inflatable slide. I was exhausted and overheated at this point. I flopped my way through the pillowy path leading to the bottom of the slide. To climb it, you used cloth handles and indents in the inflatable for your feet. I made it to the top, but couldn’t find another handle to pull myself over the edge. Muscles trembling, I hung there, high in the air, and then tried to pull my leg over. Instead I missed, and started falling back down. In a save that I thought only happened in movies, I managed to grab a handle on the way down with one hand and hang there, midair, by one arm. Panic coursed through my veins as I climbed back up to the top and flopped my way over the edge. I made it through the end of the course, and then had to repeat it. Afterwards, I staggered to the scoring tent to check my place, where I stood in shock. Somehow I had managed to finish the last event in 8th place. I ended up in 24th overall. I ended the day in high spirits. Once again, I’d done this seemingly impossible thing, and while it was hard, I’d come out standing taller on the other side of it.
Then we all hunkered down and watched as the true elites competed in a final obstacle course, called Super Finals, to see who won. I was completely spent. I couldn’t imagine doing any more fitnessing that day. But a quiet part of me wanted to be one of those golden athletes.
Drive
Around Finals 2016, I set a couple goals for the following year. One was to run a sub-7 minute mile, which I did (it was miserable). The other was to qualify in the top 10 for CG Games Prelims the following year. I was flying high on the fact that I'd gone from 74th place to 26th place.
I went into the first weekend of 2017 Prelims pretty confident I'd do well. By this time, I had lots of friends in CG. I was a successful instructor with Fit4Mom. Really, I was already seen and valued by so many people. But I was only starting to see and value myself.
I started running in my first event, but I was so beside myself with nerves that I started too fast. Halfway around the first lap on the track, my legs turned to jelly and my stomach was heaving. When I started doing my first set of thrusters, I couldn't move my body fast enough, my feet slipped, my lungs heaved for air. I let the humidity and my anxiety get the better of me, and felt weak and slow. I repeated a new mantra in my head as I rounded the curve on the next run: “I feel strong.” (I still use this one to this day when I’m struggling). It changed my posture, which changed my breathing, but the damage had already been done. Prelims are always ridiculously hard (or you're not trying hard enough), but this was different. I couldn’t walk after that event; friends had to support me off the field.
Moving to the second event-- which included the weighted bear crawl that I'd been so intimidated by that first year, but which I now felt supremely confident about--I knew for my own peace of mind that I had to meet my goal for that event. But I didn't. Not even close. I lay on the ground after I was done, gasping for breath, as the judge told me my time, and my stomach dropped. Prelims had always been about beating my practice times and that didn't happen for my first two events that year. Worse, I hadn’t moved as fast as the other people I talked to. Doubts crept in and I dialed my goal back more and more. Qualify in the teens. Qualify better than I did last year. Qualify at all. It seemed like everyone was faster than me STILL. And I was back to the ever-lurking fear: what would it mean about ME as a person if I didn’t qualify? How would I handle that?
Only to get home and watch with incredulity as my place after the first round of prelims remained high. It turned out the many hours of hard work--2-a-day workouts, nutrition, running, yoga--had paid off and despite my concerns I went into the second weekend of prelims tied for 4th place--a place I'd never even been close to before, much less stayed in for any period of time.
As I drove to Durham for the second weekend of Prelims, I played the song “Drive” by Incubus on repeat and settled myself into the idea of not giving into the fear the way I’d been doing up until this point. That day, I focused on keeping my nerves under better control. I wasn't able to improve all my times, but I improved two. It was enough. After days of staring at the scoreboard, the final results came in: I was 11th in the country.
Here is what I wrote at the time:
I tell my Body Back mamas all the time that success builds on success. It's because I've seen it. Every little success I've had along this journey--running a little faster, being able to use heavier weights, keeping up with someone I didn't think I'd be able to keep up with--I've celebrated in my head, and it's driven me on to the next one. Little success after little success, for four years of incredibly hard work, has lead to this big success.
And the thing is, it hasn't just affected my fitness journey. Qualifying for Finals last year after three years of trying and two years of not making it gave me confidence to shoot for success in all aspects of my life. I don't know if I would have had the courage to send my novel off to agents when I did if it hadn't been for those past successes. I feel amazing about myself, knowing what I can achieve even though I didn't walk in the fastest person that first year. I wasn't automatically good at this. I had to claw my way up to this point. But I was able to do it, even though deep down I wasn't sure I could.It took hard work and persistence. It took me learning to believe I was capable of more than I'd done before. And it took the amazing support of my friends, family, and trainers. They believed in me when I didn't believe in myself. They calmed me down when I freaked out. They beat their goals, inspiring me to work harder. They pushed me, cheered for me, shared my obsession.
11th place might not technically be in the top 10, but in my head, I've met my goal, and I'm still reeling with shock.
How Far I’ll Go
That year in Finals, I was a different person. I’d grown so much. I’d made it through struggles with depression and anxiety and I was finally figuring out who I was and that it was okay to shine. I felt stronger and more competent. For Finals I dyed part of my hair blue, something I’d wanted to do forever, because I finally had the courage to do something that no one else around me was doing.
I was also more determined than ever. I went in having decided that I was going to complete every event in the top 5-10, and make it to Super Finals.
The first event was Endurance. I was still very nervous going in, taking an extra puff of my rescue inhaler as I felt my lungs getting questionable while I warmed up. But I felt like I belonged there that year.
Endurance was my jam and once I started moving, as always, the butterflies fluttered right out of my stomach and I settled into myself. This year, instead of just marveling at all the amazing athletes, I easily kept up with the front pack on the first run. I repeated my mantra in my head: “I feel strong.”
On the second run, we had to carry TWO 15-lb sandbells. I was so nervous about this part. While I’d come a long way from my first Prelims when one 12 lb sandbell was unbelievably heavy, two sandbells were awkward to say the least. I kept shifting them to find the best position, and they pulled my ponytail down.
Still, I held on tight and plodded through, watching race cars on a track in the distance and wheezing a “Good job!” to every friend I saw. I had enough years of competition under my belt at this point to have a strategy, too. As I got close to the mats for the next set of stationary exercises, I let the runners around me surge ahead and I slowed a bit to catch my breath. This meant I was able to go straight into the weighted squats, weighted sit-ups, and plank toe touches and plow through. When I got up this time, I noticed fewer people were ahead of me. Rinse, wash, repeat, and when I got up to sprint through the finish line, I could only see one or two people ahead of me. The screams of my workout buddies chased me across the finish line.
I collapsed on the pavement at the end of the event and wept tears of joy as reality sank in. I’d finished the event in third place. Everything I’d been envisioning for years was finally happening. This was it. I was special.
The next event involved the dreaded sandbell throws over the wall, the event that had stymied me the year before. This year, though, I’d practiced. I walked up to the line with determination, even a little sass. I threw them forward now; I’d gotten strong enough. The trainer judging me called me Wonder Woman because of my shirt, and I took that encouragement to heart. Every dang one of those sandbells sailed over the wall the first time.
Still, the middle of the day was rough and I finished those events in the middle of the pack, not near my goal of the top 5-10.
I lined up for the final event, the obstacle course, a bit disheartened, but determined to do well because I knew now this was my other strong suit. It helped my self-confidence that this year I started right around some of the other women from Raleigh, ones who’d finished far ahead of me the year before (they lined us up by our ranks in Prelims). We were able to pump each other up as we waited our turns to begin.
I felt stronger through the entire course that year. I passed people I didn’t think I could pass. With every obstacle, I pulled ahead and shouted myself along in my head. I finished something like 9th, which put me at 16th overall. Not Super Finals-worthy, which was hard, but still I was proud.
Where 2016 Finals had been a lot of me wanting to hide in the background again, 2017 Finals were about me mentally claiming a place in the spotlight of my own story.
My life and my fitness journey just kept going up and up. I decided 2018 would be my year. Little did I know what was in store for me next.
read Part 4 by clicking below.
*The names of the sections of this blog post are the names of the songs I was listening to most to pump myself up for each competition. You can find my full CG Games playlist here.