Not sure if this is the intent but I thought I'd write it as a story.
I started CrossFit late 2009 but have been a competitive masters athlete a while longer. After moving to the US from the Netherlands in 2004 I started rowing again. After a few years I was deeply involved in training and competition, so much that I managed to make the final in the US National Championships (Open age) lightweight single in 2009. And then I got hurt. Twice. Because each injury took months to heal, I almost went nuts by not going any training. Somebody directed me to the CrossFit main page, and they had programmed handstand push-ups for the day. Of course there was no way in the world that I could do this, but it sounded so cool that I had to get into it. So I started "CrossFitting" (parentheses because I had no barbell, no clue on how to do things and used my daughter's swing set for pull-up attempts) in the back yard. After a few weeks I decided to join an affiliate to properly learn some things.
I went back and forth between rowing and CrossFit, and still do, although I have focused on trying to make it to the Games for the last two years. I aimed for 2017 because I just turned 45 and the Qualifier in 2015 made it clear that I probably would not qualify in 2016 either. Everybody keeps getting better and there are always these pesky young people coming into an age group, so I figured that I should aim to improve to a level such that, in 2017, I would have made the Games in 2015 in the 40-44 age group. I still think that this is about right. Looking at the athlete profiles, one of the things that really scared me was the fact that everybody had a 135# snatch. Mine was 115# at the time and for the life of me, I had no idea how to make it better.
Perhaps an interesting detail is that in the summer of 2015 I took my daughter (and husband part-time) on a humongous, 2-month, cross-country road trip. It was absolutely wonderful. We saw 17 national parks, Cities from Detroit to Seattle to New Orleans, did a rim-to-rim hike across the Grand Canyon, and met some of the craziest and most wonderful people in the world.
But it was also a problem: how to train? Dropping into affiliates was (and turned out to be) a great option for stays in cities, but we were planning to do a lot of camping in remote areas and I wasn't going to sacrifice hours every day just to get to a gym. So I took a barbell. And not just that. I also took rings (pro-tip: trees don't work well for this; try to find a playground), a kettlebell, my jump rope, and various other implements. My coach gave me 4 days of programming each week, and I did things the best I could, while also doing classes at the various affiliates I visited, often with my daughter. It worked out great. At the end of the trip, I even PR'ed my clean and jerk at CrossFit 901: a wonderful Memphis affiliate.
Last year I joined CompTrain Masters for programming and had the great honor and pleasure to go to one of Ben Bergeron's and Katrin Davidsdottir's training camps. It was an absolute blast, and I learned things that have been invaluable. Training has been going well, with ups and downs, the downs invariably being injuries. But I still had not got that 135# snatch. I'd gotten close: 130#, but it was an ugly starfish and I knew that I would never get truly better without improving technique. So I worked on mobility, did Cross-Over Symmetry ever day, and decreased the loading until I could get it (reasonably) right. I was getting closer, but, when the 2017 Open came around, still had not made the lift.
So it was with positive dread that I heard the 17.3 workout. The only good thing about it, from my perspective, was that the C2Bs really wouldn't be a factor. I'm not very good at those, but at least they were only a minor part of the workout.
On Friday morning my friend and reciprocal judge Morgan did it first. She was in a similar situation and she PR'ed her snatch at 135#! She even came close to getting another rep or 2 in but didn't. It was very exciting to watch. When it was my turn. the rounds of 65 and 95 were uneventful. I had about 5 minutes left for the 135# snatch, and I figured that one successful attempt was better than 30 unsuccessful ones. So I took a lift at 105; then one at 115, and then put 125 on the bar.
I failed it. Not just once, but twice. With about 45 seconds left, I decided that I wasn't going to try the 125 again. But I had to try the 135. So I looked at the bar, summoning anger and defiance at the weight. I yelled at it: "Hah!" And with 15 seconds left on the clock, I set up and made the lift. I think that the office workers across the large parking lot heard me yell when I stood it up.
In the end it was barely enough. An Achilles injury kept me from doing double-unders in the months leading up to the Open and 17.5 was positively dreadful. After the Qualifier I was 21st, so I thought that I wouldn't be going to the Games. And that was ok. In the end, it's about the journey, and the journey had been incredible. But I'm stoked to add another chapter.
