HEAD(hed), (n.) 1. the top part of the human body or the front part of an animal where the eyes, nose, east and mouth are. "Your brain is in your head." DIBS(dibz), (n.) 2. a thick, sweet syrup made in countries of the East, especially the Middle East, from grape juice or dates. [Arabic "debs"]--World Book Dictionary, 1976.
I’ve been spending the last few months on something I’ve always wanted to do: write a book. I’m using every possible moment on this project and it’s really coming along. I am currently 7 chapters completed out of a potential 20. However, given the source material, each chapter is just a little bit longer than the previous. So who knows when I’ll be finished. I’m learning so much tho!
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I Choose The Diamond
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I have a confession. I did not want to do the CrossFit Open 17.3 WOD. Hang with me--there's a point to this.
The more I watched the reports online and noticed what other CrossFit boxes were doing, the closer I came to ditching the effort.
Mind you, I'm an old guy, so I was already thinking of how to scale (modify) the session so something could be done with it. I decided (almost last minute) that I was not going to do 17.3. Then I got an e-mail from a guy who trains with me (you know who you are) who was very excited about doing 17.3 with whatever modification I found.
Permit me first to tell you a little about 17.3: it begins with 8 minutes of work and if the athlete completes all the work within the 8 minutes, he or she is awarded with 4 minutes of more work. If the athlete completes the additional work before time elapses, he or she receives 4 additional minutes to do (you guess it) more work. This goes on for 24 minutes, total.
Here's what happened: we got to the gym and I had a very difficult time mentally getting out of the warm-up stage (I was that excited). But like jumping off the high-dive, I started the music (Foo Fighters!), hit the clock and we all started the pull-ups.
Fast-forward to the end: I did not beat the 8 minute clock, so I did not earn the coveted addition of 4 minutes. But one guy did, so we cheered him on through his next four minutes of work. He was three reps short away from earning an additional 4 minutes when the buzzer sounded. Disappointment rained down (not really. More like, "relief").
Here's what I got out of 17.3--my buddy Brad over at SEALGrinderPT had to remind me (restated in my own words): pressure does one of two things--it either crushes or it creates diamonds. I choose the diamond.
Pressure is not fun. But what would we have without pressure? In a sense, one has a pile of untried resources that, if you think about it, aren't worth anything. Is it trash or not? To find out what it's worth, you gotta crush it.
Suffering sucks. But you gotta embrace the suck to be the diamond in the end.
Strange things happen under pressure. For one thing, there's a kind of loneliness--even if you are struggling right beside someone. It's lonely because the pain and the work is all your own. Ain't nobody going to do it for you and ain't nobody gonna hurt the way you do when it's all over.
On the other hand, the person suffering next to you--now that person understands. So you "feed" off of each other, encouraging each other along. Still doing your own work, experiencing your own pain, but together you work some, cheer some, suffer some. This is how you get through it-- together. The team who suffers together, the team who does the hard things together, comes out different in the end than when it all began.
But if the athlete never starts, he never knows.
I did 17.3 and hated it. I still do.
Do you know how long 8 minutes is? It's a like week in CrossFit time.
But I did it.
"There's no crying in CrossFit," someone reminded me before we began.
Yes, there is. It's just that everyone's too exhausted to do it.
I did it. I did 17.3, thanks to "you know who you are." And by the way, I thanked him for pushing me over my red-line.
And I am stronger.
Just a little bit more than the day before.
I'm nearly finished reading Joan Didion's collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. The book was discovered through another book I was reading, Jon Krakauer's Eiger Dreams . If Jon felt this book was good enough to pack along on a mountain climbing expedition, then I'm interested. Took me three tries, but I finally found my copy on Amazon. One of the best book buys I've made. Joan selected the title of this book from William Butler Yeats' classic poem, Second Coming . The book title is shared with one of her larger essays, a record of encounters with people in the 1960's drug culture. Didion's book is divided into three distinct parts: "Life Styles In The Golden Land," a collection of articles capturing the California experience of the 1960's; "Personals," a few of essays of the first-hand nature; and "Seven Places Of The Mind", some thoughts about those parts of California that are now long gone. One essay...
“VANITY, saith the preacher, vanity! Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back? Nephews—sons mine … ah God, I know not! Well— She, men would have to be your mother once, Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was! What’s done is done, and she is dead beside, Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since, And as she died so must we die ourselves, And thence ye may perceive the world’s a dream. Life, how and what is it? As here I lie In this state-chamber, dying by degrees, Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask “Do I live, am I dead?” Peace, peace seems all. Saint Praxed’s ever was the church for peace; And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: —Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South He graced his carrion with, God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped...
