Embrace the Suck

by Stephen Madden

  Anne is the perfect example of this. When we met, in 1996, she was uncomfortable even putting her face under a shower stream. She couldn’t swim from one end of a pool to another without panicking. But after attending a few clinics and camps, and swimming twice a week without fail with a triathlon club at the Summit, New Jersey, YMCA, she’s now a respectable and fearless swimmer. And she beat me in a 5K swim once.

  One more thing: Think about how kids play in the water. They don’t swim laps. They play sharks-and-minnows and dive to the bottom of the pool and see who can hold their breath the longest and who can make the biggest splash off the diving board. They’re comfortable because they’re playing. They develop confidence through play.

  So the thought of a swim, one in which I could use fins, didn’t faze me in the least. I was with my family and would have to make sure everyone was okay, to be the sheepdog of the group, but that was fine with me. A little backing and forthing, more yards? No worries. I got this. I was sore, but I was still strong. And I was in the ocean.

  Remember cartoons from the hippie days, the ones where all the animals and races live together in peace and harmony and all the colors are superbright and the rays of the sun strong and helpful and everyone digs each other in a Technicolor kind of way and the music is groovy and everything is good and happy? That’s what this swim was like. At least, that’s what my memories of it are. I’ve done enough long swims to know that I was probably sore and chafed and really thirsty by the time I finished, but to be in eighty feet of clear, Caribbean water, doing something I love, with the people I love, and watching my kids overcome their nerves and not just thrive but succeed—Christine won her age group and got a glass medal. Catherine finished second.

  Or maybe it was swimming along and seeing turtles and rays below us, and navigating our route by the lush peaks on nearby St. Thomas.

  I know for a fact that had the kids not been there, I would have tried to race, and that would have been a disaster because I didn’t have enough left in the tank for a really hard effort. I had finished third in my age group in this race the previous two years, and I would have wanted to do that, or better, again. I would have been plagued with thoughts of how, in my late twenties and early thirties, I could go to an open-water swim race and reasonably expect to finish in the top five.

  Not this time. Instead, I sidestroked and breaststroked and dog-paddled, stopping every once in a while to make sure the kids were okay with a shaka, our agreed-upon symbol for things being good. They’d pop their heads up like seals every once in a while and yell, “Turtle!” and we’d all dive down to follow the thing as it glided along. Sometimes they’d float on their backs like otters, flutter-kicking to keep forward progress while giving their arms a break. We stopped once to form a circle in the water, everybody checking on everybody else.

  When the kids got out at the one-mile point, Anne and I kept on. She told me to go ahead, not to wait for her, but after what she did for me at Camelback, I owed her and told her I’d stay with her. “No, you’re using fins,” she said. “You’re way faster. Go ahead.”

  And so I did, letting the steady swell from the north push me along, stopping to talk to the dudes in the small boats handing out bottles of fresh water, even floating on my back to give my arms a break and take in the sky. It was amazing.

  It was amazing because I could do it. And I could do it because I was fit. Everything I had been able to achieve in the last nine days was possible because of all those moments lying on the stinky plastic turf at the Annex, staring at the ceiling, catching my breath. I was never alone when I was there. The other guys were there, but so was my mother, standing behind my father, telling me she’d drive me to the race, and that of course I could ride thirty-two miles. I was never alone over the last nine days. In fact, the efforts I thought were solo were anything but. I was carried along by the efforts of other people, and of their connection to each other. That’s why I had told Mark Divine that love was the answer. That’s what I meant.

  We had a big meal that night, with lots of good beer from the local brewery. The next day we played tennis and snorkeled.

  There was no box on St. John, but we didn’t miss it. We had our fitness.

  We had our answer.

  Epilogue

  April 12, 2014

  Anne and I did the 6 a.m. class today. There were only four of us. Nola, the coach, had us do a ton of mobility work to start and a nice long warm-up, which felt really good after the hard-lifting WOD I had put myself through last night. The three guys finishing up the early class looked like they were working hard, but nobody seemed like they were going to die. Jeff, whom I hadn’t seen in a while, looked as if he had been lifting a lot—his arms were big. I told him so, and got a shy, appreciative smile in return.

  We ran 400s in the gloaming just before dawn, the steam rising from our sweaty heads as we ran back and forth across the parking lot. We came inside and did snatches and overhead walking lunges and double unders, completed, as usual, to the background duet of the humming of the spinning ropes and the by-now ritual chant of “FUCCCCKKKK!!” from those of us inadvertently whipping ourselves with them. The whole thing was over in, for me, 15 minutes and 24 seconds. I was last. Anne ran me into the ground, as did Mark and Tim. I lifted more in the snatches, but after all this time, 400s still kill me.

  When it was over, I sat on a wooden box and caught my breath. After running 400s, it took a while. That’s when I noticed something: I was looking at the wall, not the ceiling. The workout was hard, but rather than leaving me prostrate on the floor, I was able to catch my breath while sitting on a box; I didn’t need to collapse in a heaving, sweaty heap.

  Nor did I beat myself into submission for coming in last. I had done my best. I wish I had run faster. I’ve been wishing that my entire life. But I ran as hard as I could, hard enough to get a thumbs-up from two guys walking down the street who had stumbled onto our predawn ritual. Not that affirmation from two total strangers meant all that much. But the fact that I smiled and waved in response to their small gesture of support signaled to me that I had crossed a watershed. I was running with people, measuring myself against them, but still finding joy in the movement and the freedom that came with it. I had found a pleasure and a meaning that had nothing to do with how I compared against other people. I was doing it because I could.

  A lot has changed since I began my experiment to Embrace the Suck. My body, for one. My weight has stayed pretty much the same as it was since I ended the Paleo Challenge at CrossFit Morristown. But I now have a physique the fat kid in the Husky Boy department never dreamed possible. My pants are looser and shirts and jackets are all tighter. I like having a big back, and I like seeing veins in my arms and hands. And I like not feeling a jiggle around my belt when I run to catch a train.

  There are lots of smaller, subtler changes, too. A couple of months ago, while shopping in a Walgreen’s with Christine, we found ourselves trapped in a narrow aisle. We backed up blindly to escape a crush of shopping carts coming at us from either end of the aisle. I stumbled over a stepladder, but rather than falling flat on my ass, I was able to catch my balance and stay upright. When I wondered aloud at my minor act of body control brilliance, Christine looked at me and said, simply, “CrossFit.” She was right: I had a linkage between the different parts of my body that had never existed before. I can now sprint to catch a train and actually make it. And running up the stairs at Penn Station after a workout no longer leaves me winded.

  My knowledge of diet and my appreciation for the effect it can have on that physique is much deeper than it ever was, even if I won’t fully embrace the fire breathers’ diet. Perhaps it’s lame, but I feel that there’s room in my life for both CrossFit and Peanut M&Ms, and although the two may not be complementary, they are not mutually exclusive, at least not to me.

  Perhaps that explains why certain moves continue to elude me, despite my best efforts. I still don’t have a muscle-up, and my kip still sucks. Wo
uld they come to me if I dropped another twenty pounds? Maybe. Do I lose sleep over the fact that I can’t do a muscle-up? Only when someone like Joe tells me he did fifty of them on a recent Saturday morning, as a way to mark his fiftieth birthday.

  Some things haven’t changed. Anne still calls me every morning after the 8:45 WOD to tell me how she did and grouse about how sucky running is. Lifting continues to be my favorite part of the WODs. Mickey started teaching a Saturday morning Olympic lifting class, which I go to as often as I can to have the sensei critique my form. My one-rep maxes have gone up in all of the four basic lifts thanks to Mick’s help, and to my own diligence.

  Running continues to suck for me, too, but I continue to do it, a boat against the current.

  What I no longer do is wonder whether I belong, at CrossFit or anyplace else. Not at work, not at home, not at the head of a family. It’s not about how I compare to the rest of the world. It’s about showing up and doing your best and not giving up on a promise. There’s a lesson to be learned in embracing the suck. But there’s a greater lesson to be learned in embracing it all. The stronger your arms, the tighter your embrace.

  What makes me think I can do this?

  I do.

  Acknowledgments

  Writers typically wait until the very end of their book’s acknowledgments section to thank their families, who bear the brunt of the insanity that comes from the process of writing. This is absurdly backward. So allow me to start by thanking my wife, Anne Thompson, and our children, Luke, Catherine, and Christine, for putting up with me while I wrote this book. I was physically absent most weekends for a few months while I finished the book, and even when I was around I wasn’t fully present, the act of writing being something that’s hard to put down just because you’re trying to have a nice family dinner or watch a basketball game. Plus, how many nights did I fall asleep on the couch or pull myself away from you all so I could get enough sleep before the early WOD? So to them I say: Thank you for your patience, your generosity, and your love. It is always the answer.

  Anybody who writes a fitness memoir owes a debt to those who have written on the topic before him. Specifically, I want to thank Bill Strickland and Bill McKibben, whose Ten Points and Long Distance, respectively, influenced how I came to think about writing, sports, and sports writing.

  I’d also like to thank the teachers, editors, and colleagues who helped me learn the craft of reporting, editing, and writing over the years: Sister Henrietta, ND; William Collins; John Marcham; Keith Johnson; Chris Dornan; Jack Krieger; Joe Junod; Susan Fraker; David Bauer; David Willey; Jon Dorn; Peter Flax; Jay Heinrichs; Loren Mooney; Nancy Nasworthy; Andrea Barbalich; and Paul Cody.

  In my opinion, the best chapter in Embrace the Suck is the one about the 20X, which grew out of an assignment from Reader’s Digest. I owe a very special debt of gratitude to Reader’s Digest editor-in-chief Liz Vaccariello for believing in what must have seemed a very counterintuitive piece for her magazine, and carefully shepherding it from a raw assemblage of words about pain and fatigue into a narrative that held the key to the answer to a lifetime of self-doubt. Would that all writers had such thoughtful editing.

  At CrossFit Annex, in Chatham, New Jersey, a thanks for the friendship and encouragement go to Nola Gephart, Steve Gephart, Jerry Donini, Leo Paytas, Dave Rudder, Joe Berkery, John LeRoy, Tommy Fuccello, Stefan Weber, Muffie Roarke, John Paone, Matt Spiegel, Crystal Paone, Beth DeCicco, Matt DeCicco, Edwin Rambusch, Martin Rambusch, Chris Duignan, and Lisa Coleman. Special thanks to Mickey Brueckner for being such a good coach and even more so for building such a strong and special community within his place of business. Some businesses change lives for the better; the Annex is one of them.

  At CrossFit Morristown (now Guerrilla Fitness), thanks to Karianne Dickson, Leo Munoz, and Mike DelaTorre for their enthusiasm and generosity in teaching me the fundamentals of CrossFit. Thanks also to Greg Glassman for thinking up this stuff and making it open source, and to Tony Budding for explaining things so clearly.

  At HarperWave, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my editor, Karen Rinaldi, who entertained the idea of a book about CrossFit way back when, before CrossFit had entered the mainstream, and who pushed me to places I didn’t want to go in order to tell this story completely. Karen is a fine editor, a bad-ass water woman, and an even better psychologist, who pulled much of this book from under the shale ledges in my psyche, and for that I will always be grateful. Also, thanks to the entire HarperWave team, especially Jake Zebede, Heather Drucker, Tom Hopke Jr., and the countless others who helped get this book into the light of day.

  After almost fifty years of doing this stuff, the list of people who have shared the pain and the fun of the pursuit might be incomplete, but I need to acknowledge the following people for sharing the pleasure and the pain of the workouts and the discovery. John Griffin, Bill Elberry, Michael Green, Coach John Normant, Charles Lyons, Matthew Stewart, Christine Rossiter, Shelly Matheney, Kevin Valleley, Steve Somogy, Phil “The Hammer” Iorio, Francesca Crannell, Trish Pagliarulo, Seth Cohen, Craig Schiffer, Mike Fabajanic, Carl Sangree, Chris Lambiase, and Terry Londeree.

  I also need to thank United Airlines and New Jersey Transit for providing environments surprisingly conducive to writing if not to comfort, and to the family at Drip Coffee in Madison, New Jersey, for their care for and support of freeloading writers who pay $4.28 for a double espresso then take up space for two hours or more. Thanks also to Starbucks the world over for doing the same thing.

  And finally, thanks to my siblings—Maryellen, Bob, Dick, Tim, and Paul—and siblings-in-law—Beth and Michael—who taught me how to read and write, and how to skate, ride, run, and hit. We don’t say it to each other enough, but we should: Love is the answer.

  About the Author

  STEPHEN MADDEN is a writer and editor who has held staff positions at a number of publications and websites, including Fortune, Sports Illustrated, and Bicycling, which won two National Magazine Awards while he was editor-in-chief. Madden was a founder of Sports On Earth as well as Fitbie and Outdoor Explorer. An avid CrossFitter, swimmer, and cyclist, he lives in Chatham, New Jersey, with his wife, Anne Thompson, and children, Luke, Catherine, and Christine. This is his first book.

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  Credits

  Cover design by James Iacobelli

  Cover photographs: © Corey Jenkins Cultura Limited SuperStock (man); © Peshkova / Shutterstock (brick wall)

  Copyright

  EMBRACE THE SUCK. Copyright © 2014 by Stephen Madden. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN: 978-0-06-225786-4

  EPub Edition DECEMBER 2014 ISBN 9780062257888

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