Dottir

by Katrin Davidsdottir

  Still, ropes would be present on Day 1 as part of a larger theme: Hero Friday. CrossFit’s Hero workouts are legendary. They stand apart from other workouts in both their difficulty and significance. Many, if not most, early adopters of CrossFit training methodology came from first responder, military, and law enforcement backgrounds. CrossFit was a natural fit for these professions, where unknown challenges with high physical and mental demands are likely to greet them during a shift and failure to prepare could mean the difference between life and death. The only downside of intimacy with these communities is the harsh reality that their work often calls for them to make the ultimate sacrifice.

  CrossFit created Hero workouts for CrossFit devotees who were killed in action as a way to honor them and carry their names forward. This year we would face two of them in what Castro had dubbed “Hero Friday.”

  EVENT 1: RANDY

  For time:

  75 snatches (55 pounds)

  Time cap: 6 minutes

  The workout is a tribute to a Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team member, and it had everyone on edge. In stark contrast to many Hero workouts that are a long grind, the lightweight snatches were lightning fast. The event record was 2:26:7. The speed made the event volatile. Small mistakes were costly, and ten or fifteen seconds had cost top athletes ten to fifteen spots on the leaderboard in previous weeks. Anything outside the top ten was a less-than-ideal way to start the Regional weekend, especially in a group of heavy hitters such as the one at the Meridian.

  Annie and Sara set an insane pace, and I did my best to chase them. Athletes were required to advance the bar forward after each set of 25 reps. At 22, nearly every woman to my right advanced, led by Sara and Annie. My grip was nowhere near failure, but I could feel my forearms expanding and fatiguing. I kept the bar overhead as I advanced it and went directly into my next 25. As Sara advanced to her last set of 25, I had fallen 6 reps behind. I fought the urge to panic and focused instead on my game plan. My pace had not changed for the first 50 reps, but now it was time to leave everything on the floor. I advanced to my final set and held on for dear life.

  Our barbells were arranged to one side of the competition floor. After the final rep, athletes had to step over their barbells and sprint to the finish mat. Annie and Sara dropped their bars first and sprinted to a photo finish. Kristin Holte followed close behind. When I saw a fourth athlete, Bjork Odinsdottir, take off, I worried I could be in trouble. I had 3 more reps to go. My grip was slipping every time I pulled the bar overhead and my reps had slowed significantly. It was like an uphill sprint to the finish. But no one crossed the finish line between Bjork and I. I was fifth in the overall standings with Randy out of the way.

  The next workout paid tribute to Navy SEAL Thomas Valentine. It featured thrusters and rope climbs. Lots of them. Although I could use my legs, I was still nervous.

  TOMMY V

  For time:

  21 thrusters (75 pounds)

  12 rope climbs (15 feet)

  15 thrusters

  9 rope climbs

  9 thrusters

  6 rope climbs

  Time cap: 16 minutes

  After the 2014 Regionals, I began to identify which workout stood apart as the biggest test for me in the context of the competition, which would require my greatest focus and effort to do well. I would call this my “rope climb event,” whether the reference was metaphorical or literal. My “rope climb events” did their best to expose my weaknesses. Tommy V was difficult, but I managed my rest well and stuck to my pace regardless of what the women around me were doing. I was steady on the rope and strong on the barbell, taking sixth in the event. With the nerves of Day 1 gone, I settled into the rest of the weekend and started having fun.

  “We are accustomed to a foot race, but here at the Meridian Regional, as the crowd rises to their feet, we are seeing a hand race,” announcer Chase Ingraham said at the opening of Day 2. We were facing a 250-foot handstand walk for time.

  He was only partially joking: Bjork, Kristin, Annie, and I ran virtually upside down on the first leg of the 250-foot course. I’m typically better at longer handstand walks, while short-and-fast efforts favor Annie. I went for the advantage and chose not to take a break at the turnaround. I had told the announcers I would finish the event in one minute thirty seconds. I crossed the finish line in 1:19 and took my fourth career Regional event win. Regionals was my first love when it came to competition, and now I remembered why. It was so exhilarating to hear the cheers of the crowd and to perform at the level I knew I was capable of.

  After a one-minute-forty-second reset, we hit the 1-rep-max snatch event to close Saturday. I had successfully lifted 175 pounds in my warm-up. Now, on the competition floor, I threw 155 on the bar to see how the fatigue of the handstand walk had affected me. I was brimming with confidence and swagger; my shoulders felt really strong. I didn’t want to make a silly mistake, but I was feeling fantastic. I opened with 173—6 pounds higher than Annie or Sara. I was deep in my catch, but I buried it. In the short reset period, I fought the temptation to look at the weight increases that Sara and Annie had taken. I stuck to my plan and loaded my barbell to 183.

  When it was my turn to lift, I took extra time to sit back into my setup. Then I pulled with everything I had. I pictured myself throwing the bar through the ceiling. I jumped toward the rafters of the Ballerup Super Arena, then dove under the bar like I was dodging a punch. I threw my hands to the sky and for a moment time seemed to slow down. This is the magic moment in the snatch, when the bar is weightless for one split second. Gravity is your best friend as you force your body down and your worst enemy as you pray the bar will stay suspended above you. The moment of truth comes in the catch. My butt was nearly touching the ground when I felt the bar settle in my hands and the load began pressing down on me. Balancing a bar loaded with more than your body weight over your head is harder than it sounds. The balance point is similar to what I feel in a handstand, but with a barbell you are on the razor’s edge. A small deviation forward or backward can be impossible to recover from. I was patient. I waited in this bottomed-out position until the weight settled. After the catch, standing up was no issue. I showed a look of determination, but a smile spread across my face in conjunction with the opening of my hips. I waited at the top for my judge to call it a “good rep,” then squealed and jumped up with delight. Annie ran over and gave me a huge hug!

  Her coach, Jami Tikkanen, would later joke that mine was a “miracle snatch.” That description doesn’t take into account the hundreds of hours we practice all the minutiae that goes into this highly technical lift. Jami, one of the best coaches in the business, was referring to the ferocity a lifter needs to succeed. The only way to make progress in the snatch is to take chances. In competition, I fearlessly throw myself under the barbell. This time it paid off, and it would inform the way I snatched in competition going forward.

  “You never think she’s gonna make it, but somehow she does,” Jami laughed as we all celebrated.

  Sadly for me, Oxana Slivenko, a Russian silver-medalist weight lifter from the Beijing Olympics, was competing in our region for a second time. She was in the heat before mine and had easily beaten me by 40 pounds on her first attempt. Regardless, I was thrilled, as I was having the opposite Day 2 from what I had experienced in 2014. And it was still pretty cool that such a highly competitive lifter was on the floor with us.

  Annie and I were tied for first at the close of the day, and I was so happy I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as we were interviewed.

  “We train together, we basically live together … it makes sense that we’re at the top together.” I giggled.

  “I’m so proud of this girl,” Annie told the camera. “She deserves all of this. She deserves to be at the Games.”

  On Sunday, the muscle-ups in the final event led to my worst finish of the weekend. But it was far from catastrophic. Thirteenth place didn’t even drop me in the overall standings, but that wa
sn’t what mattered to me. I had given my best effort and exceeded my practice times. More important, I knew I had accomplished my goal in the most competitive female region in the world. The domination by Icelandic women had reached its zenith at Regionals that year. Five women qualified from the Meridian. Four of us were from Iceland.

  Before 2014, I had taken qualifying for the Games for granted. Sure, I had gotten scared, I even cried during training sessions, but I always believed I would qualify. I don’t think I was cocky, I was just naive. I knew that failure was technically an option, I just didn’t think it was a possibility. In my heart of hearts, I expected to be at the Games.

  This year I could draw on both experiences: the joy of qualifying and the devastation of coming up short. When my name was called as a qualifier for the Games, the happiness I felt was overwhelming. This time I cried happy tears. I was so happy just to qualify, and that was my only ambition. It was different this time. I had expected it before. Now I relished the opportunity. I was overwhelmed with gratitude and pride.

  I ended the 2015 Meridian Regional the same as I had ended the Europe Regional in 2014, crying on the floor of the Ballerup Super Arena wrapped in the support of Europe’s fittest athletes and its wonderful CrossFit fans. This time, though, they were tears of joy. This time I was going back to the CrossFit Games.

  With the stress of Regionals behind us, it was time to have fun. It was time for Games training. Training takes different shapes throughout the competition season. The final run up to the Games is far and away my favorite. The training volume goes up, the intensity reaches an all-time high, and our focus narrows to a laser beam. We would train all day long and Ben was teaching all the time. Before or after training, he would discuss concepts focused on the mental side of the sport. On my lunch break, I would sit outside and read The Champion’s Mind. I wasn’t just reading the words anymore, I was really internalizing the concepts. Everything felt like it was clicking.

  Ten days before the Games—after training was done and I had been working on my travel list—I walked into Ben’s office and made an announcement.

  “I am so happy with the training that we’ve done,” I told him, “I don’t even care what my placement is and I don’t care what happens. I am so happy.”

  I meant it. I had always invested myself so heavily in where I was on the leaderboard at the Games. I had wanted to be a “Top 10 Girl.” If I really let myself dream, my absolute goal was to finish in the top five. Now I was just so happy with the work that we had done that I would be pleased with any result. I felt ready and confident. I found it impossible to imagine that anyone had prepared more than we had. I was excited to step back onto the floor and test myself against the fittest women on Earth.

  11

  FITTEST ON EARTH

  FITTEST Á JÖRÐINNI

  At the end of the day, only you know how hard you worked. Make sure you gave it your best.

  July 2015—StubHub Center, Carson, California

  Training for the Games is a process of growing and competing and repeating that process continually as you try to perfect it. Could my nutrition be better? Could my sleep be better? You always want to maximize everything. Champions don’t have balance, and the reason they are exceptional is because they focus all their time and energy on what they do.

  I worked so hard in 2015 that I would go home so trashed every single day. Nothing makes me more happy than the feeling of complete exhaustion at the end of the day. There is a satisfaction in that for me that nothing else can replace. I want to eat well, I want to sleep well, I want to recover, and then I want to do it all over again. That’s what our entire year looked like. When you get to the Games and you’ve worked that hard it’s easy to be confident. It’s not a confidence that you are guaranteed to go and beat everyone, but rather a confidence that you know what you’re gonna go do. You’re going to do what you’ve done every day in training. You’re gonna go hard and leave no doubt. It’s the confidence that you could possibly be in this given moment.

  My experience at the 2015 Games was different from the start. I had never enjoyed being at the Games, but my new perspective lightened my mood and made it all seem fun. The lobby of the Marriott, where in 2012 and 2013 I had hidden myself away, now felt energetic and alive. I smiled my way through the check-in process. I laughed and socialized with people I recognized from other regions and even asked for pictures with some of them. I was having fun.

  The only Reebok representative I knew at the time was Jared Davis. He’s an affable former Games athlete with a thick Southern drawl and a big heart who took care of athlete relations. Now I met Tal Short. As the senior product designer for footwear, he was the man in charge of creating the Reebok shoe line designed specifically for CrossFit. When our conversation turned to items on our bucket lists, I told him I had two: I wanted to run in a marathon and I wanted to have my own shoe one day.

  “If you win the Games, I’ll give you your own shoe,” he said, joking, of course.

  “Deal,” I joked back.

  Both of us laughed at the absurdity of it. I was there to compete and have fun but winning the Games was not on my mind. My aspirations were centered on maximizing this experience. I knew nothing could be taken for granted.

  By 2015, CrossFit had effectively taken over the Manhattan Beach Marriott. It looked like CrossFit owned the hotel. I can only imagine the confusion of tourists who had booked that weekend simply by chance. Huge banners celebrating the festival of fitness were hung everywhere. Nearly every person in the lobby sported an athletic physique and bright clothing.

  The lobby had huge vaulted ceilings and lots of open space. Reebok had adorned the entire lobby with beanbag chairs and recliners throughout that sported the CrossFit Games logo. Straight ahead as you walked in were a set of stairs that descended to the back patio and pool area.

  For the first time, the lobby level also featured a huge CrossFit gym. Rogue Fitness had converted three adjoining ballrooms into a CrossFitter’s dream. Every imaginable tool and toy you could possibly want or need were there. We were getting spoiled. I met Ben, along with Mat Fraser and Michele Letendre just outside the gym. The conversation focused on mind-set. Ben expanded on a concept he had introduced to me in 2014, before I was prepared to understand.

  “When people visualize their performance, they picture everything going perfectly,” he started. “Don’t envision perfection. I want you to have a plan, obviously. But you also need a Plan B. If you’re smart, you will also have Plans C, D, and E,” he counseled us.

  I flashed back to the conversation we’d had on the treadmill in 2014, right before the Europe Regional. I had been incredulous when he had introduced this concept then, but now I got it. In gymnastics, I would lie in bed the night before a meet and picture entire routines; in my mind, I played them out to perfection. If I fell on my head, I would rewind and start from the beginning until I had successfully completed everything to my liking. This, of course, is not how reality works. I had never made the connection in gymnastics, but 2014 taught me what it was like to be on the competition floor in the heat of battle with no exit strategy. I was paralyzed when the moment hit and I didn’t know what to do.

  Ben recounted a story from the 2011 Games. He had led CFNE’s team into the weekend, and before the event, he met with the entire team just as he was doing with us now. He had them lie on the floor and visualize themselves on the competition floor. He invoked the sights and smells to put them in the moment as best he could. They pictured a flawless execution of the event. Everything was in sync; they felt strong and were communicating clearly and efficiently.

  When they took the floor, however, reality struck. Everything felt different than CFNE’s team had imagined it. Unprepared for things to go awry, the team members were unable to recalibrate their strategy. Frustrated and angry, they floundered in the event and finished close to the bottom of the pack. Ben shared the story because it had caused him to adopt a new method of visualization in
which you pictured potential contingencies. You prepared yourself for the worst and pictured yourself solving the problem instead of crumbling to it. It was what Ben had encouraged me to do before the 2014 Regional, with no success. Now I understood why it made so much sense.

  * * *

  I feel like the Games really begin with the athlete dinner on Monday night. Dave Castro invites the athletes to a nice dinner during which he makes workout announcements or fills in details from workouts that had been partially leaked on social media. In my first two years at the Games, this dinner was nerve-racking. This year, it was fun to see the people I had been watching compete over the Regional weekends.

  I had a new sense of confidence that didn’t go unnoticed, for better or worse. When I brought my own food to the Monday night athlete dinner, people gave me a really hard time. It didn’t bother me at all, and I knew it wasn’t personal. I knew I was stirring insecurities that they weren’t taking the competition as seriously as I was. I was set on controlling everything within my circle of influence this year and letting the rest of it roll off my back.

  Dave outlined the new additions to the Games. Wednesday would be like playtime with some very creative workouts that could not have been more different. There had been speculation about the use of stand-up paddleboards at the Games. Dave told us we would be taking paddleboards into the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica, but they were prone paddleboards. They were mixed in with two medium-distance swims. It was so different from anything I had done in my life and I had a blast, finishing near the middle of the pack in eighteenth. This was only one spot below my best finish in my previous two years at the Games.