If you were to substitute overhead squats for snatches, this event was nearly identical to the workout that had induced my hysterics at the Cape when Cole Sager beat me. I pulled from that experience. For better or worse, I was going to give it everything I had.
Once the event began, I was pleasantly surprised that my muscle-ups were feeling decent for the first time in competition. I was able to string 8 reps together at the start of the event. They weren’t the best reps, but they certainly weren’t as disastrous as my swim had been.
I stuck to the plan, looking only straight ahead and ignoring the thundering noise that was swirling around the Coliseum. The weight was light for me, but I hit the snatches in singles and took a deep breath in between each one, trying to save my energy for the gymnastics work. From the outside looking in, I seemed composed. That also meant that I was going very slowly. The leaders of the event were long gone, but I had mentally let them go before the event even began. There were only two women left on the floor when I finished the event.
I put on a smile and tried to celebrate my small win: my muscle-ups had felt the same as they did in training. I had played smart and stuck with my game plan. In a way this was a “rope-climb workout.” And while I had broken up my muscle-ups a little more than I would have liked, I had maximized my potential for that event.
Holding back had been the right thing to do. But I could have passed Kristin Holte in the final round if I had tried to hang on for a bigger set of muscle-ups. I stayed conservative and played it safe. The strategy made me uncomfortable. I felt like my 2013 self: playing it safe and simply trying to survive. This feeling was the only thing that disappointed me.
In Carson, I would have expected superhuman magic to wash over me, bestowing the power of endless muscle-ups. But I didn’t feel any magic at all. It felt like business as usual. Among the Fittest on Earth, the finish was okay. But I didn’t want it to be okay. I wanted to be me. I wanted to shine.
Friday
I woke up to another gloomy Midwestern day. It was not raining, but there was evidence of a big storm from the night before. It was wet outside and way colder than it had been on Thursday.
The first challenge we faced was the sprint obstacle course. When he announced it, Dave Castro had referenced the obstacle course at Camp Pendleton from my rookie years. My placement had been underwhelming, but I remembered it fondly as a cool event.
At the beginning of the week, my expectations for the Sprint O-Course were low. Upon arriving in Madison, I had driven with Ben, Mat, and Cole to a nearby town where they had an obstacle course to practice. I was proficient, but they were so fast.
One of the dangers of training with extremely fit athletes is that it can skew your barometer for what’s normal. As a result, I don’t think I’m athletic. Cole and Mat are to blame.
When I met Fraser for the first time in 2014, I didn’t know who he was. He was a pretty good athlete, but nothing to write home about. We were training at a gym in Boston and the conversation somehow turned to backflips.
“Meh, I think I could probably do one,” he said casually.
As a former gymnast I challenged him to put his money where his mouth was. He did a backflip on demand, with no experience to draw from. I was amazed. Later, back at CFNE, he figured out a roundoff back handspring backflip with a twist by watching a YouTube video. He had never done gymnastics. He just has a freakish sense of body awareness baked into his brain.
Cole is similar. If a challenge has obstacles like hurdles or jumping, he picks it up in seconds and makes it look so good. He is the most athletic human I’ve ever met. Both of them figure out odd objects in a heartbeat and do them so gracefully you would think they had learned the skills as babies. And then there’s me. It takes me so much longer to figure out new challenges, which makes me crazy. Around these two, I feel like the least coordinated person to walk the Earth.
Our field trip to the obstacle course was basically an opportunity for them to laugh at me and tease me about not being athletic. They give me a hard time but it’s all out of love. The benefit of chasing these two in training, especially with events like an obstacle course, is that I exceed my own expectations in competition. I’m far more athletic going head to head with the fittest women on Earth than when I line up against Cole and Mat.
The obstacle course had nine obstacles, with the most technical of them showing up at the very start. On Tuesday, Dave had given us the opportunity to practice the course. At the time, it was sunny and hot. But now the adversity I had been craving had arrived in the form of rain, wind, and cold. The remnants of the previous night’s rainstorm had left the obstacles wet and slippery. It was 55 degrees Fahrenheit, but I felt like I had icicles on my nose. When we were sent to the field, we were only allowed to wear our uniforms—no warm-up clothes. Even the spectators were sparse and those who did make it were huddling under plastic ponchos. Many were bundled up like they were going snow skiing. My dad was the only one from my team who was willing to brave the elements to watch me compete.
I was fearless in my qualifying rounds. In the quarterfinals, the top two athletes from each heat automatically advanced. The athletes with the next four fastest times also moved on. I didn’t make any mistakes on my first run. I accelerated over the back side of the course and edged out Emily Abbott on the last obstacle: the caving ladder.
In the semifinal round, only the heat winner would advance automatically. One non-winning wild card would also advance. So if you didn’t win your heat, you had to stand by nervously, hoping your time was good enough to advance you into the final. I passed the first two obstacles without any drama, but a near slip on the balance beam made my heart jump out of my chest. I recovered and used the adrenaline to push harder. For the second time I arrived at the caving ladder second. The bottom swings freely and the ladder rungs are at awkward intervals. I fought the temptation to go faster and instead made focused, intentional steps that put me in the lead. My whole body was tingling standing on top of the platform. This win meant I advanced to the final with the top women.
I went straight to Ben, ecstatic, and said, “Ben, I am athletic!”
I had an automatic entry into the final, but the wild card athlete needed to be confirmed. After the last semifinal heat, we waited in the cold and the wind and tried our best to stay warm. I made my first mistake in the final on the monkey bars. I couldn’t recover. Still, I was thrilled to feel like I had gotten a drop of my swagger back.
* * *
The next event was a 1-rep-max snatch. The snatch is my absolute favorite lift to perform in competition and I was riding the momentum of my finish on the O-Course. The feeling of taking a chance and diving under a heavy barbell is thrilling. The snatch is technical. That evens the playing field for me against women who can beat me in tests of brute strength. I also perform this movement better in competition. All my personal bests had come in front of a crowd.
We had hours to rest after the Sprint O-Course, and I was chomping at the bit by the time I started my warm-up. When we took the floor, we only had two opportunities to lift. The top ten women would advance to a bonus round for a shoot-out. The format forced us to make hard decisions. A typical strategy is to go for a safe weight on your first lift, then swing for the fences on your second.
Ben wanted me to go lower on my opener, but I was feeling great. I loaded the bar to 185. It felt like it flew overhead. It was a solid first lift, but I did some quick math to establish what I thought would keep me in the top ten and give me two more shots at the barbell. I opted for 195 pounds, which was the second heaviest weight I had ever lifted. I was in the last row of lifters and two athletes had already lifted 196. I glanced at the change plates and thought, Why not? I’m never even gonna feel that anyhow. I loaded the bar to 197. I would take a lead into the bonus round or I would crash and burn.
The weight flew up, but I caught it off-balance. Something was wrong. As I stood up with the weight, it shifted forward and my arm was cont
orted into a strange position as I adjusted to keep it overhead. There was a funny feeling in my elbow as I completed the lift. In my head, I was freaking out as I assessed the damage.
How bad is this? Can I straighten my elbow?
The lights and cameras were on me, though, so I smiled and celebrated. I was calm on the surface, but all I could think was, Don’t grab your elbow. I didn’t want to show weakness. I prayed that it was nothing serious.
I knew I would take the field with the top ten lifters, but I was brought over for an interview before I could leave the floor. Alarm bells were still going off in my head and all I wanted to do was debrief with Ben. I answered the interview questions but I could barely focus.
“What can we expect in this next round?” Amanda Krenz asked, wrapping up the interview.
How the hell was I supposed to answer that? I didn’t even know if I would be able to come back to the floor.
“Bigger lifts,” I said with a big smile.
It was all that I could come up with. And I was sure that I was right, I just didn’t know if they would come from me. I only had a few minutes now, so I ran to the warm-up area.
“I hurt my elbow,” I said matter-of-factly.
I knew Ben could see the emotion on my face.
We tested the range of motion and it seemed like it would be fine. Then Ben did his best to calm me down. His ability to be a nonemotional sounding board in times of high stress is one of the biggest advantages to having him as a coach. We had just over six minutes to talk and my interview had chewed into that. Now athletes were being summoned to line up for our return to the floor. Ben quickly formulated a plan.
“I want you to get back out there and snatch 135 pounds immediately,” he said. “If that feels okay, go for it. If not, pull back. This is not the time in the competition to get injured.”
At this point, I had no idea what was going on with my elbow. I wasn’t sure if I had just tweaked it or if I was possibly facing a serious injury. The uncertainty scared me. On top of that, I had to approach the competition floor again and the only way to improve on my lift of 197 would require me to hit a lifetime best lift on an unstable elbow.
I got to my station and snatched 125 pounds. My elbow didn’t explode. In fact, it felt fine. Still, a million thoughts raced through my head. Two months earlier I had been with Rachel Martinez at CFNE when she had dislocated her elbow on a snatch. It wasn’t pretty and her recovery was arduous. I wondered how that would play on the broadcast. I fought the thoughts out of my head but they fought their way back in.
Katrin, this is the CrossFit Games, I told myself. These are the moments you train for; these are the moments that count and these points matter. You better get yourself together and perform.
I loaded the bar to 202 pounds. I was the final lifter in the rotation, so there were three minutes of lifting before me. The other girls were gunning for personal records (PRs), and the crowd was loving it. My plan was not profound: I was going to pull as hard as I could, no matter what, and let my instincts take over. When my name was called, I set up with a deep breath. The weight immediately felt heavy. To be successful in a snatch you have to be aggressive, and at that moment I was anything but. I bailed early, essentially performing a snatch pull.
We went back through the rotation again and I tried to fire myself up. I jumped up and down and slapped my thighs. In my final preparations, I extended my elbow, testing the range of motion and checking for problems. The elbow was fine, but my result was no different on the second lift. I pulled the bar to my chest before letting it drop. Multiple attempts were allowed in the twenty-second window and I instinctually lined up for another. I screamed at the bar from the top of my lungs and lined up for another attempt. I was angry and I fully intended on putting it over my head. But my body would not comply.
It was devastating. I love events where I’m on the big stage and achieving something superhuman. I wanted a Disney moment where the adrenaline picks me up and the crowd goes wild. Instead, I did two snatch pulls in front of a sold-out crowd. How embarrassing.
It would be silly to be disappointed with a 197-pound snatch. That’s heavy. But I still hadn’t found my magic. I was in search of that feeling. I was chasing the exhilaration that comes with a tremendous performance—the feeling of doing something I couldn’t do before.
I sat with Ben after the event and we established that my elbow was fine to continue competing. I moved on, content to not be injured.
Where I had been thrilled with the start of the day, I felt the momentum shift in the wrong direction after the snatch. I wasn’t performing poorly. I was doing okay. And that was exactly the problem. I didn’t want to be just okay. I wanted to shine. In every event it seemed as if I was just outside of where I wanted to be. Through two more events on Friday—a chipper and a sprint that felt more like a street fight—I finished sixth or better. But that wasn’t the point.
My standard criteria for measuring my effort has to cut both ways. If a poor placement on the leaderboard could still be considered a win if I performed my best or slayed a demon from the past, then the opposite had to hold true also. In 2017, my event finishes were good by most people’s standards. However, I knew I was capable of more. I was consistently turning up finishes that were okay.
I was carrying myself like a champion in terms of how I was responding to these challenges, but it didn’t change the fact that I was in a slump.
Saturday
Even an event win on Saturday morning in Strongman’s Fear lacked the significance I so desperately desired. I was happy when I finished, of course, but the event had been tailor-made for me and I felt like I could have gone for five more rounds. The way the event played out made the victory feel less meaningful. I was still missing the magic. I didn’t even feel like I had won. I hadn’t done anything special or spectacular, I just did work. It was just another event.
On the emotional roller coaster of the Games, the Muscle-Up Clean Ladder event on Saturday was a low point.
The event called for eight rounds for time:
4 bar muscle-ups
2 cleans, ascending weight
F 145-160-175-190-205-215-225-235 pounds
This was the workout that had grabbed my attention when Dave had outlined it at the athlete dinner. On paper it did not suit my strengths, so I entered cautiously. I was trying to strategize my way to victory, and I was focused on all the wrong things. I tried to keep my heart rate down and make the early cleans feel light. I took more time so I could ensure the first cleans were easy to catch in a power position. I wanted to save my legs for the later rounds. I was trying to stay under control. I would walk to the barbell to make the cleans count.
When I got to the 225-pound bar, I immediately put away one successful rep. Then I failed for the first time. I didn’t panic right away, but things started to unravel quickly. I took a chance, approaching the bar earlier than I thought I should. When I failed again, anxiety crept in. I still had a lot of work left and the weight would only continue to get heavier. Repeated failures on a heavy barbell can bury you in a pit of exhaustion. You have to walk the fine line that will allow your body to recover for a maximum effort. I didn’t have time for this. There was a short time cap on the event and the clock was bleeding minutes. I successfully finished my second rep at 225, but my overall result was disappointing.
I went over the mistakes I had made and beat myself up for them. I could have improved my tie-break time and I could have been more patient waiting for those cleans instead of failing.
When I’ve done great things in the past it’s been because I took a chance. That’s when I exceeded my expectations. If I could do it over again, I wouldn’t change anything. I had to take chances.
The frustration of repeated mediocre performances was starting to mount. I couldn’t hold it together. I returned to the warm-up area. When I saw Ben, I started crying.
“I’m so tired of ‘okay,’” I told him. “‘Okay’ isn’t good
enough.”
I wasn’t performing terribly. I just couldn’t put it all together. My plan wasn’t panning out how it usually did. I wasn’t on fire like I normally was. I expected excellence of myself, but instead the theme of the 2017 Games was “meh.”
In 2015 and ’16, I would go without thinking. I got out of my head and into the competition. I would take a chance in events and things would fall into place. I was constantly performing well and exceeding my expectations. I was in the zone. This year in Madison everything was just “okay.” I wanted my spark back.
Ben was speechless. I was right and there was nothing to say.
17
THE TIGER EATS THE DEER
TÍGURINN BORÐAR DÁDÝRIÐ
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
—“SERENITY PRAYER,” OFTEN ATTRIBUTED TO REINHOLD NIEBUHR
Waking up the day after the Games is like waking up in a silent, lonely room the day after your birthday party. The noise, the decorations, and the people are all gone. It’s normal for me to feel lost and a little down during this time. Athletes can commiserate. The Games is such a focal point in our year and the week is so intense. And what goes up must, of course, come down.
This was different. I was in shock. Questions rattled around my brain, and I didn’t have answers for them. I was as good this year as I had ever been. I had avoided huge mistakes. Why had I gone so slow? Where was the next gear? I was physically and mentally solid, yet I had proceeded cautiously on nearly every event. I overstrategized and overpaced. I tried to do everything so right instead of letting myself compete. I was less upset about my placement. That had something to do with it, of course, but the cracks that appeared in my mental foundation had been there before the competition even began. That was what was troubling me.
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