Feeling better, after a severe cheat day

Counter-intuitive, but maybe what my body needed was a day off my program to recover a bit?

Easter started healthy enough with the aforementioned Easter eggs in omelette form at Sandbar when Roland also installed *the coolest* app on my phone that lets you type by dragging your fingers rather than pressing each key individually. It makes typing no only faster but also FUN! I did indulge in some decaf cream cappuccinos because it’s not every day that Sandbar is closing in a week.

But later on I met up with my friend Sam and since it was a holiday a lot of places were either not open or were kind of dead, so we wound up going to Beluga. Now while it is possible to eat paleo at Beluga I decided what the heck, and had some sushi. The “what the heck” extended to the bar beforehand, and at dinner (some fantastic red wine her friend Ray picked out), at his place afterwards, etc. I may even have eaten some milk chocolate. All in all, I guess, a much more extreme cheat day than I had had honestly since I can remember. But it was a great night: great conversation, using frozen bread as an ice pack, and watching the Flyers win in OT! That was very exciting, not only to be able to watch the NHL playoffs live from South Africa, but to happen to have it be my team, and to come from behind to tie in the third period and then win in OT in a must-win game (they were down 3-2 in the series, and have since won game 7 thank goodness … it’s always embarrassing for a #2 seed to be knocked out in the first round).

Monday was a public holiday, because I would never be able to do this crazy on a school night anymore. So the next morning I had a bit of a dehydration headache that wasn’t much improved by Sandbar where the omelette was good but I had to ask for water several times. Seriously, ??

Hung out with another friend in Camps Bay for a couple hours, then went home to shower, took Sam home, and on the drive back to the gym was thinking how stunning the autumn foliage is. It’s a bit colder south of Table Mountain so the leaves are changing more there than they are inland (like Stellenbosch area, where I was on Friday). Sam is such a cool girl. It’s funny, we look at the world very similarly although the way that our personalities manifest is very different: I am very much the tomboy and she is very girlie. But we get along great; it’s too bad she’s leaving SA for a few months to go work in London (she’s a stylist and model).

I couldn’t do the day’s workout which was all Olympic lifting so instead I had fun with doing strict ring pullups (shoulder to the bottom of the rings), and then 100 ring pushups with chest to the bottom of the rings. Needless to say my triceps are a bit sore today!! The good part about being injured, I suppose, is that you get to play around with things you don’t normally do. Then I was super lucky because right when I was thinking about going home and cooking dinner one of the coaches asked if the others of us wanted some food. I was about the happiest person alive at that point. Simple pleasures.

Tuesday was a very exciting day. First day back at work since Thursday but more to the point, I got sick of limping around so just started walking normally, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t feel fine (a little sore but nothing extreme). Maybe it was the rice. Had a pretty productive day, too, although my brain is getting a bit overwhelmed this second when I think of all the work that I still have to do. But today is a holiday too so I’ll start thinking about that tomorrow morning again. Things are definitely starting to take shape, and if all goes according to plan I can get back to my real job in maybe 6 months or so. But I could think of more boring things to do with my time than to get the accelerator up and running. Still, with all of these public holidays (last Friday, Monday and Wednesday of this week)combined with concern over my own physical health, my brain hasn’t really been fully in work mode. It will be good to get it back there, actually: I am happiest when I am driving at a number of things at 100% rather than just now where it feels like a couple of things are about to ramp from 80% back up to 100%. That’s a good feeling.

The workout yesterday was max handstand pushups, nose to wall. I almost did one with full range of motion, did 12 down to the abmat (maybe 1.5 inch) and 5 to a height about half that of the abmat (maybe ¾ inch). Getting better. The knee is still not 100% so instead of squats I did pullups and so I discovered a couple of things: 1. Knees-to-elbows are hard and I should practice them more, 2. Even kipping pullups are hard the day after you’ve done a bunch of strict pullups!

As seems to be my pattern lately I spent another good hour or so at the gym doing various types of physical therapy on my ankle and knee. Mainly rolling on a ball on my right quad to release the tension that is causing the inflammation in the knee. I was also practicing a lot balancing on my right leg, and I’m getting a lot better! Very exciting. At least I’ve progressed a long way from having to re-learn how to walk every time I stand up.

Yesterday was a pretty glorious one: woke up around 8am, saw that the Flyers had won, decided I didn’t really feel like being up yet, so went back to bed to snooze until 10am or so. Got up, showered, had a protein shake, iced my ankle, and went out to meet Chris for a trip to the Stellenbosch track. My ankle wasn’t exactly up to running and yesterday was essentially a rest day for me (and a recovery week for Chris) but we did a couple things. I did 3 pullups (just to test the bar, I’m laying off of those before the Sectional), 40 pushups, 46 situps, and like 65 or something Superman back extensions, then 3 minutes of various plank holds). Chris ran a super fast 400m (not quite as fast as he wanted, but he had to dodge a gardener in his lane at the end of the last 300 … I was cracking up). Just his luck it decided to rain just the one time when he was running! Fun time though and I should be good to run by Monday which is when we have a super fun (aka deathly!!) workout planned. Monday is another public holiday, you see.

So yesterday I also realized that I have literally become my t-shirt (the one that says Eat, Sleep, CrossFit). I always said if you added Work into the mix it would be pretty much accurate. I am now so in touch with my body that I no longer enjoy what alcohol does to it. It’s either one glass of wine or on the rare occasion when I actually want to drink more seriously I’ll do that, but I’m not so happy about accepting the consequences anymore because it’s not just that I don’t feel good it’s that I can feel more clearly now how it impacts my training and my mental function at work and I’m not cool with that. Also getting enough sleep is key, in general but also in particular when it comes to alcohol: ElectricSleep has showed me that even after two glasses of wine my sleep is significantly affected in a negative way. Guess it stands to reason that the body doesn’t particularly like to be poisoned.

Also bad is losing 5 points in the paleo challenge for having one sip of wine. I need to double-check the rules there. Last night a couple of us had dinner at one of our favourite restaurants, Carne. I, at least, had a really great time. Then again, any evening that involves t-bone steak and seeing what happens when you put a really pretty girl in front of your guy friends is bound to be fun!

Just got back from a coffee run over to Espressolab, and time to get into the swing of this two-day week!

• “You already work here, you just don’t know it.” – Jobst
• “You’re almost more stupid than I am.” – Chris
• “It would still take 20 minutes.” – Chris (this one is an inside joke, sorry)
• “There aren’t a lot of white people in Stellenbosch, are there?” – Chris
• “She’s surprisingly cool. For a girl.” – Jobst

A wonderful terrible week

So I wrote a bunch of stuff and decided it was all pretty boring and whiny so here’s a summary of what didn’t go so well in the last week:
• I got a cold or flu that gave me a fever and knocked me on my ass for 2 days (although this did lead to the story my boss has told incessantly ever since of how he came back from a meeting to find me lying on the couches in the company pajamas working)
• Because of my fever acupuncture was particularly horrible. The doctor stuck me with needles in my arms and neck to help with the fever and the ones in my right arm caused a very negative feeling. Eish.
• Knee tendonitis flared up again
• Yet another week in which I couldn’t do the CrossFit Open workout which hurt particularly much because this is one I would ordinarily be quite good at. Technically, I could have done this one but objectively the risk of exacerbating existing injuries was too high.
• Oh and the Flyers lost twice. They are the #2 seed in the east and are now down 3-2 vs the Sabres. Not. Good.

So I swallowed my pride and did what I should instead of what I wanted to, got my one lift to stay in the competition in, judged a couple people and practiced muscle-ups. Damn shame because I’m quite certain even on a bad day I would have had the #3 score in the region on this one. We’ll find out when I heal up and do it for real.

Essentially I’m bummed that I’m not back to 100% yet. That I can’t train is part of it but more fundamentally I don’t like being broken. I can’t wait for the day when I can actually run and jump around like normal, injury-free. I’ve also found my limit of patience; I was quite ok with this whole injury thing for the first two weeks but actually I was nearly in tears yesterday when I saw one of the girls in our gym after the workout. She was on the floor, exhausted, and I was just devastated. I actually had to go spend a few minutes alone before coming back to judge the next heat. Even at the market after, I am so glad one of our coaches was thoughtful enough to bring me some sausage to eat because I was feeling so down that I wouldn’t have eaten anything otherwise, although watching the boys chow through some serious sugar cheered me up a bit. I am not sure how they do it. I can’t take the stomach ache, but then again I also don’t have a sweet tooth.

I know it is ironic because there have been many more upsetting things when you look at it objectively that have happened to me in the last few months, and it’s not like this is Regionals I’m missing or anything. But I guess that’s how life is; sometimes the little things set you off and emotions are just brain chemicals anyway. Maybe I’m so busy always being calm and rational in serious situations that I finally reached a bit of a breaking point.

On a side note, if I had to pick a sectional workout to judge five times, it wouldn’t have been this one. There’s 100 minutes of my life I’m not getting back. It was fun the first 3 times … but by the third time on the same day I was quite bored of it. But I am finding that I’m loving coaching and judging. No real surprise there I suppose. My mother said it best once: I don’t like learning, I like knowing. I actually do like learning, but I love knowing. And it is nice to be a big fish in a small pond and even look past this year to the longer time horizon. Hey, a year ago I couldn’t do most of the things I can do now, or even 6 months ago. So it’s cool to think how much better I’ll be in a year because the learning curve is still rapid, and at a certain point you do hit a bit of a plateau but mine is far away still, considering the rate at which certain things are improving (or were…).

On a more positive note I lost a half a kilo in the last week and a half and I sincerely doubt it was muscle … we’ll call it a reduction of about .5-.75% bodyfat. A combination of not eating as much plus making some better food choices has helped. Knowing the secret doesn’t much matter if you don’t consistently practice it, and my body has stabilized at around 14-16% which is normal athlete range but in the interests of experimentation I want to see what happens if I drop down a bit more: will I gain some speed and get stronger at bodyweight exercises without losing strength.

At least I’m not burned out at this point, either at work or at the gym. I went to yoga this morning to cure myself feeling sorry for myself (it worked). So from tomorrow time to start doing some serious training at things I can do. Getting that muscle-up would do wonders to cheer me up, so there’s my new goal: get that muscle-up before my other injuries are 100% gone, or before my 1-year CrossFit anniversary (10 May). Nothing like a deadline to focus the mind!

And actually, this week was quite awesome! Significant progress at work; this place is going to look completely different a month from now than it does today. Super exciting. I better take some “before” pictures soon! On Thursday we had the formal launch of the accelerator. This is going to be my baby until we can find someone else to take it over and I can get back to my true love which is starting our own social enterprises (this time with real money for real staff!). But the accelerator is such a cool thing. I am not aware of any other incubators that do what we do which is a combination of consulting, fundraising, sales, and actual on the ground assistance. We have basically a 1:2 ratio of consulting hours to hours of literally assisting in the business. The two are so complementary when you think about it and the absolute genius of our system is that with social enterprise, the whole accelerator can be grant-funded. So that takes care of the problem of how to pay for it (er, well it will once the funds have been raised to pay for enough staff to get us running at full speed).

The other absolute genius is that when you think about it, a business is much better positioned after a year or so of operations (especially when put through the ringer of an incubation methodology that makes sure the market, product, operations, etc are all well-understood and well-planned) to go after capital. As an entrepreneur, writing a business plan is really only useful for the purposes of generating investment. For your own purposes of figuring out what to do, business modelling is all you really need to do, but after a year or so once you know your business and have figured out how to adjust your original concept and business model to the actual market realities, you can literally write a business plan in a weekend and it’s going to be a lot better than what you would have written a year earlier. Add to that a real track record, customer base, and positive trends (well, hopefully at least!!) and you are now on a much more solid footing to be negotiating for venture investment. So we all know all this (or at least it sounds quite logical), right? Sure, but here’s the missing link in my own mind until this week: with social enterprise, that first year or so of operations can literally be grant funded or funded with soft loans, if you play your cards right. And how cool is THAT? I mean I’d seen that upside when it came to our own businesses (i.e. the job I want to get back to) but it hadn’t occurred to me that it could apply more broadly.

So there are some benefits to social enterprise. On the flip side you see that it’s not as sexy as a charity (who wants to donate money to a solution that might be sustainable and where the owners do want to make some profits when you could donate your money to an orphanage), and it’s not as profitable as a purely for-profit enterprise. The secret is scale. A social enterprise on its own can’t easily get grant funding for that first year of operations. But at scale…. Well, without giving up our trade secrets, you get the idea.

I’m excited because it seems like this can really work, and we have the right kind of momentum (at last, the pieces are all starting to fall together). Boy it’s been a rocky road, and maybe I am more mentally beat down than I even admit to myself. But it’s time to get charging again … just, maybe, with a little more balance this time. I’m happy with my lifestyle at the moment and the balance I’ve found therein. But hey, we only learn lessons when we’re ready. It took me a while to learn a couple things in my own life, and it took us at work some long hard months of slogging through to learn some key lessons about core competencies, positive energy, and letting go of the shore. After all, one of the key lessons I’ve learned recently is that the energy you get out of a situation reflects the energy you put in (the traffic’s always the traffic, it’s how you respond to it that determines if you get road rage or not).

Thursday night was a Greenpop gig at the Assembly and that was awesome as a chance to hang out with Peter, hear Jeremy Loops (!! I am still just in awe of this guy), and support Greenpop. Right as I was leaving, in walks a friend I hadn’t seen in ages, who was looking for another friend I hadn’t seen in ages. So “I’m leaving now” turned into 2 ½ hours. But hey aside from the fact that the smoke and all the shouting did no wonders for my physical health … what an awesome time!

Friday was a public holiday, and started off with a massage (awesome) then I went to the gym to stretch and wound up staying for like 3 hours (how does that happen???). Funniest thing was watching one of our guys do a workout then immediately lie on the ground and watch the video recording he had taken of himself doing the workout. Very post-modern.

I later learned that there is such a thing as alcoholic ginger beer. That is very exciting, or will be in a few months. Heh. I took a group of people to a wine farm that had some good food and a fantastic view (and the Sauvignon Blanc wasn’t bad either. Yes, it took South Africa to teach me to appreciate white wine!!). So that was super fun.

Saturday started out just awful as I mentioned, but then the sausage and coffee at the market were amazing and I spent the rest of the day with a combination of boys from the gym. First we went to see a movie (Sucker Punch). Very entertaining. The dialog was terrible but the cinematography was great. And it had everything in it from scantily-clad hot women kicking ass to zombies (it’s hard to cheat the range of motion when zombies attack!), a train job, Vermont (apparently it’s quite sinister?), and Tekken. So that was a nice escape from reality in every sense of the word and I do always enjoy getting quality time with the boys.

Sunday, yoga followed by a freaky reiki experience. I had done something weird to my ankle yesterday walking (of all things) and I was quite worried as a new part of it was suddenly inflamed and ice, rest, etc. overnight did not help. So after about 8 or 10 minutes of reiki, it was not only apparently healed but the whole area of the leg felt like what it feels like when you put on one of these anti-inflammatory patches or gels: the whole area first felt really warm when she was doing her thing, then very cool after. Even weirder than that, though, because I’d never properly experienced reiki before but hey if you believe that’s more than half the battle, was that the woman who did it said that she hadn’t done reiki for a long time because when she did it she heard voices. When working on my ankle, someone named George had a message for me that “I could shave time but I must go more slowly in order to progress.” This meant nothing to her but obviously meant the world to me. And if that isn’t weird, I don’t know what is. Afterwards, I got a big dose of Sandbar with Roland (friends are the best when they can order your food for you!!). It’s his favourite place and it’s closing in a little over a week and I am quite upset …. The omelettes and cream cappuccinos are amazing.

This week also featured a great Skype call with a Babson classmate. I’m trying to cause some trouble. We’ll see how far I get. More info when I have it.

So overall I can’t complain. In the grand scheme of things, work is going better than it ever has, and hey my right leg may be a disaster but my upper body has never been so strong. I suppose I am also learning lessons about patience. I guess I’ll listen to George, whoever he is (or was).

• “Not that I’ve done it before. My friend told me.” – Jacques
• “You’re like a man when you’re sick!” – Max
• “Men never change. Ever.” – overheard while walking to work
• “Her tenacity scares me a little bit.” – Roland
• “Making it to the inner sanctum isn’t easy.” – Peter
• “Most men are boys.” – Sam
• “I’m like a grandfather clock without the grandfather.” – Dan
• “The fact that it’s a cult is a little disturbing.” – Dan
• “It’s cute that you can name your callouses after days of the week.” – Dan (not true, actually, only the places where the skin actually rips open)
• “For those who fight for it, life has a flavour the sheltered will never know.” – Wise man (Sucker Punch)

In which, for once, I don’t get injured doing something stupid

Apparently I should have named my last blog post something along the lines of “Ellie gets injured doing something stupid.”

Well, when the most movement you do is hobbling between the couch and kitchen, it’s pretty hard to injure yourself. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty boring. So maybe a better name for this post would be “Nothing much interesting happened because I didn’t do very much.”

They announced the next CrossFit Games workout: 10 minute workout of as many rounds as possible of 60 burpees where you have to jump over the bar in between each one (two-legged jump and landing, whee…), 30 overhead squats @40kgs, and 10 muscle-ups. Would be interesting to see how far I got at this workout if I could actually do the workout.

Adding insult to injury, my brand new weightlifting shoes arrived at the gym from the courier Rika (glad to have her back in the country), and they fit perfectly. At least the left one does. This was a bit of a risk since you had to order men’s sizes (thanks, Rogue Fitness… but at least the sizing charts were bang on). Very exciting. Ugliest shoes in the damn universe but hey, it’s CrossFit not a fashion show (as I think I reminded Roland once when he made fun of me for wearing purple socks with my green shoes…).

Speaking of something that is not something else I had my first experience with acupuncture on Wednesday. Wow this is all very stream-of-consciousness but I’ll go with it. So the first needles went into my cranium (how giving me a cramping headache when they came out will help my ankle I may never know). Probably not ideal to have your first experience with acupuncture be to treat an acute injury but it was what it was. So the needles hurt a little going in, then some dull pain. Then nothing. Then some crazy pain throughout the whole ankle area the likes of which I’ve never felt before. It wasn’t sharp, or dull, or acute, or achy … it was a different sort of pain, and I could almost feel something being radiated out from that area, and some heat. Apparently this is what acupuncture feels like, although usually it manifests as energy and not pain! All in all a very disconcerting thing. Then that faded away.

THEN the doctor came and took the needles out and proceeded to do something that might have been termed massage if it wasn’t absolute torture. Chris had me at an 8 out of 10 on the pain scale the other day, this was more like a 9 or 9.5. I’m not one to cry out in pain, but I did. Holy heck. I will say that I was walking better after that little adventure. Went back to the gym to do more mobility work, and say goodbye to one of our coaches who is off to Europe for a few days. How you can tell I was really injured is that I was watching the other people lift weights and I had absolutely zero desire to join them. I could have done some sort of a workout but I was absolutely, completely, totally not in the mood. That never happens to me. The body is smart, if you know how to listen to it (and, ahem, actually DO listen to it!).

So what did I actually do this week other than lay around on the couch, ice my ankle, massage the fluid away, rest, rinse, repeat?
• 2x sports massage to help with the ankle and tendonitis
• The above-mentioned Chinese torture session
• Visit to the chiropractor
• Picked up my organic veggie bag in Woodstock
• Lunch at Caprice (beach salad & bikini burger, paleo style!)
• 4x foam rolling & stretching at CCF (along with I think 7 pullups, 4 pushups, and 5 or 6 ring pullups)
• Judged two athletes perform 11.4 (both of them did better than I did haha!)
• Did my one burpee jump over the bar; Chris was even nice enough to cross off the “s” on the word “burpees” so it’s nice to know he at least has a sense of humor about the whole thing!

I of course had wanted to do more than one, but I was told in no uncertain terms and multiple times that I was not allowed. I guess that’s the secret: if you want to order me around I need to believe that you believe you’re doing it out of love.

In thinking about it, most of the day Thursday was spent in one form of physical therapy or another. Probably on the order of 9-10 hours total in the entire week. Injuries are not only painful, but expensive and time-consuming!

I finally made it back to work on Friday. That was pretty awesome. I picked a lousy time to get injured though; the next few weeks have a ton of public holidays and so there won’t be as much work getting done. The calm before the storm, and if I’m smart I’ll take good advantage of it.

Saturday was TEDxCapeTown! Unfortunately I was still a bit immobilized so I didn’t get to socialize as much as I would have liked and mainly just hung out with other CCFers. Good thing we brought our own protein because the catered lunch didn’t have any. I should also thank my friend Charlotte for finding someone to put my ice packs in the freezer and for going and swapping them each break. Also, I nearly made myself sick drinking too much water too fast. But this is what happens when I’m cut off from access to water for hours at a time. I am, indeed, for love of water.

Interesting series of talks, and a sublime musical performance by Ard Matthews. Cape Town really is a great town for music. A couple of interesting notes from the day:
• Thanks to mine refuse there are parts of Gauteng that get yearly doses of radiation that are in line with Chernobyl (this was the only talk to receive a standing ovation). From this three take-aways:
o Government coverups exist in every country, I guess
o Another reason to be glad I live in Cape Town and not Johannesburg
o I really hope that Shell doesn’t get to frack the Karoo
• We generally don’t take sufficient time to think.
• Eran Eyal is a singulatarian. Interesting.
• Cape Town had municipal water before the city of London. Who knew? The Reclaim Camissa project is quite interesting.
• Stats are apparently that about 20% of people will have substance abuse problems and 5-10% will have them to the point where it messes up their life severely.
• The universe *is* an amazing place and we really don’t need to be under the influence to enjoy and be amazed by it. Having said that, I still intend to have a drink too many on occasion. Just. Not. Until this ankle heals.
• Never get too dependent on your slides.
• The world as tetris: apparently the best players manipulate the orientation on screen rather than in their heads, and you can work with people and situations in the same way.
o This didn’t sink in as much until in discussions today I realized it applied to CrossFit as well. Vary *how* you do things and you might learn what does and doesn’t work (or, in my case, exactly what situations cause your hands to rip open in various places ….).

Best quotes from TEDxCapeTown:
• “We try to get too clever and we just get stupid.”
• “But something is changing, isn’t it?”
• “It’s so easy to shirk the responsibility to think.”
• “Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.”

Today was a good day. Decided against yoga because of my ankle, so slept in which was divine, had some lunch, then headed out to Somerset West where I spent a couple of hours with Neil at his gym. Yeah put a couple CrossFitters together and they can talk about CrossFit for, apparently, about 4.5 hours! I did learn a thing or three, ripped my hand open in a whole new way, and I hope I gave him some things to think about in terms of how he might build his own business. I guess the #1 thing is that it’s time for me to put together a specific plan regarding how I want to get stronger and address my own weaknesses, and start experimenting.

This was also the first day that I was able to walk in the morning without having to ice the ankle first, which is encouraging in terms of my being able to train in the morning tomorrow. I feel like a kid before Christmas … I get to train tomorrow!!! Hmm, what was I just saying about substance abuse problems?

I’m excited. Excited for the work week, to be training again, and hopefully for a Sectional workout that I can actually do!

• “Unfortunately being perfect is really hard!” – Meggie
• “Well, you certainly did twist your ankle sufficiently.” – Stuart
• “What sadistic bastard thought this up? This is hectic!” – Rob
• “Don’t eat a giant bowl of berries and cream right before you do the workout.” – Pat Barber
• “It happened outside the gym.” – Chris
• “I ain’t so afraid of losing something that I’m afraid to have it.” – Zoe (Firefly, Heart of Gold)
• “I think we’ll see some things we’ve never seen before.” – Neil

Oops, I did it again

So I am knowing that I need to rest, am very smart and even though my knee doesn’t feel any pain doing the 50kg front squat (woohoo!). And that was the easiest time I think I’ve ever had power cleaning that weight. Didn’t hurt that I decided to do my one whole rep when one of my favourite songs came on (Shipping Up to Boston).

After that I was judging and coaching. I had the pleasure of judging one of our athletes for whom 50kgs was also a big PR, and she managed to get 5 complete reps in. So inspiring to watch competition bring out the best in people. Also on the men’s side two amazing performances: one guy had tried to squat clean 75kgs probably like 20 times and failed and finally got it. THAT was amazing and I was so happy for him, we all ran over to give him a hug. Another guy managed to squat clean 75kgs when his previous PR was something around 50. Now that is amazing … if the weight had been 75kgs for me, I’m not at all sure I could have done it. Speechless.

So instead of resting for the day instead I decided it would be a good idea to go and do a workout of tire flipping and rope climbing. It was actually super fun while it lasted: 20 minutes, as many rounds as possible of 4 tire flips (300lb tire), 10 jumps onto and off of the tire, and 2 rope climbs. I was really having a blast, practicing pulling myself up the rope with both my arms (usually I primarily use my right arm), learning that flipping the tire isn’t quite as easy when you don’t have 15-20 seconds of rest in between, and just generally having a great time working out outside in the sunshine.

And then on the way down on one of the rope climbs I let go before getting fully to the ground (as you do, you know, trying to conserve energy), landed on the rope with my right ankle, twisted it violently, heard a loud pop, swore, and went upstairs to get it treated. By the time my shoe and sock came off my ankle was swollen about 2 inches bigger than normal size. It was not pretty. Somewhere there is a photo from a traveling CrossFitter that should be mailed to us of me on the ground covered in dirt from the tire with my foot being iced and a huge smile on my face because in that circumstance what can you possibly do but laugh?

My friend Kerry told me yesterday that she thought I was handling the whole injury quite well: taking it as a message that I really should have been resting and now I am being forced to; that the things it will prevent me from doing for 2+ weeks are the things I am good at anyway (running and jumping), and I can just use extra time to work on areas of relative weakness in my upper body and there is no chance I’ll try and push myself back from my knee and bicep injuries too quickly now. When she met me a year ago, I probably would have gone off about how awful it was that right when I was getting over one thing I went on to the next injury, and bemoaning the situation. Thinking back on it, it’s probably true that I would have done exactly that, but I look at the problem more holistically now. Sometimes I wonder how much I’ve realistically changed in the last year and this is actually a great example of how I have.

I was thinking how I was just writing about how I’m not one to cry over spilt milk, so of course, I wasn’t sitting here crying over this one: just absorbing advice on how to get better and putting all my energy into recovering. Luckily one of our coaches knew just what to do, which was to put tight compression on it as quickly as possible to stop the bleeding. He seemed amazed that we got the swelling down as much as we did (it was reduced by about 50% in the first hour or so). Obviously he’s not well acquainted with my parasympathetic nervous system.

But here is another area where trust is critically important. What he did HURT, like grit your teeth and hold your breath, 8 out of 10 level of pain hurt. When you’re injured like that and someone is touching you and it’s increasing the pain you really, REALLY have to trust them. I am not sure I had ever been in a situation like that before, come to think of it. Then, another of our coaches literally carried me down five flights of stairs, to his car, and into my apartment up another three flights of stairs, and I’m 69kgs of heavy. If there is one thing I don’t like it’s to feel helpless, and in this situation I was scared, helpless, trusting, and so, so grateful. All of which is good for me.

52 hours post-injury I was taking my first steps. Well, I eat well and I’m healthy, right? Faith in my own healing (although I need to stop having to prove it!), combined with lots of fish oil & antioxidants, some physical therapy, and following instructions regarding icing and compression. Been drinking a lot of protein shakes with crazy amounts of antioxidants (maca powder, hemp protein powder, cacao powder, the marine collagen stuff that tastes terrible but is great for tendons, ligaments, etc.). I feel a bit like I’m on the SlimFast diet but these things taste fantastic and are so filling! Also, abstaining from drinking has surely helped. A year ago I probably would have self-medicated with a bottle of red wine and would have felt better for a little while but alcohol promotes inflammation, so it was actually the last thing I should be doing with an injury like this. Shame, though, I was kind of looking forward to having a few drinks before the paleo challenge started. Oh well… :)

72 hours on, now, walking is easier. It’s so funny because with a sprain all your balancing muscles forget what to do and walking becomes something you have to concentrate on. It literally is almost like learning to walk again.

The x-ray is a year old but it shows how my bones are made out of concrete (thank goodness). Now this is another area for me to be extremely, extremely grateful because the height I fell, and the way I twisted the ankle, well let’s just say I am DAMN lucky I didn’t break it.

While being laid up I read this post which is the best thing I have read in a while. Funny because I was just thinking a few days ago that this is one thing that I generally enjoy, is being open to new possibilities and being flexible. The best decisions in my life were made that way: the decision to go work for Ask Jeeves, the decision to drop out of Cal, the decision to apply for the South Africa offshore course instead of the India one, the decision to try out CrossFit (yeah I’m still hooked, this injury doesn’t mean Xfit is dangerous it means I’m not as careful as I should be and let this be a lesson to us all!).

I have had some good reflection time working from home, and have gotten over some bits of writer’s block because here there is nothing to distract me (other than chat and Facebook…). Time to grab another ice pack and get back to it!

BTW thanks to Chris for staying up late to pull a photo of me climbing the rope off his video. Thank goodness he repositioned the camera part-way through so my injury was not caught on camera!

• “Well, we’re all running from something I suppose.” – Inara (Firefly, Bushwhacked)
• “Be prepared for some extreme pain.” – Chris
• “Everything works together for the good.” – Shaun
• “Wow, how much fish oil did you consume? An entire whale?” – Janie
• “For the past 33 years I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” – Steve Jobs

Finding my limits

I like pushing my limits. My ex-boss said it best in a letter of reference when he said that he was of the opinion that I am happiest when I have almost too much going on.

I think that’s one reason why I like CrossFit, because it’s fantastic to see how my limits increase upwards over time. A year ago, I couldn’t do a single pullup. Tuesday of this week I got a new personal best for consecutive pullups and they were chest-to-bar (this is where your chest must touch the bar, so chin over the bar isn’t enough). Some improvements are fast, and some are maddeningly slow.

One of the nice things about CrossFit in this way is that it’s measurable. Measurable progress is more pleasant than progress that’s difficult to measure. That’s why milestones and goals are also important in a work setting because if you don’t know where you’re going it is easy to deviate from the path, and it’s good psychologically to see progress even if it’s just going through a checklist.

This week I finally fell back into the groove at work. It’s been a rough ride for a number of reasons. I actually love change, but that doesn’t make it easy. I am so excited by what we’re doing and outrageously happy to be running the accelerator …. But at the same time a bit of writer’s block. We have a couple of new interns who are fantastic (or show signs of being such), and working with them has been great but has also highlighted our lack of process around inducting new interns, which is one of the projects one of them is now working on. I always knew that one of my weaknesses was getting started with things: once I’m going, I go. But this has been a testing process, and I’m learning how to get better at this. But it’s a slow process, and I suppose this might be a good time for a little self-compassion.

I love my parasympathetic nervous system. Last week Friday I was diagnosed with tendonitis in my right knee, which means I can’t do any sort of activity involving lunging or squatting until I am pain-free. I’m also learning the difference between “pain” and “pressure” as yesterday for the first time I was able to squat pain-free; but I did still feel pressure in the knee. But I swear I must be a genetic freak because the usual healing time for tendonitis is 4-6 weeks. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be fully fine in 3, or possibly less. We will see, and we will also see how the workout I’m about to do sets me back.

In order to qualify for the Regionals you must complete one workout every 6 weeks as prescribed (as RX’d in the lingo), and the top 60 men and women from each region qualify for the Regional competitions in a couple of weeks (second week of June in our case). We are in Africa so any woman who can complete the workouts as RX’d will qualify. Unfortunately for me, CrossFit HQ picked my worst nightmare workout for this week: as many repetitions as possible in 5 minutes of a squat clean & jerk at 50kgs. Now ordinarily this would be a little bit challenging but otherwise fine … but I shouldn’t be squatting on my knee at all right now, let alone with 50kgs! So I have to do 1 rep to qualify, which I will do, and hope it doesn’t set my healing back too much.

Apparently I also have a reputation for pushing my limits because Chris, who is one of our coaches, has told me literally twice every day this week since the workout came out that I must not do more than one rep. Now I may be foolhardy but when it comes to injury I’m no dummy. And yet. Well, whatever, I am in a cult after all.

Speaking of which, so inspiring today that four people at the gym did amazing things:
• Two of the guys got their first muscle-ups
• One girl did the 50kg squat clean and it was a PR lift by like 10kgs (if you know anything about Olympic lifting you’ll know just how impressive that jump is!)
• And another girl did 6 reps of the squat clean & jerk in the 5 minutes. This doesn’t necessarily sound like much until you learn that her PR for clean & jerk is 50kgs.

On Tuesday doing those chest-to-bar pullups I also strained one of my biceps so now I have to rest that too. After the gym that evening I went to Pecha Kucha, was not social at all, and just wanted it to be over with so I could go home and eat. My body is trying to tell me something, clearly, so it looks like some rest is in the cards for next week.

These are definitely trying times for a lot of people. I have been ridiculously out of sorts because I do not like being injured, and it bleeds through to everything else in my life. I feel OK though because I’m getting better and I couldn’t be more excited by what we’re doing at work. Well, that’s a lie, but once we get the ball rolling in a week or so and have the Easter break to do just-in-time process mapping things will get a lot cooler. I can’t wait to talk about it.

But also a lot of my friends have been going through challenging times at work: I have friends on literally three continents right now whose dissatisfaction with work is so palpable it’s almost painful. I take that back, too, it is painful. But that reminds me of what I posted about the last time. Change it, do something about it, or leave the situation, if accepting it is not an option. I guess that’s one somewhat unusual aspect of me: I don’t generally take a lot of time to wallow in self-pity (or do I? says the girl who’s been moping around all week because she’s worried about her knee; hmmm). OK maybe self-pity, but I do believe in not crying over spilt milk. Something broke, or didn’t go the way you wanted, or whatever … get over it. Move on. Are you really going to care in 5 years? Depending on the severity, maybe, but sitting around wishing the situation were different doesn’t help you.

Not knowing when you’re in a rut is the biggest problem. Awareness. I have been struggling a lot lately with presence, living in the moment, really listening. Dragging myself back to the now. I think I read or heard somewhere that 90% of what we talk and think about is either the past or the future. Think about it. But once you come to that realization (or if it’s obvious), well, it’s interesting. I think I will spend some more time probing and trying to understand my friends and what holds them back. Meanwhile, I will think about what’s held me back in the past. If I have half a brain, I’ll have a few extra hours this next week to do just such a thing.

“I can’t believe it.” – Luke
“That is why you fail.” – Yoda

This is why I heal quickly.

• “Let’s not confuse the guinea pig with the bacon.” – Nathan
• “You must go full throttle when it really counts.” – Shaun
• “Do it as Rx’d.” – CrossFit Games instruction guy (with a bit of a sneer, I might add!)
• “Just don’t do anything stupid.” – Chris
• “Yes, the cult comes first.” – Jaco (this was a statement of recognition, not agreement!)
• “Just because there’s a gap in the market doesn’t mean there’s a market in the gap.” – Jaco
• “Yeah but you’re a freak.” – Jeff (explaining that his ripped hand wouldn’t heal as fast as mine)

What a startup needs to succeed

Probably every entrepreneur/would-be entrepreneur/anyone-with-an-opinion-on-the-subject has written a blog post about this. Just like everyone has an opinion as to what should go into a business plan (and even why to write one, which is the subject of another post but the short answer is to get funding; business modelling takes care of the rest), everyone seems to be an expert as to what it takes for a startup to succeed.

Am I an expert? No, not really. I am developing expertise, yes, but what makes me competent in my own mind to comment on the subject are a couple of things:
• Experience working in a dotcom startup in Silicon Valley, two small enterprises outside of Boston, and now an organisation in the social enterprise space in Cape Town
• A framework for business planning and modelling that I learned at Babson
• Common sense in the form of strong tactical ability. Once we agree on where we’re going it’s always been very easy for me to figure out an effective (fast, cheap, and most importantly workable) way to get there. Put more succinctly, I see boulders coming and course-correct around them without even thinking about it
• The mind of a strategist (or so I’ve been told, more than a few times)

So, what does that give me? A combination of talent and experience and, as anyone who knows me knows, if I’m anything I’m opinionated. And besides that, right or wrong, if you’re reading this I bet you’ll learn a thing or two even if it’s just to disagree with me!

With that, here’s my list on what a startup takes to succeed (in no particular order):
1. The right team. OK this one is first for a reason, it’s really the sine qua non, and does it really need too much explanation? There is a reason venture capitalists bet on the jockey and not on the horse. A good entrepreneur and the right team can fix an idea (because let’s face it, every idea is going to need some fixing once the rubber meets the road), but the wrong team can doom event the best idea. True. I’ve seen it happen.
a. But it’s a little more complicated. You need to have people in the key roles (i.e. visionary, planning doer, doing doer, salesman, etc.). The same person can wear multiple hats, but ultimately the team has to be able to DO what it sets out to do.
b. Also, aces must be in their places. Like where I work there are no fewer than three of us who are great business strategists. But one of us is a natural leader and fundraiser, one is a natural at business development, and one of us is a thinking doer. So comparative advantage is also important.
c. The team MUST have passion for the idea. No passion, no followthrough, and the team can become distracted by … oh, is that a helicopter?
d. Last but not least, the team must have the ability to execute. This is similar to having the right people in the right roles, but really speaks to ability actually do come up with good ways of achieving goals, and actually following through.

2. Good financial stewardship. Pay attention to the bottom line. It’s so easy to get caught up in sales, or product development, or operations, or fighting various sorts of fires that you forget to focus on the bottom line. And guess what? If you run out of money, you’re through (usually!!).

3. Sales focus. Yeah I know it’s weird for an ex-product person to focus on sales, but without sales, you run out of money. See point #2. If you build it, they won’t necessarily come, no matter how damn good your mousetrap is.
a. Tim Ferriss, who I had the pleasure of going to high school with (he wouldn’t have been my pick for self-made self-help guru but hey we’re all different in high school) summed this up quite nicely when he wrote that it’s far better to have customers and no product than the reverse.

4. Something people want (or preferably need), NOW. This one is so simple but often overlooked: there must be a clear and distinct customer value proposition.
a. First of all, you must be solving a real, burning customer problem (or filling a strong desire). I mean sure, you can sell bobble-head dolls for a while but every fad fades. If you are helping a customer in a real way rather than trying to force something on them, you’re going to have staying power.
b. Solving a customer need is better than solving a customer desire. Without going into the hierarchy of needs, you’re going to have more success the weaker the customer power in the equation. If they need you, it’s a hell of a lot better than if they just want you, not least because wants may change (needs might as well, but it’s harder), and you are competing with a lot of other wants (and needs).
c. The idea must not be ahead of its time. Market windows are real things, and to a certain degree if you’re a bit late to market you can catch up. Check Google: when it entered the scene there were something like 6 or 7 major search engines: Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, Inktomi, Webcrawler, Lycos, FAST, LookSmart (I’m sure I’m missing some). But if you’re too early to market you’ll burn through your cash before you can get people to adopt what you’re selling. Make sure the customers are ready.

5. Competitive advantage. So you have identified a customer need: people need to eat. Great; I can solve that one by providing a place people can go to purchase food that they can go home and cook. But why should people buy from MY grocery chain?
a. Learn what motivates purchasing decisions (well, the ones that aren’t done solely on brand or reputation!), and how to get people to change behaviour and start buying from you. This one is key: if you can’t answer why people should buy from you, go back to that customer value proposition. Until you have that right, you are building on VERY shaky foundations.
b. Understand the competition (including the status quo). If a customer has a need and they are not buying from you, why not? What is the competition doing that you’re not, and how can you react to that? Oftentimes your biggest competition may be the status quo. How do you break people out of that mould of NOT buying, or buying a substitute product?

6. Belief. Or faith, maybe? You must believe that you can do what you have set out to do. Many of you have heard this one before but my metaphor I use for this is lifting a weight that’s near your 1 rep max. In order to do this three things must be true:
a. You must be strong enough to lift the weight
b. You must have the correct form, because with a light weight you can be sloppy as hell but you can’t do that when the weight gets heavy
c. You must believe that you can lift the weight.
I would say that something like 90% of my failed lifts fall into category c. Which is why I need to believe I can do a muscle-up before I attempt one. But anyway, if you don’t believe that you can achieve what you are setting out to do, you’re not guaranteed to fail but if the challenge is big you are certainly not setting yourself up to succeed. What you think about, you bring about. So think about success.

7. The right support network. Mentors, connections to open doors, advisors. You can’t do everything yourself and plugging the holes and gaps in your offering (as well as having people point out your own blind spots) is critical.

8. Money. Left that one for last. Yes, you need money but be very careful of what you give up to get it. Someone once offered me a blank check for $1 million in exchange for 20% equity in whatever business I might start up. The first words out of my mouth were something along the lines of “I would never take that deal.” The sooner you can break even on sales, the less equity you need to give up, obviously. Be very careful! Venture capitalists expect 7 to 9 of their investments to fail, so they need to make sure they get good margins on the ones that don’t. That makes their money very expensive. Take as little as you need at any given time!

So that’s all I can think of right now on what you need. What doesn’t hurt?
• Luck
• An attractive industry (think Porter’s Five Forces, a quick back-of-the-napkin will tell you this)
• Good marketing, PR, and a sexy brand

What I have seen here in Cape Town is a lot of passion and raw talent, which is necessary but not sufficient. There’s an old adage “you don’t know what you don’t know.” This is true. High capacity people may need money and mentoring/strategic guidance. Less experienced people may need more direct skills transfer. It’s great that a lot of initiatives are trying to plug these gaps, from Silicon Cape to Umbono.

Providing money without a support structure can work (that’s the classic venture capital model), but it has a high failure rate. Providing a support structure without money isn’t going to work too well because you do need that initial cash injection (in most cases).

What has been exciting me for the last few days is how cool what we at Heart Capital do because it’s a combination the likes of which I have never seen of seed money (this is to come, but it’s part of the vision), incubation that is specifically tailored to the current level and desires of the startup social enterprise, and hands-on work. We will get in the trenches as part of incubation if that’s what the need is. Consulting hours are consulting hours and we don’t need to spend all of it in the boardroom talking strategy and marketing plans (or even customer value propositions). If our hours are better spent making introductions, or fundraising, or even planting trees in an all-hands-on-deck situation then that’s what we’ll do.

Last week was a good one. We set a couple of balls rolling, and there was a distinct change in the energy. There will be another change tomorrow; I know already.

Trying to remember what all I did last week since the last time I posted. I think Wednesday and Friday evenings I didn’t do much other than go to the CrossFit classes. On Wednesday we did a super fun workout (30 pullups, 30 dummbell squat cleans, 30 kettlebell swings, 30 wall balls, 3 burpee box jumps) but unfortunately it re-aggravated my knee. The good news is that I did get it diagnosed, and it’s tendonitis so I should be able to get it to heal up pretty quickly between these lovely NSAID patches and resting it. I am just hoping next Saturday’s workout doesn’t involve any sort of squatting! Friday we flipped the tire a bunch of times and then because we didn’t have the rope to climb Chris decided to have us reverse bear crawl up the stairs. Never mind what that means because it’s absolutely nuts. But flipping this tire so many times much improved my tire-flipping technique. It also removed a bunch of skin from the back of my fingers and caused Chris to make fun of me because I broke a nail.

Saturday was this week’s Open workout: as many rounds as possible in 15 minutes of 9 deadlifts @45kgs, 12 pushups, 15 box jumps @50cm. Now I was terribly disappointed in this one because I really wanted to get to 10 rounds and I only got to 9 even (and even that was close). I just absolutely died on the pushups because the form standards were VERY strict: you were not allowed to “snake” and push your shoulders up before your waist. I am sure I could have gotten to 10 rounds if we’d been doing “standard” pushups, but we weren’t. So I was quite disappointed that my strength gave out; I was spending nearly a minute on the floor doing pushups in the later rounds which is sad; my first few rounds I was done everything in under a minute. Oh well. I’m currently sitting at 7th in the region for this workout which also doesn’t please me very well. But, that’s life. Moving on… I guess the good news is that I got a PR on consecutive ring dips after the workout (and after some volume training on pullups). That’s actually kind of impressive; not long ago I could barely do 1 and to be able to do 5 in a row while tired after only about three weeks, well, I was happy.

Thursday night we had an event at the Hub that went off very, very well. I also had the pleasure of hearing Jeremy Loops play for the first time (I know Jeremy from Greenpop, but he’s also a loop artist). Oh my God, I mean, I had heard he was good but I was blown away. Blown. Away. I stayed up way past my bedtime to hear him (I was planning to leave at 9:30 and get to bed but I think I left at like 11:15 or so once he was done and I’d gone up to tell him exactly how awesome I thought he was). That still blows my mind. I very nearly went out to see him play the next night too but I really had to be getting sleep before Saturday’s devastating workout so I restrained myself. Apparently I was the only one.

Saturday: some retail therapy (bought a blender and soufflé dish), dinner with Deon in Gordon’s Bay and hung out for hours in his flat in Stellenbosch after. Slept poorly, woke up and went to yoga. 22 minutes of downward-facing dog into upward-facing dog would have been a lot easier if my shoulders hadn’t been shot from yesterday! Brunch with Kerry @The Twelve Apostles, then hung out in the hammocks in the fynbos garden for a couple of hours talking. Browsed the Kalk Bay bookstore and made a couple of interesting purchases; decaf and pea soup @Olympia Café, home to make dinner and write this blog post. Now: bed, because it’s past my bedtime again but I somehow get the sense I won’t have time to finish this blog post tomorrow.

I was just saying today how it really is true that things seem to be speeding up. It’s amazing how things can change in just one day, or how when you peel back layers of the onion you begin to understand why things are the way they are, and sometimes, just sometimes, exactly where they are going. Don’t be surprised now if things you thought would take weeks or months or years wind up happening much faster than you ever expected. Expect the unexpected.

And I’ll leave off today with Dina Oelofsen’s motto:
If something frustrates us, we have one of THREE choices:
1. Change it or DO something about it.
2. Leave the situation.
3. Accept it as if we have chosen it.
(P.S. Complaining about it is NOT one of the choices available)

• “Oh, you’ll climb that rope!” – Chris
• “When we do something we want to win, right?” – Peter
• “…but then I realized you’re no ordinary woman!” – Peter (I think he meant remembered)
• “Of course he is! He’s a f*cking genius!” – Misha
• “When was the last time I told you to do something that wasn’t going to hurt?” – Roland
• “If I die tomorrow I will die passionless. So should I take a chance and go for passion?” – Deon (bet you can guess what I told him)