Track in Iceland is divided into four seasons, a repeating cycle of build-up seasons and competition seasons. I joined the club during the build-up season, which involved conditioning all the time. Perfect. I was going six days a week and spending a majority of my free time on the track.
It wasn’t until the competition season arrived that I realized I didn’t have an actual event. This presented a problem. The competition season was organized around the event. Training sessions were lighter, with rest and recovery and maintenance days. The abundance of competing and lack of training was exactly the opposite of what I was looking for. I was just trying out events and never really knew what I was doing. I didn’t have an event of my own and I didn’t like all the stumbling and failures. I endured the competition season and did another build-up season, which I loved. The coaches taught me a little bit about how I should be eating and I was feeling good about how I looked and felt.
I wanted to do the heptathlon, but my mind-set was a little bit skewed. I had tried my hand early on with the long and high jumps with very bad results. In my head, I thought this would clearly eliminate me as a contender from the heptathlon, so I moved on. My close friend is nationally ranked in the heptathlon. When I told her that story, she laughed at me and pointed out that she had been training in these events since she was six years old. I walked in off the street and quit because I was unsuccessful on my first try. Without the diversity of the heptathlon I was certain that I would get bored with a single event, and my track career ended shortly after. You can’t be unhappy with yourself if you hadn’t put in the hard work, but I had yet to learn that.
* * *
That summer I came back to the States to visit my family in Atlanta, Georgia. I always worked particularly hard in the summer, but now I had nowhere to direct my efforts. Even when we had breaks from gymnastics growing up, I filled any gaps in training by exercising or creating my own routines every single day. I have always loved exercise.
I joined a local globo gym and hit it hard all summer long. I would take multiple classes a day like Spin or Body Pump, whatever fit my schedule, really. I would also run every morning, which forced me to get up before sunrise to avoid the oppressive Southern heat. By now I was very conscious of what I was putting in my body. I drank tons of water and leaned heavily on smoothies and salads. I was deathly afraid of carbohydrates.
I had natural athletic talent and boundless energy, but I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do with my athletic future. For the better part of a year, I had gone through the motions athletically. I would go back to gymnastics sporadically, but I didn’t want to compete. I just wanted to train and to be there at the gym. I gave track another halfhearted attempt.
As directionless as I felt, the universe was diligently conspiring behind my back to align the stars that would lead me to CrossFit. While it can take me longer than I might like to find the hidden meaning in life’s events, I have no doubt that everything happens for a reason.
My best friend growing up was a girl named Heiddis Anna Ludiksdottir. We did gymnastics together, but when I switched clubs she left to pursue pole vaulting. She was always telling me about this girl named Annie Mist Thorisdottir who trained with her. Annie was really good at pole vault, even though it was hardly getting a fraction of her attention. She divided time between Bootcamp classes and some “CrossFit” thing.
In the lead-up to Annie’s trip to the 2011 CrossFit Games, a documentary about her was released. I had seen parts of it and was intrigued. This gave me a vague idea of who Annie was. My friend Heiddis Anna kept talking about her. She told me how good Annie was without even trying and how much potential she had, if she would just stop running off to this Bootcamp thing. She was notorious for being late to training because of other training. Apparently Annie was unstoppable.
I was always the one in gymnastics who constantly asked for conditioning. I craved it and exercise has always made me feel good. Annie was the same way. Heidis Anna would often remind me how similar the two of us were. Heiddis Anna was the first one who mentioned Bootcamp and encouraged me to try it while I was stepping between both gymnastics and track.
“You’re a little crazy like her,” she said. “You should do CrossFit.”
For some reason I couldn’t be convinced. I needed a spark of motivation badly. I was in my final year of college. I was uninspired and bored. Later that summer my motivation hit an all-time low.
That’s when “Iceland Annie” brought CrossFit, along with a gold medal, back to the island.
4
THOR’S DAUGHTER
ÞÓRISDÓTTIR
In the hotbeds the right butterfly wingflap was causing talent hurricanes.
—DANIEL COYLE, THE TALENT CODE
Fall 2011
Icelanders refer to ourselves as a unit.
“We qualified for the World Cup. We have such strong women.”
We are very proud of the successes of our “sons” and “dóttirs.” That’s how it was in 2011 when “We won the CrossFit Games” with “Iceland Annie” Mist Thorisdottir.
“þetta reddast” is a common phrase we use. It’s the Icelandic way of saying, “It will all be good.” We use it to remind ourselves that things tend to work out for the best, even if it’s not “all good” at the moment. Most households and businesses will have the news on and everyone talks about it the following day. The news is less depressing in Iceland and just about anything can make it on air. If a lamb gets stuck in a fence and it needs saving, for example, it’s on the news. Everyone knows everyone. Instead of six degrees of separation, in Iceland, it’s more like two.
Annie’s winning the CrossFit Games was all over the television and the newspapers. A documentary team had been following her on her journey, which added to the excitement. When she won, she became a national hero and an instant celebrity. She had traveled to the United States, performed what seemed to be every movement under the sun, and been crowned Fittest on Earth. Not in Iceland. Not in Europe. Not in the United States—on Earth.
This really put us on the map. Annie winning the Games validated for the world what Icelanders had held as a truism: that Icelandic women are mightily strong. There were parades and celebrations. Everywhere you turned, people were talking about it—cafés, shops, bookstores. You couldn’t buy groceries without hearing about Annie Thorisdottir and her amazing fitness exploits. Her success was a boon for Icelandic sports and we were very proud.
CrossFit blew up in popularity as well, and everyone wanted to try the new sport. Because of Iceland’s humble size the effects were magnified. Annie became a household name as everyone in Iceland talked about fitness, CrossFit, and the CrossFit Games. I watched, too, and was captivated by the images I saw on TV. Videos and pictures were shared all over Facebook and Icelandic websites. They featured athletes from many different backgrounds with amazing bodies doing crazy things. It was all set in a world-class facility under the sunny skies of Southern California. Thousands of spectators who looked like competitors themselves were clearly enthralled with the spectacle.
Annie was on display, climbing ropes, pulling sleds, hoisting weights, and doing movements I had never seen or heard of before. She looked untouchable, like a Viking shield maiden. But Heiddis Anna had already told me about her. “Iceland Annie” was just a girl from the nearby coastal town. We were more alike than we were different.
“Katrin, you could be so good at this,” my mother and Amma observed. “Why don’t you try it?”
I knew that they were right so I called CrossFit BC, the operators of Bootcamp, immediately. It was the gym where Annie trained. I was there the next day, ready.
* * *
With Bootcamp, it was love at first try. The angst I had been feeling after gymnastics and track were instantly a thing of the past. I felt like I had found my home. The sessions were massive outdoor beatdowns. They were heavy on cardio and bodyweight movements and mimicked military training. The trainers would act more like drill instruc
tors than coaches. We would grind for hours on end and work so hard.
When I was a kid I was interested in the army. But I’m afraid of guns, don’t like violence, and never wanted to fight. I just liked the idea of training professionally. I wanted to try my hand at all the cool stuff you see in movies. Bootcamp gave me a taste of that crazy that I’d always wanted to try.
The coaches loved challenging athletes. If I were holding a sandbag, they would come and exchange it for a heavier one. If your push-ups were strong, they would put a heavy load on your back and make you hold the plank position. Often the idea was to challenge you mentally. Everyone—and I mean everyone—will reach a physical breaking point sooner or later. Most Bootcamp sessions taught you to realize what you can accomplish once you’ve passed that breaking point.
There was also a premium placed on competition. There was a lot of running. Coaches would pair me up with the fastest and I would kill myself to try to win. I was addicted: The mix of mental challenges and competition fanned the flame inside of me to a red-hot glow. I wanted to see how far I could push myself. It was a constant challenge and I was working out with so many people that it kept it fun in spite of the craziness. And there was always someone to compete against. I learned to seek hard work over everything because we didn’t work on a clock. You would just grind and try to find new limits for yourself every day. Each session left me sweaty and filthy, exhausted but fulfilled.
Where Bootcamp lent itself to the formation of pure work capacity, I was told CrossFit would introduce me to more technical movements and challenges. The coaches suggested that I alternate Bootcamp days with CrossFit days.
I felt nervous about CrossFit. I didn’t know a single person there, and the classes were confusing just to an observer. Watching people cycle through the gym made me dizzy. I couldn’t figure out how everyone knew where they were supposed to be. Some were doing pull-ups, others were lifting weights. There were people with kettlebells buzzing around. It looked like fitness chaos. I could not figure out what they were doing to save my life.
My official introduction to CrossFit was far less sexy than my intro to Bootcamp. I was placed in the Elements class just like everyone else and I hated it. I caught on quick, so the pace of the class felt slow. It was too easy and I wanted to do more. But I kept my mouth shut and just waited.
The first time I saw Annie, I was participating in Elements. She was teaching a regular group class, and the workout featured handstands. I had lived on my hands for almost a decade. Handstands were my best party trick and I wished I could be in that room showing off my skills. Instead I was stuck in the side room, shoulder-pressing a piece of PVC plumbing pipe. I had not anticipated being so starstruck just by spotting her, but she was a pretty big celebrity, especially to me.
Oh damn, Annie’s coaching, I thought.
I admired the way she carried herself and you could see that she commanded respect. She told me years later that she had been eyeing me up to gauge my potential as well, saying to herself, Damn, who is this girl?
I really looked up to Annie. I remember when she said my name for the first time. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but what it represented to me was acknowledgment, and in my mind, it was huge. I do my best to use people’s names now because of the impact that had on me. Interactions mean so much more and I can connect so much better when I remember people’s names.
In Elements, we spent fifty minutes focused on technical work, followed by a short workout. I’ll never forget the first workout I was given because I thought it was a joke at first. It was a five-minute AMRAP of box step-ups and push-ups, barely a warm-up for me. My inner sled dog was dying to run. But I knew the on-ramp classes wouldn’t last forever, and I picked up a lot of information that helped me immensely.
After Elements, it was time to pay for a punch card and transition into the general membership of the gym. I didn’t have a lot of money and I really had not enjoyed Elements. My plan was to gracefully exit CrossFit and only attend Bootcamp, but the coaches at CrossFit BC wouldn’t take no for an answer. They included a three-month CrossFit card with my Bootcamp membership.
When I got into the classes, it was a completely different speed. I loved it more than anything I had tried before. I felt like I was born to do CrossFit. Everything about it made me happy. Each day presented a new challenge. It was a roller-coaster ride of huge improvements followed by even bigger ego checks. I had never squatted before I tried CrossFit. My only real weightlifting experience involved light body-pump circuits and core work. I had only touched a barbell a handful of times during track, when we did power cleans. I remember thinking that I would be good with the lifts because I had well-defined biceps. I had a lot to learn.
Just like everyone who walks into CrossFit, I quickly discovered my strengths and weaknesses. I was pleasantly surprised by my abilities on the barbell and distraught by some of the gymnastics skills that did not transfer over from my formal training. I was infatuated. This was the most unique challenge I had ever faced and it changed every day.
Success came extremely quickly with the barbell when I did finally get my hands on it. Within a month, I could snatch my body weight. Part of my success came from being fearless on the lifts. I would throw myself under the bar on a snatch without a second thought. I was also so new that I was trying to max out every single time I snatched. I would fail over and over again at maximum weight, then reset and try it over and over again until I was either successful or too exhausted to continue. I would never do that now, but experience is the greatest teacher.
My affinity for the snatch and clean and jerk gained the attention of the Olympic-weightlifting coaches in Iceland. I took them up on offers for a few sessions and learned a lot. There was no way that weightlifting alone could maintain my focus and drive, but I loved doing it inside the framework of my CrossFit training. My legs were surprisingly weak. I would make up for it by leveraging my back to whip the bar up. My power clean was solid and I could put anything that I got to my shoulder over my head.
Everyone who has tried it knows that CrossFit gives and CrossFit takes away. For all my success on the barbell, the gymnastic rings were my absolute nemesis. Muscle-ups were the first movement I ever encountered that I physically could not do. Other people were getting themselves on top of the rings and I couldn’t for a million dollars. As an athlete, nothing made me crazier. I was following the formula and working so hard, and still failed to make progress. I would tell myself stories in my head, like that I was built strangely and that a limitation of my anatomy was probably to blame. I thought it was reasonable to believe I owned the only body in the gym physically incapable of the muscle-up.
Acquiring that skill became an obsession. I watched every single video on the internet of coaches teaching muscle-ups and athletes performing them. I watched so many videos of Canadian CrossFit athlete Camille Leblanc-Bazinet doing muscle-ups that I felt like we were close friends. Sometimes I watched them in slow motion, clicking through them frame by frame, trying to crack the code or witness the black magic that would make me move like her.
Carl Paoli, a former gymnast from Spain, was producing instructional videos out of San Francisco CrossFit. They were phenomenal and I worked on every single skill and progression I could find. I showed up early for training and work progressions. Of course, with a false grip, it’s only so long until you’re going to start bleeding all over the place. That was my process: I would drill every day before class until my hands bled. I would work on muscle-ups whenever I could. I was obsessed. On Fridays, I didn’t start classes until 10 a.m., so I would drive to my old gymnastics gym and work on the rings continuously until it was time for class. It went on like this every day for two months. I couldn’t figure out why girls who I surpassed in any other movement in the gym could swing around me like monkeys while I was cemented to the floor, watching.
In the fall, I was visiting Reebok CrossFit Thames, the gym owned by Annie’s coach, Jami Tikkanen. Jami was out of
town at the time, but one of his coaches was working with me after class. Maybe it was the right cue, maybe the pressure of being at another gym, or maybe it was just the product of all my hard work, but something sparked the magic and I found myself on top of the rings. I almost exploded I was so ecstatic. I kicked my feet spastically and screamed at the top of my lungs. I didn’t come down for what felt like a minute. The feeling of working so hard and then succeeding was too sweet, and I wanted to live there forever. When I finally got down, I hugged everyone in sight.
I was smiling ear to ear and beaming on the way home, as happy as I had ever been. I felt victorious and elated until a thought occurred to me, What if I can never do that again? My joy dissolved into panic and I couldn’t sleep. I showed up to the gym early the next day to see if my new skill had mysteriously disappeared overnight. It had not and I was happy again. This cycle repeated itself for a week. The joy of a successful muscle-up was followed by dread that it would be the last time I saw the view from on top of the rings. For months, I had to test the skill every single week to make sure I still had it.
Winter, 2012
When I was only a few weeks into CrossFit, three girls who had competed at the CrossFit Games on a team attended the class before mine. They wrote their times on the whiteboard and when I realized I had beaten all of them, my confidence surged. Hey, I’m good at this. When I spoke to my mom later on the phone, I remember declaring to her, “Mom, I’m gonna make Regionals.” Of course she was on board. I was serious and determined from the moment I began CrossFit. Now I had goals.
Sometime around Christmas I remember setting my sights even higher, saying, “I’m going to make the CrossFit Games.” At my cousin’s house I had acquired one of the Livestrong bracelets that were popular at the time. I had no idea what it meant, but was attracted to the bright-yellow color that caught your attention and loved that it said “strong.” My cousin parted with the rubber bracelet easily. I put it on and decided it would serve as my reminder that I was going to go to the CrossFit Games. This was the first time I used a bracelet as a reminder. Now it’s a thing.
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