Ironic that I should have written Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable a day or two before we tackled Eva at Potomac CrossFit. For those of you that don’t know, Eva is 5 rounds of 800m run, 30 kettle bell swings at 72lbs, and 30 pull-ups. If you are scoring at home that is 2.5 miles of running, 150 KB swings, and 150 pull-ups.
Needless to say, I got killed. After round three I had nothing left. I have only reached that point a few times in my life. One was mile 20 of a marathon. It becomes VERY clear VERY quickly that whatever goal you may have set for yourself is going to fall by the wayside and all you can hope for is to finish. In the case of the marathon, I ran/limped the last 6.2 miles but I did not walk. In the case of Eva, I just finished … slowly.
Facing failure is important. I suppose I didn’t technically fail, but I came face to face with my inadequacy. I abandoned all intensity or sense of urgency and merely plodded along because I couldn’t stand the thought of giving up. I don’t know if this workout actually helped to improve my fitness. It may have actually hurt it. But that’s not the only reason I CrossFit, so I’m glad I made it through a miserable experience that had me muttering to myself for the last 20 minutes, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Don’t believe me? The pictures don’t lie.
This is exactly how I felt about the heavy cleans, arghhhh. Great posts.