13 Things I Learned in 2013

It's that special time of the year when I reflect on lessons that I have learned in the last twelve months.

1. CrossFit is life changing. In six months my life went from empty to overwhelmingly full. I am stronger physically, mentally, and emotionally. I feel human. I have hope.

2. I have true girlfriends. A pretty awful thing happened this year and I learned that I have seven women in my life that are completely there for me. I didn't really let them in but knowing that they supported me meant more than I think I bothered to tell them. So ladies, thank you.

Fitting In as Much Fitness as Possible in 2013

It's recently come to my attention that some of my readers are not pleased with the focus on CrossFit and preferred the days when posts were almost exclusively about running. Well I went for a run today and my knees hurt so don't get your hopes up anytime soon. I went to my last WOD of 2013 this morning and then came home to find the cleaning couple cleaning my parents' house. I didn't want to get in their way so I changed and headed out for a run. It was probably about 3 miles but my phone died, which meant no GPS tracking and no music. I promptly turned around and was left with my own thoughts. And my own thoughts apparently go straight to imagining my future glory at a Team Dangerous team WOD with 30 of my closest CFHK friends.

it's 21 degrees out and this is my 44 oz iced coffee

CrossFit Collages from December

Here are some photos from December that never made it into their own posts.

I think I'm getting bigger and I bet a lot of it has to do with poor food choices (Cheetos, Chinese, cookies), but putting on muscle has hopefully also played a part. I like this blog post on accepting your CrossFit body and was glad to see that other women can't fit into their damn clothing anymore either.

Can never have too many locker room selfies.

Volunteering at Tough Mudder Tri-State

Way back on October 12, my friend Susie and I volunteered at Tough Mudder Tri-State. If you have the opportunity to volunteer, I highly recommend it. Not only do you get to participate in a future Mudder of your choice for only $20, you get to spend the day with some pretty awesome people.

We manned the Phoenix obstacle. We all know how I feel about pyrotechnics so I was effing thrilled. The most amazing part of the day was witnessing the love the guys from the Adaptive Sports Foundation showed each other as they completed every single obstacle, no matter what. I was honored to carry their packs around to the other side of the pit.

Enjoy the photos. If they say Tough Mudder on them, they are property of Tough Mudder.

Trust, Goals, and Growth

As I was gathering my thoughts for this year's XX Things I Learned in 20XX post, I started reflecting a lot on personal growth, setting goals, and trust.

I think I've grown a lot as a human being this year. I don't feel the need to hide behind the overly friendly, too loud, larger than life and always up for a party persona I created to basically just deal with people so many years ago. I feel more present, less manipulative, and I'm not going through the motions as a means to an end. As the Lumineers (anyone else secretly love their music but feel ashamed to admit it?) say, "It's better to feel pain than nothing at all." Feelings ain't so bad. They're actually kind of refreshing and break up the monotony of the day and week.

I had to set so many goals when I was teaching that the word actually makes me cringe a little bit. Backwards planning, benchmarks, progress to goal... These are things that I've applied to CrossFit. I told myself that I was going to have three consecutive pull-ups by Christmas Day and I figured out what I needed to learn to do to get that done, including accepting feedback about using my lats and reassessing my progress. I didn't have access to a pull-up bar until today but guess who has THREE CONSECUTIVE PULL-UPS? This girl. The first two I banged out but the third took a little extra effort, but at no point did my hands leave the bar nor did my feet make contact with the ground. Setting goals is a good thing because it makes me push myself to be better. My self-performance review at work always includes me admitting that I never believe my work is good enough for the next day because whatever is good today should be better tomorrow. Continuously improving and relentless pursuit of results.

Trust is a crazy thing when it comes to human relationships. I believe that you will act in a certain way so I allow you to get close to me and I confide in you? That sounds pretty risky to me. 

If you haven't seen the meme for this yet, let me pass off: 

“Friendship is weird. You pick a human you’ve met and you’re like, "yup I like this one," and you just do stuff with them," as my own.
(Source: MandySchmandy)

12 Days of Christmas CrossFit Kilo Style

This morning I had the pleasure of celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas CrossFit Kilo style. I commandeered the rental vehicle for the drive up to Cedar Falls and I remembered how much I love me a Tahoe. It was about a 40-minute drive but totally worth it.

because who doesn't do this in their hotel room?

Home for the Holidays

I came back to Long Island last night and leave for Iowa in a few hours. I obviously couldn't leave without making it to CrossFit Central LI so I drove over this morning for the 5:45 AM WOD.

I was a little sleep deprived/hungover from my cough medicine, but felt pretty good going into it.

WOD
5 rounds
:
Deadlift 4 Reps @same weight as last week

30 Double Unders

5 rounds
:
5 Power Cleans @185/125

10 Burpees

Brittany's Birthday Burpees

A little over a year ago I met my friend Brittany at a work conference. She's based out of our New Jersey office so I get to see her but not nearly enough. She started CrossFit about a month after I did and she goes to CrossFit Jersey City. They had a scheduled rest day so Brittany came to CFHK with me for a birthday WOD. I was so excited to spend this morning with her!

Deadlift PR

Monday is deadlift day and since deadlifts are my favorite, it is always an awesome day even when it also includes handstand push-ups and toes-to-bar and other necessary evils. I went to the 9 PM class after putting in a full day of work, which included trying to track down the grant application process for an organization whose website is a hot mess of interactive icons. I don't care how cool it looks - if it's adding time to my brief research, I hate your marketing people.

I was very excited to get downstairs to let out some of the aggression I felt towards these web designers. Since I was able to lift 143# pretty easily during our last wave 3, I told myself I should aim for 155#. I have that Big Lifts app but I'm pretty sure I didn't set it up properly and I just keep overwriting my original numbers with new numbers and screwing the whole thing up. When I got to 125#, I was like this is too easy so I decided to throw some more weight on there. If it was too heavy, I'd take it off. It's not like I've gotten to the point where I can't admit that something is too heavy for me - I just wanted to see if I could push myself. I got 6 reps at 183# so I'm standing by my decision to see what was possible.

A Sense of Humor

People often point out to me that while I may initially get very upset about incidents or situations, I usually calm down pretty quickly and approach whatever bothered me more rationally. I can be very logical, perhaps to a fault, because I can take all of the emotions out of a situation and see it as  a cut and dry series of events. That might explain why some people have the misperception that nothing ever gets to me. I just think I tend to see the humor in situations. If you don't laugh at yourself, no one can laugh with you. (Very profound, I know.)

If you had told me six months ago that I would be calling the 23-year-old (now 24) for advice about a guy I like who doesn't like me (blows my mind too), I would have told you that you were insane. We weren't speaking and the kid once admitted to having the relationship skills of Miley Cyrus. Now he's happily dating the love of his life and spouting wisdom like he's Dr. Phil if Dr. Phil made any sense at all.

no really he did and then I sent it to Texts From Last Night

Friday Confessional

I have a confession to make. I used to like musicals A LOT. I've seen Annie Get Your Gun, Camelot, Carousel, Cats, Footloose, Grease (twice), Guys and Dolls (at least twice), Jersey Boys, Jesus Christ Superstar, Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, The King and I, Les Miserables (three times), The Music Man, Oklahoma!, Once Upon a Mattress, Peter Pan, The Phantom of the Opera, Ragtime (twice, it wasn't any better the second time), The Red Shoes, and I can't remember if I saw South Pacific or just memorized the soundtrack. I even went to, wait for it, musical theatre camp.

Now I hate musicals. Everything about them makes me uncomfortable. Why are they breaking into song? And why are they smiling so wide? Is it time for intermission? Can I sneak out at intermission? I went to Jersey Boys last year somewhat against my will and I promptly closed my eyes and pretended I was just listening to Frankie Valli, whom I love dearly. A couple of uncomfortable hours later (anyone else notice that the actress that played his heroin addicted daughter also played the dancer/prostitute that wanted him to cheat on his wife?), and I was telling myself that at least it wasn't The Lion King or Rent. God, I cannot imagine a worse musical experience than Rent.

The BEST Day EVER

Kate's Facebook status this morning

Deadlifts and That Time I Could Have Died

Remember that time I fell off the rig with my foot trapped in a band on my fiftieth pull-up and all of the 8:10 and 9 PM classes let out a collective gasp? Yup. That happened. I landed on my well-padded rump and was perfectly fine, but I think I scared a few people when it happened.

sometimes you have to work with what you've got

Being a Big Girl

So this morning I woke up in a t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off and I have to say, I looked fucking awesome. Then I found a video of me ugly crying on my phone. If I sent that to you, I am so so sorry.

I woke up this morning feeling awesome because I went home alone last night at a reasonable hour like a big girl. And by reasonable hour, I believe it was 3 AM but at least I didn't shut down the bar. Anyway...

Make NYC Your Gym

This temporary tattoo is the brainchild of somebody at NYC's Health and Parks Departments. The Make NYC Your Gym campaign kicked off in 2011 and these are still floating around the office. Taking this charge to heart, I found a new use for scaffolding.

CrossFit with Friends

This morning I woke up and realized I was going to be late for the 9 AM WOD I had sort of entertained going to in my head. And then I checked Facebook. I got back in bed for another 45 minutes, took a leisurely shower, chugged an Alka-Seltzer, and didn't bring my gym bag because classes were cancelled today.

But then they weren't.

Rest, a Four Letter Word and Other Challenges

Today is my rest day and I am already feeling anxious and restless. I don't like to rest, I find it difficult to sleep, and I prefer to be moving. But you don't get stronger if you don't let your muscles recover, so today I'm taking the day off from CrossFit and will likely find myself running instead.

December is a new month and it's time to challenge myself.

Yesterday, December 1, I returned to my apartment with two closets full of clean clothing and one closet full of clean linens. Can I go until December 22 without doing laundry?

Yes, my studio apartment has 3 closets.

I might not have 18 sports bras and I know I have to buy some black tights, but otherwise I think I've got this.

Sunday Funday: Let's Pack as Much Fun Into Today as Possible

This morning I was in my car by 7:45 AM on my way to the Greenbelt Trail to meet my running friend Michael for a quick run. We were supposed to do the full 15ish mile loop yesterday but there was a bit of a miscommunication. Since I absolutely refuse to miss Oly Sunday if I am on Long Island, I had exactly one hour to run and not a minute more.

It was a warm 36 degrees this morning so I wore compression calves sleeves and compression arm sleeves underneath leggings, a tech long-sleeved shirt, and my winter running jacket. I also wore gloves and a hat.

As you can see, I am thrilled to be freezing my ass off in my car.