The Climb

Someone I love very much is having health problems. The kind of health problems that make you wonder if we all have invisible clocks above our heads ticking down the days we have on earth from the time we're born. This person has already overcome so much and this is a cruel blow.

I know that taking care of yourself is no guarantee that catastrophic illness won't occur. It's becoming painfully clear that our days are numbered and it's important to live every day. Give it our best.

Last night was a tough WOD. It was a series of 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 reps of strict shoulder presses and medball clean wall balls. Both of those are tough enough but there was a rope climb in between each round. Doing a rope climb when there's no pressure is one thing, doing them as fast as possible because there's other people who want the rope is very different, as I found. I attempted every single rope climb but most times I didn't get all the way up. The thing about rope climbs is that once you lose your footing it's pretty hard to get it back 10-15 ft in the air. Going down the rope without a foothold was scary. I was terrified I'd slide down and rip open my hands or my thighs.

Here's a photo that pretty much captures the "Oh, f*ck" moment when I lost my footing.



I was really disappointed I didn't make every rope climb because I know I can do them.

Fast forward to today with the rough news about my loved one. I was having a crappy day at work (aren't they all, though?), 4 hour commute, I was sore from last night. I had checked the blog and saw what tonight's WOD was and there was no way I wanted to do it. I was dead tired and I just wanted to drive the 2 hours home, get in bed, and try to forget the day. On the drive home I started to break the WOD down into parts:

25 pullups -- okay, I could do that.
50 deadlifts: yeah, I can do that, too. Not Rx it but I could do it.
50 pushups: I'd be able to do them if I broke them up into sets of 5 sets of 10.
50 box jumps: okay, I hate those but I've done them before.
50 floor wipers: I didn't know what those were but how bad could they be (answer: bad!)
50 kettleball clean and press: since that came near the end of the WOD I would just use whatever weight kettlebell I could handle
25 pullups -- when you know it's the last 25 you can get through them

I decided it was doable. And would go a long way to improve my mood. So I went. I usually workout with the 5:30 class so they were all finishing when I showed up for the 6:30. While they were finishing I went over to the rope and did a climb without any problem. So I felt a little redeemed.

Then I realized that I was the only one for the 6:30 class. Besides being last, being alone with the coach is probably the worst thing that could happen. The pressure! But she was going to do the WOD with me so we were in it together.

It was hard. And I didn't come close to Rxing the weight. But that's not what tonight was about for me. It was about not going home and feeling sorry for myself. It was about not using a little muscle soreness as an excuse to do something I knew I was capable of. It was about showing up and using the opportunity I had today to work toward my goal. Because I was lucky enough to have this day.