Rising Above Part 4

This is Part 4 of a 4 part series. read parts 1-3 Here.

2018 Prelims, in my original 2014 Prelims t-shirt and now constantly blue hair.

By the time 2018 Prelims rolled around, I had launched as a Camp Gladiator trainer despite my worst fears (another story for another time). I was no longer the shy girl who didn’t talk at camp. I was in my element there, knew people at each workout I went to, joked and danced around whether I was leading camp or participating, and dared to show more of myself to others. I was used to being the fastest or close to fastest wherever I went to work out. I wish I could say I no longer had the burning need to beat everyone around me, but I did. I was still jealous of the people who were faster than me. I still thought that doing well in CG Games had something to do with my self worth.

But the rush of affection and support that people expressed when I left Fit4Mom and moved to Camp Gladiator took me by surprise. I was humbled to learn how many people’s lives I had touched more than I realized in the midst of my own journey. And my heart glowed with the knowledge that I wasn’t alone in life anymore. So many people were also happy to touch my life (and my son’s life) and make them better. I needed that for many many reasons, not least of which was the infancy of loving and valuing myself.

CG Games was my passion. I loved the rush of the competition and the feel of everyone cheering you on. I loved how we as competitors connected over how hard it was and shouted each other out for our performances. I loved that the CG community had grown to include people from all ages and walks of life, and how everyone had started doing CG Games, not just the people trying to qualify for Finals.

I’d qualified for Finals every year since that first qualification. I finally felt confident enough that it was no longer a question of whether I would qualify for Finals, but in what place. I worked a lot that year on believing in myself, on my mental game. In 2018, I could run somewhere around a 6:15 mile and used 35 lb and 40 lb dumbbells at camp. I was in the best shape of my life. I finished Prelims in 14th place, and declared to everyone that I would finish Finals in the top five.

Then one month before CG Games Finals, I told my husband I wanted a divorce.

Whatever It Takes

2018 CG Games RDU crew. One of the best parts about Finals was getting together and hanging out outside of the competition all weekend. That part brought me true joy.

We’d been together 18 years, since I was 16 years old. I didn’t know adult life without him. All that kept me going through the next month was the knowledge that I had to take care of my son, and that I couldn’t let myself down with Finals coming up. Still, I had no appetite, and while I tried to make myself eat, I lost a lot of weight in a short period. I wasn’t sleeping. I started getting lightheaded doing normal activities. All I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and not move. Instead, I kept putting one foot in front of the other. I had been through impossibly hard things before, and took strength from that knowledge. I kept reminding myself I could survive this, too.

2018 First Finals event. This was the only picture of me competing that year. I felt like I had faded back into the background in the midst of my pain.

Appropriately enough, the day of Finals dawned cold and gray. There was a sea of heartbreak inside me, and waves of fear and self-hatred kept crashing over my head. I wept in between events. I messed up simple transitions and berated myself for it. I think I did really well, but I felt like I failed.

I remember the day in steely gray flashes: Warming up in the bathrooms because it was the only heated area. My lungs screaming in the cold, a cough following me all day long. Missing a burpee hop in the Interval Event and having to go back and do it so I was one of the last ones done on that interval. Lying inverted with my legs against a wall trying to recover before my next event, then getting up not feeling better at all. Repeatedly dropping steelbells in the Strength event; no matter how much I screamed at my freezing hands to hold on, the steelbells kept ending up on the ground at my feet. My bloody fingernails after that event.

I did do well in the Endurance event, and made it through 70 battle rope jump ropes, a new move to me, to finish in the top 10 for that event.

I didn’t do better than the year before. I didn’t finish in the top 5. I didn’t make it to Super Finals. It’s significant that I don’t remember what place I finished in. All I remember is how unhappy I was. The people around me were what kept me going.

Crown

During the week, my back was a little tight. It felt worse that Saturday morning. I was at a friend’s house later and finally had to lie down on the floor. When it was time to leave, I couldn’t get up without whimpering.

A few weeks after my now ex moved out, in the midst of grieving and trying to figure out a new life, my back went out. I’d had back spasms before, but this was different. For days I didn’t get up off the couch except to pee. I had to slide a pocket door open and closed to get to the bathroom, and I couldn’t help moaning with that small effort. Fortunately, my son was with my ex during the worst of those days so he didn’t have to see it and be frightened.

It was the worst pain of my life other than childbirth. My hips were frozen cocked to the right so severely that when I looked in the mirror I thought something (although I wasn’t sure what it would be) must have been dislocated. At work those first few days, I stayed upright as long as possible, but to my chagrin ended up hanging onto my speaker and eventually lying down partway through camp. I couldn’t afford subs, so I (for better or for worse) kept showing up. When I finally was able to whimper my way to the PT (driving felt like fire consuming my hips, and I had to brace myself against the steering wheel to ease the pain in my back to something survivable), she determined I had a bulging disc in my lower back.

The mind-body connection is a powerful thing. I have no doubt stress helped trigger this event. In fact, looking back at the last few times I’d had (smaller) back issues, I was able to link them all to particularly challenging times.

I was determined I’d only be out for a couple weeks. After all, this was going to be MY YEAR at CG Games. I was going to keep building on the best shape of my life and get even stronger and faster. A new Prelims event had come out and it was tailored to my fitness strengths. My bib even had my lucky numbers in it. I was going to make it to those elusive Super Finals, be one of those golden athletes competing in front of everyone (finally seen!) for the prize money. A few days later, the sign-up for CG Games Prelims came out. I registered while lying on the couch, eating uncooked Kodiak cake pancake batter because I couldn’t stand up long enough to prepare food for myself.

That was February. In June, I was finally cleared to start full impact activities again. I was desperate to go hard at camp again. I’d kept going to camp to ‘work out’ because that was the only way I’d do my PT exercises and it was my happy place. But I’d had to let go of the idea of being the fastest person there, or even of doing the same exercises as everyone else. For a long time, all I could do were hip bridges and plank position exercises like push-ups. Slowly I’d built in upper body work without too much weight, and made up my own modifications for things like burpees (they became push-up blast-offs). When I was teaching camp, campers volunteered to demonstrate exercises for me. Sometimes when I tried to run, I’d have to stop in the middle of the parking lot, lie down, and do a cobra pose to make the pain ease. Then I’d do a careful little trot, and finally power walk.

It wasn’t all bad. I strengthened my core immensely through that time, was forced to focus on form over speed (hey, shoulda been doing that all along!), and actually conquered one of my arch-nemeses: push-ups. But still. Through some of the more hellish months of my life, I couldn’t fall back on the one thing that had so reliably gotten me through hard times in the past: working out.

I had to learn some really hard lessons that year. I went from pushing myself through two workouts a day to listening to the pain every time it rose up, and dialing my efforts back. I had to build in rest days and go to PT and the chiropractor and learn to recover. I could no longer berate myself for missing workouts; I had to give myself kindness and grace. It turns out that was one of my bigger steps on the road to learning self-love.

I still can’t thank all the people who helped me enough.

I also had to learn to ask for help. I had always just taken care of everything myself, because in the past I hadn’t had a lot of support and I didn’t want to bother anyone, but suddenly that was no longer possible. At first, I needed people to bring my son and me food and do my dishes while I lay on the floor and talked to them. That summer, I moved out of the home my son had grown up in, and I still wasn’t supposed to lift heavy things. Terrified that no one would volunteer, I forced myself to ask anyway.

. . . And was blown away when dozens of people gave up their time to help me sort through a lifetime of accumulated detritus, discard memories I couldn’t stand to hold onto anymore, and move into my first home I would have alone. An entire community rallied around me. I finally began to realize I didn’t have to win anything to be seen. I already was.

I was overjoyed to start exercising harder again that summer, but also terrified of relapsing. I was told my disc would be more likely to bulge again in the future. Instead of jumping right back into things, I eased in tentatively, while simultaneously trying to prepare for Games in six short weeks.

When practicing the event, though, I angered my back again. Three weeks until Prelims. I was so scared and defeated.

I rested and scaled things back the next three weeks. The week before Prelims, I didn’t work out at all. I skipped competing the first weekend, and just judged, to preserve my back. I knew I’d only get one shot—very different from previous years, when I’d practiced over and over again and knew exactly how the events felt and how fast I wanted to go. It was nerve-wracking to walk in almost as blind as I had that very first year.

Instead, I focused on cheering on the people I’d been training. When I’d become a trainer the year before, CG Games had taken on a new dimension, as I got to help others achieve their dreams. This year, in spite of—no, because of—the heartbreak and changes in my life, everything was more intense, and I was so much more alive. So this year I loved judging even more, and as a bonus, many of the people I trained, competed. I got to see campers experience the same elation I’d felt at having completed something they thought they couldn’t do. I got to make the magic happen instead of just benefitting from it. I felt so much a part of the community, I wanted to cry.

2019 Getting to cheer on campers through their own journeys became the greatest joy yet in CG Games.

The day of competition came and just like every year, I was nervous. I’d been down for the count for months. I’d gained body fat, lost muscle, and I wasn’t sure I could even make it through the course (for the first time, there was only one mega event). My priorities were different this year:

Don’t injure myself again (there was no way I wanted to relive that experience). I promised myself I would walk off if I had to.
Do the best I could.
Finish in 18-19 minutes and hope that was fast enough to qualify. My practice time had been over 19 minutes in the blazing heat.

The butterflies still invaded my stomach as I walked up to the field that morning.

I gingerly began the first lap with a sandbell on my shoulder and waved happily to the campers in the stands cheering my name. I kept my pace steady and careful. As I ran, a strange kind of peace came over me that I’d never had before during Prelims. I was doing it, I was moving again! And I was surrounded by this amazing community. It was like Joy had been running behind me this whole time, trying to catch up while I frantically ran ahead. When I finally slowed down that year, it overtook me.

I cheered other competitors on as I went. I was careful with every move on the field, going steadily to make sure the hurdle hops didn’t jar my back, keeping perfect form on my squats so when I picked up something heavy I didn’t throw my back out. When I got to the rucksack portion, I did my first thruster with it and then looked up at the judge/trainer in front of me and laughed, because it didn’t hurt my back at all. I’m sure she thought I was delirious.

2019 reverse crab walk. (Photo: Doug Mall)

I ran across the finish line and sat down (well, collapsed) with a friend that I trained in the mornings and we laughed and cried together over having completed the course. When I heard my time, I gave a shout. I’d beaten my wildest goal for the event. 17:51.

That competitive part of me wasn’t gone. I really wanted to qualify, and I was disappointed to finish in 30th place. That year, they only took the top 25 individuals in each division to Finals. I indulged in some self-pity and comparison; the fastest women I knew all finished in the 15- and 16-minute range. But I also knew I’d done what I could, and I was finally able to grant myself some grace. After all I’d been through that year, I’d still almost made it. And I was pretty sure I’d still have a spot.

Wait For It

Sure enough, because people ahead of me had dropped out, a month later I was offered a spot in Finals anyway. I spent the next months carefully training, continuing PT, trying to get back into shape. November rolled around, and I wasn’t where I’d been a year before, fitness-wise. Nowhere close. But my mindset had already shifted.

I was the happiest I’d ever been at CG Games Finals that year. Instead of being terrified of letting myself down and laser-focused on how to make it through, I enjoyed the sunrise on the way to the arena. I breathed in the excitement of the day—one of my favorite days of the year—as we warmed up. I laughed with friends. I just felt so grateful to still be able to be there with everyone and compete.

It’s funny, because all the things I thought mattered, no longer did in the same way. Before, the drive had been to get the best place possible, to lose weight and get skinnier and more muscular each year, to beat more people. To prove to myself and everyone else that I was worthy. And yet here I was, heavier than I’d been in years, not as fast or as strong as I had been, and happier. That’s not to say I didn’t feel bad that I couldn’t compete like I had in the past. But I finally understood that other things mattered more, and I was becoming secure with the fact that if I didn’t perform well, it had nothing to do with who I was or how hard I had worked. It only took a major injury to get me there.

It was still hard. The event I’d finished in the top ten in the previous two years almost took me down, as I couldn’t keep up with the fastest runners anymore. I watched myself falling further and further behind on the weighted snatches and box jumps. Funnily enough, the event I expected to be worst at, Interval, ended up being one of my best events (although it still felt like the worst. I HATE sprinting). I had always been an endurance athlete, but that year, the way I had had to train had given me more short-burst abilities. On the final event, Peak, I took my time with my back, spending what felt like an interminable amount of time on top of that tall wall, trying to decide on the best way to jump down, and carefully climbing down the cargo net instead of sliding or rolling down. But that ended up being to my benefit. Some of the people who passed me at the beginning burned out towards the middle and I passed them again towards the end.

Once again, I don’t remember what place I finished in. But this time it was because it didn’t matter the same way. Needless to say, I didn’t make it to Super Finals with the golden people, but I took the most joy I’d had yet out of cheering on my friends who had. It was MY YEAR that year. Not the way I wanted, but the way I truly needed it to be.

(Side note, I just checked my placements. In 2018, in amazing physical shape but not a great mental state, I finished Finals in 19th place. In 2019, after my back injury, I finished in 18th.)

The Light

2020 was the first year that many of the people I trained made it to Finals, too. The night before was a flurry of texting people good luck, and planning times to cheer other people on in their driveways. I was as excited for them as I was for my own team.

Time has gone on, and as I’ve grown as a person and built a new life, that thought process where I equated performance with self worth has faded. Instead, I can focus now on steps to do better if I don’t like how well I performed, without hating myself for it. My confidence has grown. I’ve gotten more secure in who I actually am, what I value in life, and what I bring beautifully to the metaphorical table. And I’ve been able to continue to enjoy the competition in a new way.

I continued to grow through 2020 and COVID. Obviously, that whole experience is also another story. But when everything locked down, CG went virtual. It could have been catastrophic, but instead, the community banded together once again, and I found a new level of meaning in helping campers through historic times when we all felt the threat of isolation and death. And having those people got me through being a single mom quarantined at home with a kid who was now home as well. I shifted my focus to making my son feel safe and not alone and basically doing the same for clients. My business grew, my self-confidence as a trainer and a human being grew, and I finally felt I had my feet under me for the first time post-divorce. (Also, it was really really hard).

2020 Doing a burpee in Virtual Finals in a teammate’s driveway. Each competitor had their own laptop pointed at them so trainers could judge on Zoom.

On the Games side of things, Prelims were delayed from July to October. Then, as it became clear COVID was not over yet, Prelims were made to be virtual. For a month, we did a new event each week and recorded our times. For the first time, I was on a team. Appropriately enough, we were all single moms, which is a special kind of strong. After months of weirdness and isolation, it felt amazing to get together outside with a few people and train hard. Even though our camps were running outside again, I saw people I hadn’t seen in person in months. I think we all took a special joy out of doing the events that month.

Our team made it to Finals in fifth place. Early one November morning, we convened in a teammate’s driveway, carefully positioned our four laptops to give the best angle on each of our mats, and warmed up in the cool air. I was nervous, of course, but felt prepared. We’d strategized out each event. We knew who was fastest at each exercise. I’d prepared whiteboards to guide us through. All of the events felt so good. I didn’t have to work to remind myself of my “I feel strong” mantra; it came naturally now. We had friends rooting us on there in the driveway and more on Facebook Live. Our kids played together in the backyard and raced past our mats as we competed (this was the first time my son saw me compete, which was very special to me). Because I’d spent so much time doing planks and push-ups while my back was injured, I was even the designated push-upper during one of the events. We finished the final event and waited with bated breath for the results.

Finally they announced it: we’d clinched that top five spot I’d been dreaming of: we finished 5th.

My growing mindset took me (sometimes limping) through innumerable heartbreaks and times I thought I couldn’t go on. My sense of self grew through juggling a demanding job, the divorce process, single motherhood, trying to figure out dating as an adult, deaths, the betrayal of friends, loneliness, a global pandemic, family health issues, rewriting my entire life, raising a kid with anxiety, my own mental health challenges, and the everyday stuff. I’m not the person I was eight years ago, for many, many reasons.

It’s funny, because I used to think that if I didn’t worry about things constantly, if I didn’t care with an unhealthy intensity, I would slide back into oblivion, or get left, quiet and unnoticed, out of the spotlight. I thought if I didn’t achieve big things, I didn’t matter. I know now that’s not true. The shine comes from inside me, not from some external spotlight. And what mattered more was consistent effort, the determination to change, the willingness to face down every obstacle and come back stronger. Success from the start, which is something I used to wish I had, wouldn’t have made me who I am becoming now. It’s overcoming the hard times that builds resilience. You grow when you’re shoved (sometimes kicking and screaming) out of your comfort zone. You dare to try something new when all your old fallbacks fall through. I’m so incredibly grateful to have had my fitness communities supporting me, cheering me on, and believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself.

Deeper

2021 Prelims. I got this tattoo over the course of 2020-21. To me it symbolizes the word “rise.” (Photo: Laura Morton)

This year, I’ve been training, but not with the same dread of failing. I just kept doing the work. I went to camps regularly, ran with friends to increase my endurance and improve my pace (I’m still working on getting back to the running speed I had before I hurt my back), and kept eating well (most of the time). I also maintained a deliberate recovery schedule including yoga at least once a week and one day completely off. I modify certain exercises always (deadlifts become hip bridges; bent-over rows are plank rows; I never squat with heavy weights), and modify others when my back is tight. Turns out you can still get fit while listening to your body.

I had a goal, to beat my time from two years ago after my back injury by 52 seconds. And, of course, to help my team qualify for Finals. And while I had fleeting moments of doubt about my fitness level and our ability to qualify, I generally felt more settled than ever.

Before Prelims, I did something I’d been thinking about for years: I cut all my hair off. I was ready for a change after a number of hard things hit in the span of a short period, and I was ready to declare unequivocally who I was and what I wanted. I no longer wanted to hide on the field so others wouldn’t see me struggling. This felt like a symbolic first step. Like I was finally shedding the last layers of a cocoon I’d been transforming inside of and trying to climb out of for years. Like letting go of accommodating everyone else’s comfort at my own expense and letting myself shine.

I walked onto the field this year feeling so sure about who I am and how I look. So sure that I, someone who has never felt comfortable working out in just a sports bra no matter how hot it was or how skinny I was, stripped off my shirt and promptly forgot it was even gone.

2021. Bear crawls are one of my favorite exercises now, because they used to be so hard and scary, and now they’re not. (Photo: Laura Morton)

I really only felt nervous leading up to the start line. I took all that was going on in my personal life and fed it to the fire burning in me, and went. Yes, it was hard. Yes, I threw up in my mouth a little bit at the end. But I finished the first weekend with almost 50 seconds off my time from two years ago. I took another 30 seconds off that time the second weekend, which placed me as the 3rd fastest woman in North Carolina. If I’d been competing as an individual this year, I would have finished 9th, finally inside that top ten bracket as an individual. Our team qualified for Finals in 11th place. Our goal is to make it to Super Finals. But if we don’t, I’ll just try again next year. I have no doubt at this point that I’ll get there eventually. And if I don’t, this ride will still have been so very worth it.

The last few years have been unbelievably challenging and many times very dark. But I can also say with confidence that I am more myself than ever. I love myself in a way I never did before. I have confidence in my abilities without placing too much meaning on them. So much of that has come from getting through dark night after dark night. So much of that has come from getting through hard workout after hard workout. So much of that has come from the worst parts of this journey.