Iris Dunkle

Four years ago, I sat in a doctor’s office listening to the physician tell me that my knee would need to be replaced within the next three years. I was thirty-nine years old. I’d spent my entire life being active: as a competitive swimmer, a triathlete and a master swimmer. But I’d gone to see the doctor because I couldn’t swim, bike or run without pain and swelling in my knee. When I was 22, I’d been hit by car as a pedestrian in New York City. The accident left me unable to walk for a year. I worked hard to recover and did, but now, 17 years later, my accident had come back to haunt me. My doctor suggested taking up a different sport. “How about yoga?” He suggested. But, when I tried, I felt like an imposter at the back of the hot yoga studio. That’s when my friend suggested I join her at one of her CrossFit classes. “I think you’ll really like it,” she said. And she was absolutely right. Within the first month of beginning CrossFit, I became hooked, albeit cautiously. I mean, wasn’t CrossFit a fitness cult? Didn’t people who did CrossFit become super muscular? I proceeded carefully. I went three days a week and just “had fun”. My body got stronger, but I kept an eye on it to make sure it didn’t build too much muscle. I still felt like I looked like a woman and I could fit into regular clothes. The first summer I started doing CrossFit, I remember watching the CrossFit games on T.V. Katrin Tanja Davidsdottir, Tia-Clair Toomey, and Ragnheiður Sara Sigmundsdottir were competing to become the fittest women in the world. At first, I was taken aback by their almost reptilian abs, and their thick legs. Thanks to everything I had ever read and seen what I saw before me on the television looked strange: like some sort of anomaly. What I would soon learn though is that in reality, there are millions of women in this world who look or want to look like those strong women. For four days the women battled doing things I couldn’t even dream being able to do. Those “freak” body were carrying the women in them through incredible feats. That day I started to ask myself, what if I let myself get strong? What if I was strong enough to do what those women were doing? My progress at CrossFit was has been slow but steady. When I started, I could barely do a pull-up and I was always afraid that I would injure my knee so I was very cautious. My first named workout was Annie (double-unders and sit-ups). I could barely do single-unders and each sit-up felt like a battle. The workout seemed to take forever, but even as I struggled what amazed me was how the other members of the class cheered me on. No matter how long it took me to complete a workout, no matter how much I had to modify, I felt supported and welcomed into the community. That’s when I knew I had found my people. By my second and third year, I started to be less cautious about my knee. My legs were muscular again and my knee pain was almost completely gone. I no longer believed I’d have to get a knee replacement, at least not for a long time. I stated to get some of the complex movements: rope climbs, double-unders, hang snatches and hand stand push-ups and even a bar muscle up. I learned that I loved to lift heavy and with the help of the coaches, I started to hit PRs on my 1 RMs. One of my proudest days at CrossFit was when I hit my deadlift PR. I liked how if I pushed myself, I could achieve more than I expected or believed I could do. My body began to feel like my own again. I wasn’t injured. I didn’t have to be careful. It was the machine that could take me where I wanted to go. The open is one of my favorite parts of CrossFit because not only do you get to push yourself beyond your limits, you get to cheer on and watch everyone else in the gym doing the same thing. The open gives you a marker to watch your progress from year to year. The first year I competed in the open, I had only been doing CrossFit for eight months and I had to modify most workouts. But, by the third year I was able to complete all of the workouts RX and was shocked that my scores put me in the 85-90 percentile of my age group. Last January, I signed up for my first competition. I was terrified. But, when I got there to compete, I realized I was surrounded by my community. We cheered each other on. We shared war stories about what happened during events and we celebrated each other. I not only survived, but I did better than I expected. Now, I look forward to competing in more CrossFit competitions in my future. This community has carried me through some of the darkest times in my life, including my mother’s cancer diagnosis, treatment and death. Having a place to go each day where I knew I could push myself, where I knew I could laugh and complain with my classmates, where I knew the coaches would have my back, meant everything to me. CrossFit and this community have made me a stronger person, both inside and out. For the past year, I’ve been going to CrossFit six days a week, and working on my nutrition and my muscles have bloomed. I have stepped back into the body of an athlete at 45 and I have found a community where being physically strong is celebrated. I still have so many movements I want to achieve: ring muscle-ups, handstand walks, heavy squat snatches and better squats, but I know if I stick with it, I will find a way to achieve them. I am so grateful to have found this amazing community. I can’t wait to see where it takes me next.