While I did not appreciate such a high dose of honesty, I could tell it came from a place of concern. I was a complete mess and in no shape at all. I looked and felt heavy and sluggish. I was so tired.
Boston was able to rejuvenate me. When I was there, I was a professional athlete. It was nothing but training and recovery, with no distractions or obligations. Progress came quickly in this environment and my fitness returned to an acceptable level by the end of the month.
My grades were submitted while I was at the camp. I went online to check them and stared at the screen, frozen in shock. I had failed. It was the first time in my life that I had failed anything in school.
When I returned to Iceland, I met with my instructor to see where I had gone wrong. It turned out that I had only failed by a fraction of a point. The content they were looking for was there, but not in the way they wanted it presented. I thought that I deserved more credit so I argued my case, but to no avail.
I hated the feeling of failure. After Regionals, this felt like adding insult to injury. I felt an emotional tornado whipping up inside of me. I was disappointed in myself and mad at my instructors. It tore me up inside and embarrassed me to my core. It would take me a long time to understand why this had happened.
I had to face some difficult realities. Success had come easily in school and in CrossFit when my ambitions were low. Now they had both leveled. If I wanted to be the best, it would take my full and undivided effort.
My mom was the first one to suggest taking a break from school. I was shocked she even mentioned it. My family has an academic tradition; it put tremendous value on higher education. I wanted to please my family by following my scripted path. There were things I was supposed to be, and things I was supposed to do. I was even more astonished when my grandmother agreed with my mother.
“Katrin, this is what we’re doing right now. It’s not permanent. You don’t know what you want to do with your life and it’s okay to take some time off to figure that out. In the meantime,” she said with a smile, “you go and train!”
I struggled with these notions before realizing that these people who loved me and understood me better than anyone might just be onto something. I gave myself permission to take off one semester.
But only one, I told myself.
9
COACH
ÞJÁLFARI
If you want to take the island, burn the boats.
—JULIUS CAESAR
I took the semester off and stopped coaching completely. I threw myself into my training with a laser focus on becoming the best possible version of myself. Ben likes to say, “You can only do the best you can in the place that you are with what you have available.” In Boston, I would have the best tools in the world—coaching and training partners—at my disposal. During my extended stay in New England the year before, I had accidentally stumbled into living like a professional athlete. Now I was going to do it on purpose.
Without the burdens of school and work, I felt like a million pounds had been lifted from my chest. I was training with an accomplished coach full-time and I was paying attention to my diet. I took control of all the factors that were under my control, both inside and outside the walls of the gym. Most significant, I had no distractions or obligations. All I had to do was train.
CFNE operates like a fitness academy. The quality of the coaching and collective interest in learning made me feel like I’d transferred schools instead of leaving. CFNE creates and attracts excellent athletes. On any given day you can find elite Masters athletes, world-class teams, multiyear individual veterans of the CrossFit Games, and a handful of Regional-caliber athletes with ambitions for the Games sharing the gym and pushing one another.
The biggest difference was that CFNE’s competitors weren’t splintered into groups pursuing individual training programs. They were one huge elite group of trainees. And they had the desire to be led. I was used to Iceland, where group classes were the norm and elite athletes would isolate themselves—with or without training partners—to attack their personalized programming. They offered each other pointers and input, but not real coaching.
When I first came to CFNE, I wasn’t looking for a coach. I was coming to train with a motivated group of athletes. I wanted to be in that environment to push myself. But the first thing I noticed was not the athletes’ performances but their deference to Ben. He was regularly running classes with ten, sometimes fifteen, of the best competitors in the sport.
The realization hit me: I had never been coached in CrossFit. Not like this, anyway. This was foreign to me and what I missed most about my gymnastics career. The last time I had an athlete-coach relationship was with Vladmir at Armann. Like my Russian coach, Ben had the intangible qualities of a great leader. These qualities come hardwired into a person’s character. They distinguish the good from the great and they can’t be taught. I couldn’t articulate it then, but Ben had a quiet command of the room that I had never experienced before. We were a pack of very fit alpha personalities, but everyone listened when he talked. Maybe because Ben doesn’t say much, the athletes wanted to hear what he had to say.
No one really had coaches back then, but Ben coached us. After workouts as we were sprawled out on the floor, Ben would often talk about mind-set: “Guys this is it. You need to tell yourself that you worked hard. I know your legs are burning and your lungs are bleeding. We love this feeling. This feeling is why you’re here; it’s what’s making you better.” Lying on the floor, unable to find a position that was comfortable, I would think: Yes! This is what I want.
This was the beginning of my mind-set shifting. I was nineteen, and these practices and people were the best influences I ever could have found. The books I was reading presented new ideas and philosophies, and Ben and our practices at CFNE helped me to actually put them into play. This solidified them, it made them real.
Ben says only what he means, and he hands out praise sparingly. A “good job,” from Ben is a rare event, and usually meant you had done something truly exceptional. Most of his feedback was reserved for areas where we could improve.
I liked that his feedback never had any hidden meaning. Ben has a way of presenting constructive criticism that makes that clear. I never worried that he might be second-guessing whether I belonged there or whether I was good enough, or that he might think I wasn’t trying hard enough. Ben just told the truth, in a way that reminded me of my dad. This kind of feedback is actually quite rare, but I leaned into it. I don’t need someone to tell me I’m great all the time, and it annoys me if all I hear is “good, good, good.” Give me something I can learn from, or feedback that will make me better. I know when I’m good. I want a coach to tell me where I can be great.
There was no cheerleading during training at CFNE, just statements of fact. I’d be killing myself on hill sprint intervals, and Ben would very matter-of-factly read off the time that was ticking off on his stopwatch. “Fifty-four seconds … Kat; one minute … Rachel; one minute, seven … Ally.” I’d go again and the cycle would repeat. As an athlete, that taught me a lot. Without any external praise for my effort, I was forced to turn inward for the positive feedback I was so badly craving.
I was forced to constantly question my level of effort: Am I working hard enough? Could I go faster? Could I have pushed more? I came to realize that I was the only one who would ever know if my performance reflected my best effort. I was learning so much about myself as an athlete. I was starting to understand what it meant to truly work hard.
* * *
In many ways, the coaching I was getting at CFNE reminded me of gymnastics back in Iceland. It started with respect. The first thing we did upon arriving at Armann for training every day was salute our coach, make eye contact, and greet him by name. “Good morning, Vladmir.” The exchange was a sign of respect. It would set the tone that you were there to be coached and you recognized he was in charge. You would thank your coach in a similar fashion when you left. This is how it was a
t CFNE: a big group of people who showed up on time ready to work. Ben was there to coach and everyone listened.
All the things I loved about gymnastics were present in some degree at CFNE. In gymnastics, the higher my coaches’ expectations, the more I loved it. I didn’t want happy and bubbly. I wanted them to push me and show me I could do things I didn’t think I could. That was Ben. I loved that he would hold me accountable when I wanted to quit. I wanted to be held to that high standard.
When you have a coach who is there for you every day when you show up and, in return, expects you are going to deliver your best effort, it creates a bond. With Ben, it started to feel like we were training together and working toward a common goal. As we tried new strategies, things started to click. We were reading the same books and discussing the concepts. We were learning and practicing techniques for building a stronger mind. There was growth happening well beyond the walls of the gym, and I could feel the momentum starting to build.
I’m not the same athlete I was when I met Ben. Ben is not the same coach he was when I moved to Boston. Although he had experienced success and produced Games-caliber athletes, he wasn’t where he wanted to be. It all came together at the perfect time. I was ready to learn, and I was excited to take in new ideas not just for my training, but for my life.
My biggest takeaway was that doing my absolute best is the ideal outcome. I realized I didn’t have to do anything special. I just had to work as hard as I could work. I realized I’m only in competition with myself. It was around this time that I began to internalize the slogan, “Be the best me.” I use this phrase all the time when I need to refocus.
* * *
For all the good things that had entered my world, life was not all sunshine and rainbows. My failure at Regionals—on the rope climbs, in particular—had left a mental scar that I battled constantly. I still had full-on panic attacks in the face of legless rope climbs.
To face this demon, Ben prescribed me three legless rope climbs a day. It didn’t matter when or how I completed them. They just had to be done—before training, after training, or spread throughout the day. It was on me.
There were many days when I would stand in front of the rope and stare at it. I could not convince myself to jump up. I just couldn’t do it. I felt as helpless as I had at Regionals. In the back of my mind I thought that if I jumped up, I was putting myself out there again—vulnerable, in danger of another failure. It’s a loop I was stuck in. It didn’t matter if the gym was packed or empty. The fear was there.
People carry stress in different places. For me, it migrates to my chest, just under my throat. It’s a massive lump in my throat, like a ball I can’t get rid of, and I just want to cry. I often got myself so nervous that I would lose physical strength. When I convinced myself to jump up I would lose all the strength in my arms. This went on for months. I would complete my three rope climbs, but not without issue. I felt weak and wanted to cry. After months of this, I was still waiting for the day when they would feel better.
It was a great lesson in patience. I kept waiting for the skill to miraculously appear, but it didn’t come. I pressed forward regardless.
10
OBSESSION
ÞRÁHYGGJA
Perfect never gets the opportunity to become better.
February 2015
A year of full-time training with no distractions was bearing fruit. The 2014 Regionals had lit a fire deep inside me that was impossible to mimic or create. It was my raw, emotional response to the failure I had experienced. I had a passionate determination to never put myself in that position again.
I was obsessed with qualifying for the Games, and I trained like failing to accomplish that was worse than dying. I was working harder than ever before in my life. When I needed motivation, I imagined how hard my competitors were training. I was in the best physical shape I had ever been in and accomplishing things I never thought possible. I noticed that Ben’s investment in my mental fortitude was paying off as well. The between-the-ears focus felt like windshield wipers for my brain—my mind was starting to feel so much clearer!
The whole year, I fed on this drive every single session of every single day. In training, I pictured my fiercest competitors next to me. It helped me to find the next gear. In my mind’s eye, I would place them one step or one rep ahead of me and make myself catch up. She wouldn’t put the bar down, she wouldn’t slow down on the final 100-meter stretch, I would remind myself. I would challenge myself to chase them down, and in the process, I was crushing myself.
If I was on the track, I would picture Kristin Holte, the running and endurance phenom from Norway who had taken the third spot in the Games instead of me the previous year. I saw her next to me as I ran my final 400-meter repeat of a brutal session; just out of reach as I entered the gut check of the home stretch, her avatar would go for broke, forcing me to question how bad I really wanted to win. I approached every workout this way: as if it were a Regional event and I was fighting my competitors for a qualifying spot to Games.
Kristin was just one of my many imaginary competitors. I would conjure up whoever I perceived to be best-in-class for the challenges I faced that day. If the workout heavily featured a barbell, Annie Thorisdottir was there alongside me. If she could hold on for another rep, then so could I. I would squeeze the bar as tight as possible until it slipped from my hands and fell to the floor. When there were muscle-ups in a workout, I competed with an imaginary Sam Briggs.
In early 2015, I was traveling between Boston and home more often. While in Iceland, I had switched over to training at CrossFit Reykjavik. Annie and I were inseparable during that time. We had experienced less good times in the past and I was over the moon that those times were now water under the bridge.
She grew to be one of my dearest friends. In Boston, I had learned about surrounding myself with excellent people, individuals who forced me to grow and improve. Annie fits this mold perfectly. Quite frankly, she exemplifies excellence. She is a very whole person whom I can admire outside the walls of the gym as much as I do inside. The relationships she has with her family, Frederik, and those she calls friends are healthy and balanced. She works diligently in everything she chooses to pursue. Annie didn’t need to earn my respect, but she constantly set the bar higher. Although Iceland was now the powerhouse for female contenders at the CrossFit Games, Annie was the first. She had blazed the path that we had followed.
In our sport it’s hard to be close with your competition because you don’t want to reveal any secrets. If you’re sore or banged up, you don’t want to offer a mental edge to anyone by confiding in them. Annie and I are notable rivals. We know how much we each want to win the Games. That builds our mutual respect. I want to win, but I want her to be second. The same rings true for her.
“If it’s not me, I want it to be you,” we always say.
We are very similar; we respect each other’s work and we are able to build each other up. It’s priceless to have someone who has gone through the same things. We have so many similarities with the pressures we deal with and the things happening around us. Ours is one of the most valuable relationships I have. In more ways than one, Annie is the only one who can empathize with my experiences. I love being around her. It helped that our relationship had evolved and, in my mind, we’d become equals.
Any time I was in Boston I was working as hard as I could without anything else in my way. I trained alone a lot. In that context, there weren’t limitations. I had continued to improve because there was nothing there to tell me that I should or should not be able to do something. I just searched for my potential. What I found was astounding. I realized I was capable of far more than I had previously thought. I took that confidence into the 2015 Reebok CrossFit Games Meridian Regional.
May 29–31, 2015—Copenhagen, Denmark
Copenhagen was at a distinct disadvantage when it came to winning my affection. It was ground zero of my worst nightmare. If the work I had put into im
proving my mental strength over the last year needed a pressure test, I couldn’t think of a better place to test it. Simply facing rope climbs in training continued to cause tremendous anxiety over the safety net of CFNE. Now I would compete on the same floor where I had felt naked and exposed less than a year before.
The Games are a young sport now, and were even younger then. In 2015, the Regional format shifted to account for trends in the competition landscape. Games organizers abandoned the Olympic model from previous years. The seventeen regions around the world would no longer be guaranteed representation at the Games.
Organizers combined regions into “Super Regionals.” In 2015, qualifying athletes would face the best from at least one other regional as well as their own. As many as five athletes would qualify for the Games. The depth of competition doubled, but the number of qualifiers only slightly increased.
“You’re only going to see the best athletes at the CrossFit Games. The ones who deserve to be there,” Dave Castro explained.
For Iceland, this meant the incorporation of Africa and the Middle East. Locals from these regions had yet to produce Games-caliber females. However, a growing number of global expats—attracted by the generous salaries and training-conducive lifestyle offered by the CrossFit Kool-Aid drinkers from Dubai’s upper class—were submitting competitive scores in the Open. Most had opted to go team, though. The majority of the ladies who threatened to keep me out of the Games were from my island.
Our combined Regional was scheduled for the third and final week of Regionals and, as usual, the organizers released the workouts. On paper the seven events were exciting and well balanced. Running was reintroduced after a four-year hiatus. The use of self-propelled treadmills would make the 1-mile run in Event 3 both twice as hard and standard across all regions in one fell swoop. There was a handstand-walk-and-snatch combination to close the second day. That boosted my confidence. Most important, legless rope climbs were nowhere to be found. While it didn’t mean I would glide through the weekend, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t come as a relief.
Dottir Page 12