I liked what I was hearing.
“You have an opportunity to fight and to make something good out of this.”
It’s way easier to stay on top and cruise through, but it’s a challenge to make a comeback. I latched on to what he was saying. I went from being unhappy and disappointed to being excited for the challenge.
“When you win,” he said, “it’s gonna be that much sweeter.”
Cole Sager found me as we were walking out. He had underperformed in the Squat Clean Pyramid the previous day. He had hoped for a top-ten placement in the event but finished last in his heat, toward the bottom of the overall standings. He could see I was down and relayed an experience of his own from the previous day.
“I could have felt sorry for myself and thrown in the towel,” he told me. “But every time I cleaned a weight, the crowd went absolutely nuts.”
He recounted the loss as if he were relishing it.
“I was alone on the field and everyone was cheering for me. It was electric.”
He was smiling from ear to ear.
“It was one of the coolest moments in my competition career. I only experienced it because I wasn’t doing as well as I wanted to. I made it into one of the best things that had ever happened to me.”
Ben’s pep talk in combination with Cole’s interpretation of his experience snapped me out of the funk. I knew I could make something good out of my situation. I left the StubHub Center Saturday night fired up and ready to bring all my attention to bear on the final day of competition.
The days are long at the Games, typically ending around dinner time. Saturday, however, was a dramatic example of that. Ben and O’Keefe brought me food. This is almost an every-night ritual and the food is always the same: a mishmash of sweet potato, rice, chicken, and guacamole in large quantities. I would eat it on the way home.
Ben and I continued our conversation on the drive to the hotel. Car rides at the Games are critical. They are reserved for Ben and me only, and we can speak freely in the confines of the vehicle. We typically debrief the entire day. It’s an indispensable part of my daily process that helps me move on. I need to talk about things—what was good, what was bad. We also talk about upcoming events and make a preliminary plan. I need a plan or I can’t fall asleep. I need to know what events have been announced and briefly cover what they are. I also want the morning schedule: when and where breakfast is happening, and when we’re leaving for the venue. We set ourselves up for success.
I even need to start planning the outfits that match the next day’s events. Ben gets to escape this part of planning, but it’s critical for me. Aside from ensuring I’m happy with the way I look, I also want to make sure I have the appropriate gear for the events themselves. Do I need long pants for cleans or rope climbs? Do I need my lifters or my runners?
As soon as we get back to the hotel, I’ll have my bodywork therapist ready and waiting. Someone will always be in there with me. Oftentimes it’s my mom or Heather, Ben’s wife. Usually I don’t even talk. Everyone has become accustomed to it. I love that they are there with me. It’s comforting. However, I need to be silent and relax. Bodywork will usually take an hour. Then I’ll immediately shower and do my best to get a good night’s sleep. There was one final day before we crowned the Fittest on Earth.
* * *
“Katrin … To the right!”
I heard my name as clear as day, but the other words were a jumbled mess. I knew they were directed at me, but I couldn’t decipher the message.
“Lane … Right. To the right!”
I was 50 yards into a 280-foot handstand-walking race. My shoulders and arms were burning and my head was filling with blood, causing my head to feel bloated and uncomfortable. My sight was impaired by red and black dots dancing in my field of vision as I reached the final stretch. Combined with the volume of the soccer stadium crowd, I might not have heard my judge if he were shouting in my ear. Calling to me from behind, there was no prayer. I had been inverted for 50 yards and I had momentum, so I decided to go until someone physically stopped me.
Then, wham!
I had collided with one of the tackling dummies placed carefully on the field demarcating the lanes. It wasn’t enough to knock me over, but it did give me a jolt and knocked me farther off course. As I corrected and got back on track, the crowd raised their pitch to a roar. I could barely see now and it was all I could do to glimpse between my hands every other step. I was anticipating the ground changing colors from the natural green of the grass to the painted royal blue of the end zone, where I could kick down for the final run across the finish line. I stalled out 2 feet from the finish line. The moment felt like an eternity before I recovered. I still managed to edge out Kari Pearce by less than a second.
After the handstand walk, two events followed in quick succession: Suicide Sprint and the Plow.
EVENT 12: SUICIDE SPRINT
840-foot shuttle sprint for time
On the same 280-foot course as the handstand walk, athletes will run ⅓ of the way down and back, then ⅔ of the way down and back, then sprint the full length to the finish line.
EVENT 13: PLOW
560-foot plow drag for time (235/190 pounds)
The uniqueness of the Plow had made it nearly impossible to warm up for. Ben tried to mimic the Plow by fashioning a harness out of bands and making me pull him across the floor. It was a strong effort, but I still had no idea what to expect when I finally got my hands on that thing. There was no way to judge the pace from the previous heat, either. Some girls were devastated, but the previous heat winner, Canada’s Emily Abbott, was barely breathing hard.
Keep going, I told myself.
I try to always frame my self-talk in the affirmative. Instead of “Don’t stop,” I favor “Keep going.” Halfway through the second lap, I lost my pop but willed myself to keep moving. I felt like every muscle in my body was infected with the flu. Unable to correct myself, I accidentally swerved into Sam Briggs’s lane. I pictured myself at Blue Hills, and the fight I had crafted and honed there. This felt strangely familiar. I dug in hard until I fell across the finish line and collapsed.
I laid on the ground next to Sam and we congratulated each other. When I tried to stand up, I was not surprised to discover that I needed some help. I grabbed for the closest person to me, who happened to be the filmmaker Ian Wittenber. With his camera in one hand and me in the other, he walked me over to the medical team.
“When you’re like Katrin and you can just flip the switch to be so in the game in the moment, sometimes your brain shuts off and your body takes over,” 2009 Games champion and color analyst Tanya Wagner told the audience at home as I was carried off the field. “She wanted those points badly and she came out to get them. She won the handstand walk and the same thing with the Plow. She is on a mission. Maybe she pushed herself just a bit too hard.”
With my team, “too hard” isn’t a thing. We practice and face “too hard” all the time so that when opportunities like this arise, I can gamble on my ability to recover. Tanya was right about one thing: I can flip a switch in my head. But it’s not for the points or the glory. It’s for peace of mind.
The bright yellow bracelet I wore all those years ago to remind me of my goal to make the CrossFit Games was the first of many visual totems I have used to keep my goals and beliefs in the front of my mind. The bracelet on my wrist in 2015 was emerald green. It’s a constant reminder that regret is more painful than any physical task.
Green represents our team’s ethos of giving maximum effort no matter what. To know in your heart that your best effort was given. We call it “going green,” but it usually feels more like “seeing red.”
Ben brings the concept to life by comparing the controllable elements of competition—attitude, effort, reaction—to traffic lights. We avoid the cautious approach—yellow—and we will never, ever stop—red. The bracelet is a tangible reminder to cut the brake line whether the situation favors you or not. It’
s a reminder to cross the finish line with no regrets.
Externally it’s only your results that are visible. Only you will know internally if your effort matched your potential. Pumping the brakes—or, worse yet, slamming down—invites the potential for regrets that could last a lifetime. Especially at the CrossFit Games, where each moment is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
* * *
You might expect that Dave Castro would dislike the fact that only one woman completed a pegboard ascent in the final of the 2015 Games. You would be mistaken. Dave expected us to be excited for the opportunity to learn this skill over the course of the year between Games and show off the progress we had made. The event was appropriately called Redemption.
“These workouts are not designed to showcase the athletes, they are meant to test the athletes. The CrossFit Games are constantly redefining what is humanly possible,” Dave said in a post–2015 Games interview. “A test that seeks to do that cannot afford to issue participation medals. People will fail, they have to. If they don’t, the test isn’t hard enough and we aren’t moving forward.”
His standards are interlaced with his background. In Dave’s former profession as a SEAL, every test was an unforgiving pass-or-fail proposition. Unless there is a high fail rate, it’s not hard enough. It’s our job as athletes to rise to that challenge.
EVENT 15: REDEMPTION
For time:
3 pegboard ascents
21 thrusters (85-pounds)
2 pegboard ascents
15 thrusters (85-pounds)
1 pegboard ascent
9 thrusters (85-pounds)
Time cap: 10 minutes
To save my biceps, I focused our warm-up on mental preparation. I would stand on a mat and mimic the movement with my arms. Up two, down two. Over and over again.
There was one pegboard in the warm-up area. It was sunny and hot. Everyone was there with their person. We were all trying to read each other’s energy and gauge their temperature. Is she nervous? Do they like pegboards or not? How are they gonna do? In those moments when I know the other girls are watching me, I stand up and I want to be confident. On the inside, I was terrified. I still couldn’t do a pegboard ascent.
Ben and I had done a lot of work in training with pegboards, but never to completion. We would go up two pegs and come back down. We worked pegboards over and over and over again. The culmination of all that hard work was one solitary rep in the gym. I just could not figure it out. It had happened two weeks before the Games and it was a big win. At least I knew it was within the realm of possibility for me. It could be done.
I always travel with Amma’s necklace in my competition bag. It’s literally always with me and I guard it with my life. For the final event, I wore a high-neck sports bra. After considering the movements, I realized I could wear the necklace. Amma could take the floor with me for the final event. I felt her with me in all the events, and I tried to honor her by taking risks or adding an extra pound on the bar. I went a little faster and pushed a little harder just thinking about her. Now I would have a physical representation of her presence, too. I put the necklace on and tucked it in.
O’Keefe is good at reading the situation and giving me the input that I need. More often than not he will deliver a sarcastic “Don’t fuck this up,” in his signature deadpan style. Other times, he will just remind me to smile and it will cheer me up immediately. He won’t do that on the final just in case I actually do mess it up. I get my final pep talk from Ben, and in that situation he told me to do me.
“It’s just you against you.”
Everyone handles the jitters of competition differently. Some are chatty, some like to laugh. I turn inward. When we are in the corrals, I close my eyes and try to relax. I’ll put my hands on either side of my lane and breathe deep while I wait for everyone to line up. I’ll go through the event again in my head to make sure I’m calm and confident in what I’m about to do.
The Athlete Control team will tell us when it’s time to move to the next staging area. This is when I’ll put my game face on. I’m focused. We walk up the stairs and I get butterflies. We’re crammed into the narrow hallway leading to the stadium. The sound reverberates under the bleachers. One by one our names are called and we step into the natural light pouring through the far end of the tunnel. This is the moment when I’m the most nervous. I feel overwhelmed.
Before I left the warm-up area, Ben drew an “A” on my arm. It reminded me why I was doing this and who I was pushing for—Amma. I put my hand out and felt like she was holding it. I could feel her there with me. When they called my name, my nervousness melted away, revealing my excitement. As I ran down the stairs, everyone was trying to grab me. I high fived as many as I could on the way down. I love this energy. I need it. I jogged to my lane. I felt calm and confident. This was what I’d been waiting for. Now I was in my element. From the floor, I couldn’t make out individuals in the stands. I think there were Icelandic flags. Everything was a blur, like a huge ball of energy.
When the buzzer sounded, I dove in. I completed 2 pegboard ascents with relative ease.
I struggled on the third. My biceps were done and I got stretched out again. I went back to my scap retractions. I fought for it. Every time I descended I was sure my grip was going to fail.
The best girls in the heat were far ahead of me by then, but I did my best not to let it enter my mind. I made it and took my time with the thrusters, well aware I needed to rest before I could get back on the pegboard. Any time I reached for chalk, Amma’s necklace would fall out. I felt like I was constantly being reminded she was with me.
I knew Tia was closing in on me. I knew she was going faster than me. She was ahead of me and closing the gap on my overall lead. But all I could do was wait until I was ready.
I found success again on the pegboard. Now I was certain Amma was there, squeezing my hand. It was a roller coaster of panic and relief. At the time cap, I had finished 5 pegboard ascents. It was a huge win for me.
Tia was on the finish line. She had completed the event. It was a really weird feeling. The Games were over. I wanted so bad for Amma, and I didn’t know if I had done it. The women were huddled on one side of the floor. There was nothing more that I could do, but waiting to hear the result was torturous. Had it been enough? It was out of my hands. I walked to the red mats and sat down.
It felt like it took longer than usual to tabulate the scores. I took my necklace out and held it in my hand. It’s the most that I’ve ever wanted anything. There was a camera in my face and I didn’t know if they were there to capture my victory or my defeat. There was a camera on Tia as well. When Dave finally made his announcement, they would capture joy from one of us and devastation from the other.
“The Fittest on Earth is…” Dave said, pausing.
The tension was palpable.
“Once again,” he started and I didn’t hear anything else after that moment.
I had won again. A million feelings hit me at once.
Relief, excitement, and the feeling that I had done it with Amma. I could barely stand up—all I could do was mouth the words “Thank you” silently. Dave walked me to center court, holding my hand over my head.
Last year had been a surprise. Winning the Games had surpassed all my wildest dreams. It had seemingly come out of nowhere. It had meant so much to me because I wasn’t chasing a result in 2015, I was chasing my dream. I was driven by pure love of the game. I didn’t dare let myself believe the dream was reality until Dave said my name.
This second championship was different. In 2016, I was always chasing something because people thought 2015 was a fluke, and I wanted to show we had worked for it. But my drive had nothing to do with the expectations of others.
I had a new and stronger reason to fight: Amma. She had carried me through the weekend. She had helped me push to my absolute limits. This victory meant so much more because I felt like I had done it with her.
15
; UNPREPARED
ÓUNDIRBÚIN
Your faith can move mountains and your doubt can create them.
—ANONYMOUS
When the afterglow of the weekend finally dissipates, melancholy follows. Even in championship years. I’m told that even the fans feel it, too. The wind is taken out of our collective sails after blowing at hurricane force for months on end. Online, in life, and in the gym, everything has a stillness that I find uncomfortable.
I thrive on having a purpose. Leading up to the Games, it’s at an all-time high as we work hard to bring everything together at the same time. My goals are on my mind constantly from the moment I wake up. Every second of every day is accounted for. I meet with my coaches and team and there is a high standard of expectation. I have goals and expectations for myself and I can feel physical improvement. In the approach to the 2016 competition I was so singularly focused that I didn’t even buy a return flight home. The plan crescendos up and up and up. Then poof, it’s gone.
I know I need the rest, but I don’t like it. It’s impossible to improve indefinitely, to always go up.
Training also drops to an uncomfortably low volume and I feel like I’m losing the improvements that were so hard-earned. It will only last for a few weeks. My team needs time off; we need to evaluate the year and then make a plan for moving forward.
After a championship year especially, sliding backward goes counter to my instinct. As the Fittest Woman on Earth, what I really want to do is hold on to my fitness for dear life. I get so scared that all my hard work will be lost.
Not to mention that I love working out. It was a passion and an outlet long before it was a competitive pursuit.
On Monday morning, the day after the Games, I had breakfast with my family. Ben, Heather, and Maya joined my mom, Afi, and me.
“I have a plan,” Ben said.
Dottir Page 21