I was amazed by how much improvement I was making athletically. I limited myself when I was in charge of my own training. I think many people fall victim to programming to their strengths and I was no different. I would avoid conditioning, focusing mostly on what I was good at. I would gravitate away from the sustained high intensity of an elegant three- or five-round CrossFit workout in favor of less challenging “every minute on the minute efforts” (EMOMs), which I found less demanding. It was an honest mistake, but with Ben in charge the training regimen was improved. I was morphing into a completely different athlete, physically. I hesitantly returned to Iceland but I missed my training and friends immediately and before I left Natick I already had firm plans to return. CFNE was becoming more like my home, and Reykjavik more of a place that I visited.
* * *
Whenever I spent time away from my coach and my training partners and CFNE the more I realized how badly I needed a team. My raw capacity was unquestionable. My Regional performances spoke for themselves. But I need my energy to be bridled and directed.
My early success had turned out to be a blessing and a curse. I was a big fish in the small pond of Europe, so I could make it to the Games, but when I got there I was awkward and uncomfortable. It felt like I didn’t belong, like I wasn’t fit enough, which took all the fun out of it. My athletic goal was simply to make it back to the Games; that was it. I was happy to rest on my laurels for another year as long as I got that T-shirt.
To make ends meet, and to make matters worse in terms of time management, I began coaching at a local gym five days a week. I wasn’t drawn to coaching by passion. It was another thing I thought I was “supposed” to do. In my mind, all Games athletes were coaches. And if you wanted to be a Games athlete, my logic dictated, you should coach, too. It was true that many Games athletes were coaches, but they were driven by passion or necessity. I had neither. I was following the herd, not my heart.
It’s not uncommon to have a job while you attend university and lots of athletes went to school or had jobs while they trained for the Games in those days. The combination of all three, however, was killing me. I would got to school from 8 a.m. to noon, train briefly, and then coach from 4 until 7 p.m.
I love helping people learn because I’ve gotten the privilege of working with so many amazing coaches and I’ve learned so much from my CrossFit career. I was excited to find creative fixes that resonated with different people. The same cue seldom works for two people, even if they share the same issue. Coaching was a puzzle in that way and I loved playing around with cues and remembering what worked for my clients. No matter how much I enjoyed them, three classes in a row would drain me. I would be engaging and fun for my first hour, on a roll in the second hour, and exhausted by the third. Anyone who has coached can likely attest that after three hours the quality of your product takes an abrupt nosedive.
Afterward, I still had training of my own to do, not to mention hours of schoolwork to complete. All this on an empty stomach made me feel like I was just “on the clock” and couldn’t wait for my coaching duties to end.
It stabbed at me to bring this negative energy to coaching. It wasn’t fair to the athletes coming to my classes. When I coach, I want to give everything to everyone. I want to ensure that everyone who talks to me feels important. I want to make sure they know I am interested. You never know what someone is going through and for that reason I always want to be kind.
I felt guilty, but I couldn’t snap myself out of it. I wanted people to walk into the gym and have the best hour of their day—whether they’re having a rough time at work or a horrible time at home, even if they are just having a bad day. An unmotivated Katrin, waiting for the minutes to tick by, was a disservice to them. I wanted them to have a coach who was ready to give everything.
Meanwhile my own training lacked inspiration after an afternoon of coaching. I would head into my studies completely exhausted. I was falling asleep regularly while reading or studying, and then I would show up for school late without having read anything. The other option I entertained was to stay up late and deprive myself of sleep only to be tired all day. It was a bad scene and a recipe for disaster.
Worst of all, I wasn’t enjoying or excelling at anything. I was doing lots of things okay, and nothing wonderfully. My training was terrible, my coaching was lackluster, and the combination was dramatically affecting my ability to perform to a passable level in school. Everything was going in the wrong direction. When I was training, I would feel guilty about not studying. When I was studying, I would feel bad about all the work I was not doing at the gym. I was always conflicted and unhappy.
May 2014
I returned to CFNE in May for a Regionals training camp. The Europe Regional was just outside Copenhagen the second week of May and I had my work cut out for me. Sam Briggs was the defending Fittest Woman on Earth and of course Annie would be in the mix. With only three qualification spots to the Games up for grabs, there wasn’t much wiggle room.
The event organizers had released all the events for the 2014 Regionals on April 30, a few days before I arrived in Boston. Most of them lined up perfectly for me—except for the fifth event, which jumped off the page and slapped me in the face.
Legless rope climbs had debuted at the Games in 2013 in an event called “Legless.” Every athlete struggled with it. Only two women in the entire field finished the event in its entirety. I was exceptionally weak, only completing one successful climb in ten minutes, for which I fought tooth and nail.
Event 5 became the center of my universe in a very bad way. I was overflowing with anxiety and I had trouble getting it out of my head. Becoming unnerved had become a yearly ritual. In other words, panicking was a part of my process and not at all surprising. Regionals was the worst, because it was the gatekeeper. Since my measure of success was simply qualifying, Regionals decided if I could maintain my death grip on the label “CrossFit Games athlete” for one more year. Once I was qualified for the Games, the worst that could happen was last place. A few small mistakes or one devastating event at Regionals could wreck my season and, more important, my sense of identity.
It would have been easier for me not to know. Having the events in advance wreaked havoc on my mind. Everyone in the CFNE camp practiced them repeatedly, gauging the stimulus and tweaking strategies. When I didn’t execute perfectly in my practice runs, I’d lose my composure. I’d become overly analytical and anxious, then I would work myself up to the point of tears. I would literally cry right there in front of everyone in the gym. I was shameless.
My body was more fit than it had ever been, but the space between my ears was still a mess. I was nineteen, but I was acting like a child. I was immature and I needed strong boundaries, which Ben established in a very specific dose of tough love. I’ll never forget the day or the impact it had on me. This was the singular event that started me down the path to a complete overhaul of my attitude toward life. It’s the first time I remember focusing on improvement through character building and not physical exercise. It’s when our coach-to-athlete relationship turned a corner as well.
While we practiced the long chipper slated for Sunday at Regionals, I went to the dark side. I tend to put everything into my back when I’m pulling from the ground. When deadlifts are light enough, I hardly even bend my legs. This leaves me fried when high repetitions have to come off the floor, and Event 6 included 100 deadlifts along with a boatload of other work.
The event was already brutal and now my back was on fire from my poor mechanics. By the time I got to the box jump-overs, I wanted to stop and cry. I wasn’t happy with how I was doing or how I was handling it. When I finished the workout, I immediately took my weight belt off and threw it against the wall. I stormed out the side door of the gym and sat on the patio, upset with myself. Yes, I threw a temper tantrum.
Ben followed me outside, walked over to where I had planted myself, and descended into a squat so we were making eye contact. He was calm. An
d stern, like a caring parent who wants to guide their children.
“That’s not what we do here.”
That’s all that he said.
I wasn’t angry or defensive. I agreed, in fact. I felt like an idiot and wished I could do it over. I decided right then and there that nothing like that would ever happen again. It’s not how I wanted to carry myself.
We don’t do that here, I repeated silently to myself as I nodded. “Okay.”
This was a wake-up call. My parents and grandparents had taught me that “how you do something is how you do everything.” But I had fallen into some bad habits when things weren’t going my way. It was time to focus on more than just the results of the workout. From the moment Ben said those words to me I have tried to be an example of poise. I want to represent myself proudly. Now when other people act childish or immature, I’m the one who calls them out. I’m the one who lets them know “That’s not what we do here.”
I effectively eliminated temper tantrums, which was easy enough with some dedicated focus, but I couldn’t stop myself from crying every time we practiced Event 5.
This is the one, the voice in my head would say. This will keep me out of the Games.
After one of our sessions, Ben approached me while I was cooling down on the treadmill.
“Things are not going to go as planned,” he said.
I was immediately defensive. What a strange way to start a conversation. I couldn’t understand why he was being so negative or why on Earth he would say that out loud. I was already unsettled about the potential disaster that awaited me.
“I want you to picture that. Visualize things going wrong. How will you address them?”
I had always thought visualization meant that by picturing actions and events to perfection you could ensure a better outcome. If the wheels start to come off when you play the game in the real world, then you’re toast. Your best bet is to hang on for dear life.
What Ben was trying to do was prepare me for things to not go smoothly, which is what happens far more often in real life. When “Plan A” isn’t going well, how do you adjust? What is your “Plan B”? This was five days before competition, and in my mind I was married to “Plan A”—pull and pray.
May 17, 2014—Copenhagen
When I arrived in Denmark, everyone commented about how different I looked and how much my fitness had seemingly improved over last year. My time at CFNE had more of an impact than I realized. I felt like a different athlete. I felt like I was truly fit for the first time in my career. But in the back of my mind, there was a constant terror that the rope climbs would expose my weakness on Day 2 of competition.
The first day could not have gone any better. The first two events were back-to-back gifts: snatching followed by handstand walking. On the barbell, I tied for third and set a personal record on my hang squat snatch. I didn’t just win the handstand walk in Europe, I set the high water mark for the entire world. I exceeded my expectations in Nasty Girls V2, tying Annie for sixth place. I finished Day 1 tied for first with Caroline Fryklund. I was killing it, but all I could think about during my exit interviews and even dinner that night were the rope climbs that awaited me the next day.
I breezed through Saturday morning’s triplet, preoccupied the entire time by what might happen if I failed to perform a miracle on the ropes. I went back to the warm-up area to get some rest and change clothes. I had an hour to unwind and all I wanted to do was relax and listen to music, but crazy took over my brain. I obsessed over the leaderboard, trying to figure out what sorts of epic failures my lead could survive. I was in first place by 5 points—not a comfortable buffer. In great detail, I repeatedly envisioned catastrophe. Sam Briggs, the defending Games champion, recorded twenty-sixth place on the handstand walk the day before and was fighting herself out of a hole. I hoped people would focus on her and not me. I wondered how the other girls would pace the workout, and studied them during warm-ups. I thought about all the wrong things.
I was terrified and forced myself to keep moving just to keep my brain occupied. I’m pretty certain this was not what Ben meant when he suggested that I visualize the possibility of something going wrong. I was picturing everything going wrong. It was time to warm up; I would be taking the floor soon. When Athlete Control lined us up for our heat, I felt like I was being marched out in front of a firing squad.
As the overall leader, my lane was dead center on the competition floor, sandwiched between Annie and Caroline. We stood next to our “chess pieces,” four-sided, chest-high foam pads that we advance each round to show our progress for the fans. Right then I wanted to hollow mine out and hide inside of it. Better still, I wished I was invisible. Meanwhile, spectators poured inside to watch the top women’s heat.
A loud buzzer started the event. I was shocked at how fast every other women in the heat took off. They were sprinting to the ropes. Had it been any other event, I would have chased them down. But I knew from practicing at CFNE that the reward of keeping up with the leaders would be short lived. I was slow but consistent in my approach.
My key to staying alive was time management. Wait too long and I would run out of time. Move too fast and risk a costly failed rep. Sam, Annie, and Caroline, on the other hand, were all done with three climbs in the first sixty seconds of the event.
My first two climbs felt far better than I had anticipated. I picked up my pace slightly but it still wasn’t enough to make me breathe hard. I surveyed the other lanes while I commuted between the ropes and my chess piece. Sam lapped me on my third climb. She was on the attack and fearless. I was in awe of her. Her composure was almost annoying as she strode across the floor, smacking gum the whole time and staring stoically into the distance. Annie and Caroline lapped me at the chess piece, half a round behind Sam. They were actually speeding up.
The chess pieces painted a dreary picture of what was transpiring, with mine glaringly lonely in the leaders lane, two or three rounds behind the women in the surrounding lanes. I fought through my fourth rep, while Sam was on her eighth. She crossed the finish line in 4:31. She didn’t just win the heat—she set a world record in the event. A handful of girls finished shortly after and crumpled to the floor with exhaustion. So much for the diversion I had wanted. All the attention would soon turn to me.
The top of the rope is a terrifying place. Fourteen feet above the ground doesn’t sound that high. When you’re exhausted, however, and your forearms feel like bags of sand, making your grip unreliable, you might as well be hanging from a hot-air balloon.
All I had to do was reach up and touch the beam. On my seventh climb, I had to fight hard against my instincts to release my grip on the rope and make the touch. I got it, but the increase in effort it required bounced around in my head.
Only three to go, I told myself as I started to believe that just maybe I could pull this off.
More and more women were finishing. I was going to have a bad finish no matter what, but maybe I could avoid a complete disaster and minimize the damage.
Four and a half minutes remained in the event as I walked from the chess piece to the rope.
You’ve got time, I told myself. Get your ass up that rope.
Then all of my worst fears became reality.
During my eighth climb, I found myself at the top of the rope but uncertain if I could successfully touch the beam.
This has to happen, I told myself.
A missed rep would spell disaster. I simply couldn’t afford it. I wasn’t out of breath, but all the muscles in my upper body were burning and bursting. I took a gamble, throwing my right hand up toward the crossbeam, using the left to death grip the rope. I missed by inches and was sent back to the ground in free fall. Survival instincts sent both hands in search of anything to grab. They found the rope, saving me from injury but scorching my hands with a friction burn.
That’s it. I just failed to make the Games, I told myself before I made contact with the ground. Then, Bang!
T
he floodgates in my mind exploded open and a tidal wave of negativity engulfed my last remaining life raft of positivity. I felt embarrassed and exposed in front of all those people. Time stopped for a moment as the thoughts raced through my head, then everything came crashing down. To my surprise, I didn’t even get up. I rolled over, sat on my heels, covered my face, and unsuccessfully fought back tears.
With three minutes and thirty seconds on the clock, I quit.
Sam had now been done with her workout for almost four minutes. She and Bjork Odinsdottir had walked back to the ropes from their finish line on the opposite side of the competition floor. Sam took a knee and talked me off the cliff.
“You’ve got one minute, then you go. Give me one rope climb, got it?”
Sam’s thick Mancunian accent had no sympathy.
“Now get up,” she said.
It was an order.
According to Sam’s plan, I would jump up for my next attempt with two minutes remaining in the workout. I had forty-five seconds to collect myself. I walked toward the finish mat, away from the ropes. Annie approached me and offered her counsel as well.
Sam and Annie flanked me on the walk back to the rope. Then Sam counted down for me.
“Four, three, two, one—go!”
I stepped up to the rope and jumped. Surprisingly, my body had regained some energy. My pull stayed strong until I approached the top. Three strong kips and I reached the top! My hands pressed against the massive braided eyelet that attached the rope to the steel rig. All I had to do was reach out. It was less than a foot. But my mind wouldn’t allow it. I had gained the height I needed on my next kip, but my hands maintained a death grip on the rope. The effort was just wasted energy. I tried again with the same result.
I lost all momentum and hung awkwardly at the top of the rope in a half pull-up. I was stuck like a cat in a tree. My target was right there, just above eye level. I could almost hit it with my head, it was so close, but the muscles in my arms belligerently anchored me to safety with every ounce of strength in my body. I stayed frozen there for what felt like an eternity before I conceded defeat and gave up. Gravity took over and the manila rope turned into a coarse fireman’s pole.
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