The grind

The greatest thing about Wayne Gretzky was his vision of the game. He was a master of passing the puck to where his teammates were going to be. Almost like seeing the future.

The other great thing about Wayne Gretzky was his execution. Usually, flawless. He wasn’t quite as pretty as Jaromir Jagr in his heyday, and he certainly wasn’t the bone-crushing force of, say, a Brian Leetch. Actually, I suppose he’s sort of like the Chris Spealler of ice hockey. He is most definitely the best of all time, according to most people.

“Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.” – Wayne Gretzky

Yup. Success is about the grind, the suck, the pushing through when the going gets tough. It’s about making a plan so you know whereyou’re going, and sticking to it. Not rocket science. Success really isn’t.

It’s also about not making excuses. You screw up, you fall down, you dust your whiny ass off and get back up and keep going again. Mistakes are fine, they are necessary, they are good – they are how we learn. But it’s all about how we react to them. Make excuses and don’t change your behaviour, and, well, don’t be surprised if you make the same mistake again. I’ve said this before but I feel like often a lot of us have so much pressure (self-imposed and otherwise) to be perfect all the time, or to be the best in the room, or whatever, that we freeze. We’re so afraid of failure we are afraid to take the chances that we need to take if we are to succeed, or make any big breakthroughs.

This is what happened to me with the burpee workout. The workout was fine. A bit too fine; it was the end result that was not to my liking. My ankle wasn’t bothering me at all, but what happened was I took everyone’s advice to go hard (but not too hard) and just keep moving, but it turned out not to be hard enough … just like that row, I was so afraid of smashing myself that I left something on the table. The movement itself was OK – the jump was higher than I am used to jumping but not hugely so (we had to hit a target that was 6 inches higher than our max reach, and I was very strict here because you don’t get better by making the workout easier than it’s supposed to be). I only missed the target twice and had to re-jump. Not a biggie, though; I learned a lesson about how to do this workout and I’d probably get a few more reps if I had to re-do it but happily, I don’t. Finished with 104. At least I beat my shame level, right? AND I reiterated the lesson I learned at Fittest in Cape Town.

I did realise one other thing. I need to get way better with positive self-talk mid-workout. “This sucks, I’m not going to hit my target at this pace” or “Why are these taking so long? What’s wrong with my cycle time?” are not the right messages. “I can go faster” and “Every rep counts” is more like it, and I just wish I’d been thinking that thought between reps 40 and 80 when I was kind of out to lunch mentally. So …. Stuff to work on!

As with last year, loved the vibe in the gym during the workout. I actually originally wrote a bunch of whiny sh*t about a variety of things (how to cheat at 12.2, how my skinned knees hurt the next day, how I was getting sick already of over-analysis of the Open after just one week, how I sometimes just want to be normal again and eat bread & cheese without a care in the world). Oh, and my boring shopping expedition on Sunday. But I figured no one really cared about that stuff, and half the point of writing is just to get stuff out of your head, anyway, not necessarily to bore my readers.

Didn’t do too much exciting the rest of the weekend …. Got stuck with a bunch of needles so I looked like a human voodoo doll, had my muscles put back into place after all the limping, went to the beach, ate a lot of food, hung out with friends, went shopping. You know, the usual. Postponing my strength cycle for a week to let my ankle get all the way to 100%, and going to start playing with my diet a little bit more. But for now, stop procrastinating and get to my monstrous to-do list. This is a big week.

You know, oddly enough, Gretzky was never my favourite player. My favourite? Rod Brind’Amour. NOT the prettiest athlete. Not the best scorer. Not the softest hands (by any stretch of the imagination). What he was? The hardest damn worker on the team, a role model, a team player. In the ‘90s if you mentioned the word “grinder” which is a compliment for any non-highly-skilled hockey player, Rod Brind’Amour came to mind.

Plus, I had a bit of a crush on him. What can I say, I have some weird taste in men sometimes … and, ha! According to Wikipedia: “During his time at Michigan State, Brind'Amour would go from a game directly into the weight room where he would undertake a strenuous workout. His coach at the time said that Brind'Amour's workouts became so intense that they would turn the lights out on him, and when that failed to work, they would padlock the room.”

I had forgotten about stories like that. I guess that’s part of why he’s my favourite.

• “It’s good that you’re having thoughts like that. It means you’re normal.” – Charlotte
• “It looks really bad right now because it has New Skin on it.” “No, it looks really bad!” – Ellie & Mandy

Let the Games begin

It’s that time of year again, when CrossFitters all over the world wait with baited breath for HQ to release the workouts we’ll have to do, if we want to qualify for Regionals. As a marketing exercise it’s top-notch: compare yourself with the rest of your region, with the rest of the world, and have everyone talking about the workout non-stop for a week, before getting giddy like children at Christmas time before the next workout is announced.

… and I’ll admit, while I may keep my tongue firmly in my cheek while doing so, I do enjoy the excitement. Even the first workout (7 minutes of as many burpees as you can do), has my name written all over it. Of course, the web site is still just as broken as it was last year. You’d think they could get that AJAX shit sorted out … but no.

But … I’m not as excited as I was last year. Excited that we have a much stronger team this year, and since there are actually 100 women registered in Africa (up from I think 27 or so last year!), the level of competition is increasing which is always, always a good thing. Maybe that is why I’m not as excited … last year it was all new, and this year … well, it’s almost like going through the motions.

Was chatting to Mo, the rapper who performs with Jeremy, about performance. For a performance artist you feed off of and engage with the crowd. Focus and being in the moment is key. For a competitive athlete in a competition (which is actually a performance), it’s same same but different, as they say in Vietnam. For me, at least, it’s about that silence and pure focus where you literally can’t remember what music was playing, and everything around you goes completely quiet and it’s peaceful, and serene. Painful, yes, but it’s a meditative still, quiet pain.

Not every workout can be like that … there are many where you reach local muscular failure or you lack technique and need to think before you go again, or where grip is an issue. But the ones that are, where you just have to keep moving as fast as you can …. Those are beautiful. They quiet my head, and right about now, I need some silence in my head. So bring the shit on. The guys in my gym are telling me just how damn well they expect me to do, and I appreciate that, both because of the confidence, and also because of the pressure. It makes a workout that doesn’t actually matter for much into something where I do, in fact, care. Unfortunately it’s going to be all downhill from here.

The ankle continues to heal well. Wednesday’s acupuncture session felt quite awful but did wonders for the injury, as the swelling was much reduced afterwards. By the next morning it actually looked like something resembling a normal ankle again. I’ve gotten full range of motion back, but I’m still a bit afraid of tweaking it. Happily, burpees don’t require any huge use of jumping force. Come on baby, heal up ….

In other news, my mother will probably remember many a time telling me to suck my belly in as a child. I think I have been lazy in my mid-section probably my entire life, but I was really realizing it this week. First on Tuesday evening we were doing a barbell complex called ‘the bear’ and Chris kept telling me to keep my stomach tight. Which is HARD when you’re tired! Then the next morning I went to train and due to the ankle I couldn’t do either box jumps or walking lunges, so Rika had me do pushups and overhead squats instead (bad combo if you don’t tape your wrists…), and on BOTH exercises she was telling me I needed to be using my stomach, not my back. Wow, can I just say that overhead squats feel like a whole new exercise that way?? I finally understand why they are supposed to be good for your abs now. Moral of the story? I need to pay attention to this about infinitely more than I am right now.

I managed to finish a couple of things at work this week and, possibly more importantly, start some others. For me, starting is often harder than finishing. Once I start something, I usually do finish it which is why the act of starting takes on a good deal of importance.

We’re coming quite close to getting a new logo for one of our businesses. I had a bit of a laugh when an ex-employee responded to my request to pass over the Twitter login credentials by ignoring my request and instead deleting all the old Tweets …. Yeah, I can be passive aggressive too. Save that sh*t for something that matters, buddy! So that’s quite exciting. Next week is exciting too; with a couple of big networking events and meetings.

One of my recent tasks has been collecting references from past interns and some testimonials from the people we work with. They are beautiful, and this is only the beginning (or, rather: you ain’t seen nothing yet). Still, challenges remain, not the least of which is making sure to focus on the important, not the easy. But sometimes the easy is fun too … one of my self-assigned tasks this week was collections of outstanding payments and it does feel nice to mark a “Y” in the paid column for customer after customer.

I guess I’m feeling almost normal again. I will admit to the use of some drugs to help get me there …. Coffee makes me happy. It just does. I’ll cut it out again when my head is screwed back on my shoulders properly.

• “No, the New Skin wasn’t the weird thing. The rings were the weird thing.” – Jeff
• “It’s making my blood boil.” – Mandy
• “Well that’s pretty much a nightmare, hey.” – Hollie
• “Do we have to go as hard as we can?” – Graham  
• “I have to kill him. Before he kills you.” – my car guard
• “He looks sweet.” – Charlotte
• “Ahhh, you’re getting clever.” – Dr Lan
• “110 should be your level of shame.” – Grant (f*ck me…)
• “Why can’t Americans just conform to the rest of the world?” – Jon 
• "And your point is?"  –  Allan

Regrets

What ankle sprain? Right? Boom. Not all the way healed yet: I’m not comfortable jumping, yet, and there’s still definitely some swelling but walking is fine, and, more importantly, the body is recovered such that I can get back to training without impacting the body’s ability to recruit resources to heal the injury. 

I had a bit of a laugh last night at CrossFit. The workout was 100 burpee broad jumps which ordinarily is just my sort of workout, but I couldn’t jump, so Jobst had me sit out the workout (you should have seen the glare I gave him!) and instead do 3x max plank hold with a 25 pound plate. After the first hold I told him: “This is really hard!” to which he laughed and replied: “I know!” I tell you, that second hold I was feeling the burn 14 seconds in …. I did make it a bit longer than that, though. It’s a mental game as much as a physical one.

That last photo, by the way – what nose-to-wall-style handstand pushups will do to your toenail polish. Eh, I needed to change it anyway.

Sunday I was more feeling like myself, starting off with a beautiful breakfast in beautiful Camps Bay. Roland helped me with my San Francisco-itis by reminding me that there were many things about Cape Town that I did in fact appreciate (being able to drive to the beach, seeing Table Mountain every day, for example), and also that perhaps my issue with SF was that I didn’t appreciate it enough while I was there. Sometimes just awareness of WHY you feel the way you do helps.

We also got to talking about decisions and how sometimes you make decisions that are what you really want, and sometimes they are what you think you want, but then you realise later they were more what you thought you were supposed to want. In retrospect, my move to Boston was of the latter variety which is what got me thinking, of course what would my life be like now if I were still in the Bay Area? But that shit will drive you mental. I know, because it has been.

Then I decided to take the scenic route to Kalk Bay, because driving through the landscape around here always makes me fall in love with it all over again. Unfortunately this caused me to be late to dinner, for which I felt guilty. They say that people rate the most interesting people as the ones who ask you a lot of questions and let you talk about yourself. My goal for my dinner tonight: talk about myself as little as possible. I have this blog for goodness sakes, and I’ve been caught up in my navel gazing for a while now.

Loved this Katie Hogan post about training partners. Actually, I wish I had more (or any). I need more women to push me. Rika and I are not equal, it’s a rare workout where we can really push each other; either it’s a workout where her strength or work capacity enables her to kick my ass, or a workout with some of the gymnastic moves where I do better. But she’s not even training much with the normal classes, nor are most of the other coaches, for that matter. 

The big pro of CrossFit? The group training aspect. The camaraderie, the competition within that workout or to post a good score for the day on the white board. The big con of CrossFit (assuming you have good coaching and a good balance between form and intensity)? The group training aspect. Once you reach a certain level, it’s not optimal for your development as an athlete, depending on your goals. So more and more people move outside the system, because it doesn’t accommodate their needs fully. The programming that’s good for the general gym population isn’t ideal for the competitive athletes, and what’s ideal for the group isn’t ideal for most individuals within the group. But if you try to be all things to all people, you wind up not being anything to anyone.

Which is the same trap you can easily fall into at work, or at least I can, in the nature of my work. But enough about that. Taking it easy this week, sports-wise at least. Next week that all changes, as I’m going to play around with my training, go on a serious strength phase (this time including the dietary adaptations that will make sure I do in fact gain optimal strength), and take more active rest days, and try out qigong. If you keep dreaming about something (no, not daydreaming … that shit caused me to sprain my ankle, so I better watch it), best to give your subconscious a try to express itself.

Speaking of, I’ve been having some weird dreams, lately (maybe due to the elevated foot?). At least the food cravings are decreasing. Last night, I dreamed that a group of us were in something akin to a first person video game, progressing through some sort of Roman-baths style progression of rooms, underneath Devil’s Peak (where De Waal Drive is now), in the 1800s. There was water. A lot of it. All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

I’ve been thinking a lot about regrets these last few days. So many people say that they want to live their life without regrets. I don’t mean this in a general sense, I mean that a couple of my friends have specifically said that this is their goal, and, actually, who doesn’t, when you think about it? I don’t know a lot of people who go around saying they just want to live a boring, safe life. But here’s the thing: sometimes you see an opportunity and can decide to grab the bull by the horns and go for it. Sometimes you can see an opportunity and let it slip through your fingers. That you will regret, clearly.

So far so simple. You want to live life without regrets, do the former and don’t do the latter. But it’s not actually so simple, is it?

Sometimes, you don’t realise an opportunity has passed you by until later. Sometimes much later. Sometimes minutes or days later. I know how that one feels. I bet you do, too.

Sometimes you pass something up because you think you’ll fail. There’s a difference between reaching out and taking opportunities, and over-extending yourself stupidly. Passing things up that aren’t real opportunities aren’t reasons for regret, they are reasons for celebrating good decision-making.

It’s the nature of uncertainty that we don’t actually know where that line is, and sometimes those moments do pass us by. I’m not sure it’s possible to live life without regrets. What I can say though is that we can self-correct when we see we’ve gotten off track. One moment passes you by, wait for the next one (sometimes it comes). You realise you’re not happy in your job, or your relationship, or where you’re living? Well unless there’s some damn good reason to be afraid that you won’t find something better …. Either go for it or at least shut the hell up about wanting to live life without regrets or disliking your situation. As an ex-boss once told me, no one wants to hear problems. People want to hear solutions.

So. I have some regrets, not all of which have to do with rowing. The solution, of course, is simple: quit stewing and take action. The question is, what am I actually going to do?

• “I like to hear gossip, but I never pass it on.” – Charlotte (suuuure ….)
• “How many pairs of Inov8s do you have, Ellie?” “Five.” “Five! Why so many?” “… Because I need to color co-ordinate my outfits.” “Ahhh, the girl comes out!” – Anton & Ellie
• “It pushes you beyond what you think you’re capable of.” – Peter 

Top Ten lists are stupid

But they are also fun! Of course, if you don’t like the rule you can always break it (and as you all know, I don’t much care for rules, unless I’m the one making them!). So, I guess these aren’t so much top 10 lists as lists, in no particular order, of give or take ten things.  People, as always, are excluded for obvious reasons. Here goes!

Top 10 things I like about Cape Town:

1. Proteas, aloes, and calla lillies growing in the wild
2. Heart
3. Cape CrossFit (I’ve been to other gyms that could be homes, but this one *is* home, and you also can’t beat the view!)
4. Malva pudding
5. Camps Bay
6. The winelands (… and really good, cheap wine!)
7. Kabeljou (this is a very tasty fish)
8. The amazing hiking: Table Mountain, Lion’s Head, Crystal Pools …
9. The stunning beauty of pretty much everywhere you look
10. Not having to pump your own gas (petrol)
11. The generally flagrant disregard for health & safety, especially while driving
12. Sandbar … especially the omelettes!

Top 10 things I miss about America:

1. Dunkin Donuts coffee (yep…), and Peet’s, too, actually!
2. Spring and autumn in New England
3. Football
4. Farmers markets
5. Whole Foods (yep … in a pinch it does beat the hell out of Pick’n’Pay)
6. Heirloom vegetables
7. Instant oil changes
8. Tulips, peonies, cherry blossoms, irises
9. Drive-thrus
10. San Francisco and Boston

Top 10 things I wish I’d known 10 years ago:

1. How to eat & train properly (it wasn’t that I would gain weight by walking past the refrigerator so much as that the milk & rice & wheat I was eating was making me sick!)
2. Situations and people won’t change for you, as much as you might wish they would
3. Coconut is actually good for you
4. The customer’s opinion is actually more important than yours (which does NOT mean the customer is always right … sometimes you must educate them)
5. There is no substitute for testing (the scientific method applies to product design? What?)
6. Don’t be a martyr about something that really matters to you
7. The best way to motivate someone is to excite them (… and what excites THEM is not necessarily the same as what excites YOU)
8. Focus on what’s important (still working on putting this one into practice)

Top 10 things that remind me I’m not in Kansas anymore:

1. The currency
2. The price of petrol (aka gasoline)
3. The retail brands
4. The door handles
5. The power outlets
6. Car guards
7. Robot hawkers
8. Sloooooow internet
9. Pre-paid electricity
10. The concept of caller-pays (& outrageously expensive mobile phone airtime costs!)

Top 10 things I wish I’d listened to my coaches about earlier:

1. Don’t land on the rope
2. Get more sleep
3. Daily mobility
4. Diet, diet, diet

I’d say these last few days were more about what I didn’t do than what I did. Didn’t train. Beat myself up about reporting & monitoring I didn’t do last year, and my brain was in such a funk I got nearly nothing done at work Thursday & Friday. Didn’t go to hear Two Minute Puzzle because I needed to sleep. Didn’t practice muscle ups with the boys at the gym because I felt like my body needed to concentrate on healing my ankle. Didn’t hang out with Sam because our schedules conflicted. Didn’t go to another friend’s party because I didn’t bloody well feel like it. Most definitely didn’t eat any of the sweet & sugary things on display at the Biscuit Mill Saturday morning.

When I’m sick, I’m probably the most miserable person in the world to be around. When I’m injured I’m not as insufferable but I do suffer from a general sense of humour failure. Add to that the continued hangover … damn, I really need to pull my sh*t together and get on with things. Carl was saying, under the stars, with a view of the Twelve Apostles, how he’s just a little bit jealous of those of us who live here. So why am I not feeling it right now? Rhetorical question, yes; I know exactly why.

On the bright side, my body continues to amaze me. I self-diagnosed myself with a grade 2 inversion sprain, which typically takes 1-2 weeks to heal. Thursday morning, stairs were a challenge (I was having great fun also carrying a box of food for the Thursday lunch upstairs, on my head … it actually does balance better up there than trying to carry in front of you). By Thursday evening, stairs were manageable but I couldn’t do any mobility work such as a shoulder stretch that involved putting weight on the ankle. By Friday evening, I was walking almost normally, and with very little pain/limping. The first 10-30 steps are stiff and awkward, especially in the morning, but after that I can stand, put weight, even balance ok on the injured ankle.

Other than getting ice & compression on it immediately this time around the other good thing I did was to go for acupuncture the next evening. That was, as expected, one of the most painful experiences of my entire life. Firstly, Dr Lan starts poking it as he does to understand the complexity and nature of the injury. THEN he starts poking the hell out of it … maybe 10-15 different pokes, each about 2-3 seconds long. I posted on facebook that it was a 10/10 on the pain scale. That’s exaggerating a bit, it was more of a 9/10 because I wasn’t screaming. I did let out a couple of yelps of pain which is unlike me. But apparently it was necessary to reduce inflammation and increase blood flow. I tell you what, getting poked with needles was a relief after that.

An interesting insight of this latest injury is that I am almost certain last year’s ankle sprain and the associated month or so of limping was the root cause of the imbalance in my muscles that caused the strain to my left hand psoas/obliques, etc. After only a few days of a light limp, that strain is flaring up again so I’m going to have to be VERY careful to get it rebalanced quickly before I jump right into crazy training again. At least this time I know where to turn, and what to do. Got the green light to head back to CrossFit on Tuesday; we’ll see how the ankle does and if I need to substitute any exercises.

In the meantime I can pray that the first weekend of the CrossFit Open workouts doesn’t involve pistols, box jumps, or any sort of heavy squatting. Not that it will matter too much if it does …. I am in Africa after all. Speaking of, we had a meeting of most of the CCF competitors on Friday evening, to brief us for the upcoming competitive season. I was much more excited about this a few weeks back. I’m sure the passion will return as soon as they announce the first workout. After all, it’s all with a goal in mind. Hobbyist or not, as a competitor you still want to compete.

Speaking of, I was thinking I was a bit too harsh on myself about my row. Truth of the matter was, I DID have a plan and I stuck to it. I knew that my closest competitors were in my heat, and that short of a catastrophe, there was no catching Rika points-wise, so the most important things were finishing second to her in the heat in the row, and then beating everyone else at the burpee/walking lunge/run workout. For the former, the only part of the announcing that I heard was the bit about what pace everyone was rowing at/how many meters were left, so I knew how to pace myself there. The latter was pretty well perfectly executed, and going too much harder on the rower might have hurt my chances there.

So why was I so upset? Because it was a competition and I left something on the table. That’s the short answer. I’m still doing that 2K row. God knows when ….

What happened in the field this week? Another site visit to Mama Rosie, and a meeting with Greenpop. I’m excited about their trajectory, and now that I’ve double-checked my calendar looks like I actually can join on one of their away weekends in May. Before the meeting got started we were discussing diet (mine in particular). These socially-conscious people are interested in becoming fully or largely vegetarian. There is a lot that could be said about that, but the topic of eggs came up. So compare conventional wisdom (stay away – eggs have cholesterol and therefore you should limit your intake) with Loren Cordain’s take. Scroll down a bit to see his answer. The short version? Just like eating fat doesn’t make you fat, eating cholesterol doesn’t raise your cholesterol (yes, yes, extremes of either will). Cholesterol is more determined by hormones than anything but to the degree that diet does affect it, my cholesterol is best when I eat a bunch of eggs and very little grains.

There are so many bits of conventional wisdom related to exercise and nutrition that are just flat out incorrect, it’s just sad. While I’m on a roll, here’s a very good and well-balanced article on why aerobic training (as opposed to high intensity interval training) is actually bad for you.

I used to joke that I could walk past the refrigerator and gain weight. Turns out it was just that the best application of conventional wisdom was wrong. I’m not sure this is a completely comprehensive list but a few people have asked me, so here is my sense of macronutrient deficiency symptoms:

• If you’re feeling tired, or low energy, or like you want a stimulant, you probably need protein
• If you’re feeling hungry, even after meals, you probably need fat
• If you’re craving sugar, you probably need carbs

So chow some broccoli instead of the chocolate bar. Speaking of cravings, I have had some WEIRD ones recently, most likely due to the injury. Like ranging from no appetite at all, to eating a whole cabbage & head of cauliflower and six eggs in one sitting, to an insatiable desire for coconut oil which I am eating by the spoonful. I can only assume it’s my body trying to heal itself. The more advanced of an athlete I become, the better I get at listening to my body. The question is, whether or not I always take its requests. Definitely trying to get better at that, hence staying away from anything strenuous since the injury. If I have no desire to train, it’s a pretty good indication that I shouldn’t be training.

Eating, on the other hand, has never been a problem. So with that, I’m off to Sandbar to eat a six-egg omelette with mince & avo.

• “It’s not bad.” – Dr Lan
• “Is that REALLY necessary?” “Yes.” “I know, but asking makes me feel better.” – Ellie & Dr Lan
• “I don’t know where home is anymore.” – Ellie
• “He saw you, and allowed you to see yourself, in a new way.” – Debbie 

Carl Paoli, the hangover, an existential crisis, and another ankle sprain

I’ll admit, it was touch & go with my 8 hours of sleep Saturday night. But I wasn’t kidding when I said I would walk in at 8:58am for the gymnastics seminar Carl Paoli was doing. Oddly enough, I wasn’t the last one.

Unsurprisingly, the day was both super fun and an great learning experience. Carl is definitely a natural crowd-pleaser and comedian, which makes him immediately likeable, but more importantly he has the best understanding of human movement of anyone I have ever met, and has another remarkable ability to remove fear. He got me walking on my hands for the first time ever and it took him, oh, two minutes to do so. Not that I walked more than half a meter, but still!

Similar to the CrossFit certs, I’m sure Carl has done this seminar dozens if not hundreds of times. It must be so tough not to get bored, especially with the intro part, but that’s where storytelling comes in. But I also understand the magic of coaching: there is something that makes you so happy about getting someone to learn something for the first time, or make dramatic improvements to their movement. But hey, that’s also what I can get out of my work, although in a more cerebral way.

Won’t spoil the secrets of the seminar but we started with hollow rocks and pushups into handstand pushup (kipping) progressions. I am very excited to practice this because last time I did max strict HSPUs (nearly a year ago!) I got to 15, and if you can do 3x the number you can do strict if you kip, then, well, you get the idea. Then, freestanding handstands and the aforementioned handstand walk. Now that I know the right body position to be feeling for and how to get there in a way that I feel safe (which has always been my issue with the handstand walk), I’m very excited to practice this as well! Who knew sport could be so fun, right?

A couple simple tips on pistols (one-legged squats) helped me significantly. I could semi-consistently pistol on my left leg, but not on my right. Part of the issue with the right was last year’s ankle sprain causing mobility issues, but on Saturday I was happily getting pretty decent pistols on both legs. Amazing what a slight change to how you’ve been doing things can do!

Similarly, we practiced the muscle up progressions that I’d seen Carl’s videos of before. But this is why, as per a discussion we were having Friday evening, all [good] coaching is local. I wasn’t doing the transition right because I wasn’t doing it right (duh), and thereby making my life a lot harder. Carl quickly fixed what I was doing and now I get it. Similar to the kipping pullup, once I got what my body was supposed to be doing it became easy.

Some playing around with burpees and rope climbs later, the seminar was done. Before heading to the airport, Carl solidified his position as my own personal hero (of the month, at least…). I may have complained here before about having a weak/lazy right shoulder. When I go to do a heavy strict press my left side shoots up and my right side I have to press, press, press to get it up. It’s also noticeable on snatches, where my left arm is visibly slow to lock out. So ninja warrior Carl did some mobility tests. His first thought was internal rotation but I said I doubted it because I’d been working that for some months and it was the same on both sides. I’d actually never had anyone do a proper internal mobility range of motion test and it was actually not too bad at all! But then he tested external rotation, found and fixed the problem immediately, and showed me how to work it myself. We tested on the other side and found that the problem did not exist there. Re-testing a few power snatches on Monday I am happy to report no lazy shoulder. Now I can go after that max strict press that’s scared the hell out of me for ages. Yay!!

In case you’re wondering, no, it’s not a ‘real’ hangover. I haven’t had a drink all year, and no desire to do so either. Rather an adrenaline hangover combined with delayed onset muscle soreness. I trained Monday morning and my 60% back squats felt like about 80%, and I could barely do burpee box jumps. I was also having a laugh because one of the things at the competition that I didn’t get was everyone having issues with hand-release burpees … I was thinking to myself ‘how hard can that be?’ firstly, and secondly, ‘well they should have been practicing since the movement standards were released weeks back.’ Second point aside, now I get it. Between the hand-release burpees onto a plate and the hand-release burpee box jump squats from the United We Stand Games, the burpees in this workout were not hand-release but damned if I didn’t do hand-release anyway for at least 6 or 7! Motor control, anyone?

So when the body is healing the mind isn’t 100%. I didn’t used to be so aware of my body to notice this but now that I do it’s wicked annoying. It felt like I had a minor fever all day Monday and Tuesday, not because I did but because my body was recovering from Saturday. I helped Mona move her weights out of her gym on Tuesday and they are now sitting in my car. Once I can walk a little better I’ll move them at least into my apartment. J Shame on the timing, I was looking forward to playing around with them in my living room until she picks them up. She finally moved out Wednesday morning, so that was sad but it’s also quite nice to get my space all the way back. It’s one thing to have a roommate, it’s another to have a roommate staying in your room!

Wednesday I had recovered a lot, which was good because my head needs to be in the game at work. We have a lot of things on the go, not the least of which is trying to herd the gigantic untameable cat that is FoodTents. But I’m very excited about our plans with some of our social entrepreneurs for this year, and a number of other things. It’s also nice to be out in the townships again, connecting with people like Mama Rosie. She may have only a few years of education but that woman knows what’s up, and she is tough as nails. I suppose you have to be if you’re going to survive and thrive, right?

But even by last night’s training I was still not 100%. The workout was 30 burpees with sandbag power cleans and I found the weight awkward enough that it was hard to push for 100% speed. Then we did a 5 minute session of 5 pullups 10 pushups 15 squats. The first two rounds went very fast, about 45 seconds each, then my strength kind of went away and I barely finished 5 rounds in the 5 minutes! Then we had to do 100 double unders which was even more sad … I got to about 20 and then did the rest in very small increments as I kept tripping up. So, body definitely still not all the way back. Somehow I managed to roll my right ankle badly at the bottom of the stairs. Heard that good old pop and felt a ½ inch swelling by the time I reached my car.

Swearing aside, I went home and got ice and compression going as quickly as humanly possible. The good news, if there is such (aside from being in the Africa region … wasn’t intending on a repeat of last year’s most pathetic qualifier for Regionals with doing 1 rep for a few workouts due to injury!), is that it’s not nearly as bad as last year. The swelling is not at all severe (maybe less than ¼ inch) and I can walk already, albeit with pain. Flexion and any sort of lateral movement more than 2-3mm is painful. So, looks like a Grade 2 sprain, should take 1-2 weeks to recover. Going for some acupuncture today. Not going to worry about if Dr Lan decides to see fit to massage it like he did last year because that was the most painful experience of my entire life, I think. Sometimes you must just do things without over-thinking them.

The hangover also consisted of a bit of ‘whatif-itis’ which is actually a bit better now that I sprained my ankle again. Something about reality crashing down on you to bring your head out of the clouds. But all the talking to Carl about how he likes Cape Town so much and how I like San Francisco so much got me thinking. About a lot of things. Decisions we make, or don’t make. For example: had I not gone to Cal, I wouldn’t have started working for Jeeves. Had it not been for Jeeves, I would have never met Rob. Had I not decided to move to Boston I would not have gone to Babson and would most likely not have come to fall in love with South Africa. The list goes on, and some of it not even related to me: had my parents not taught at Cal, would I necessarily have gone there? Had I not been assigned to the particular dorm room I was, I wouldn’t have met the friend of a friend who worked for Jeeves, etc.

So metaphysics and multiple universe theory were playing through my mind. I’ve thought in recent months that if I were to move back to the States, it would realistically probably be to San Francisco. It’s not in the cards at the moment by any means but as I keep saying, if you’d told me a few years ago I’d be living in Cape Town now I would have said you were nuts.

To top and tail the weirdness, I was thinking of a friend Mike on my ride to work Wednesday morning, and he sent me an email just a few short hours later. How weird is that, right? Signs from the universe or a cigar just being a cigar? Who knows. All I know right now is I’m not crying over spilt milk because that’s not my way, but it is time to ice my ankle again.

• “Rats don’t chew where they live.” – Carl
• “I haven’t had a burrito since. True story.” – Carl
• “Look at your bicep! I mean, I wish I had a bicep like that!” “That’s my tricep.” – Peter & Ellie
• “Are you eating salt?” “Coconut!” – Mona & Ellie
• “BOYS are not like that. THEY are like that.” – Mona
• “The problem isn’t your technique. It’s your head.” – Mona (roger that …)
• “It must be crazy to be indoctrinated. Oh, wait, what am I talking about? I’m in a cult. I KNOW what it’s like to be indoctrinated!” – Ellie
• “There’s someone upstairs who says he wants to talk to the person in charge, so I guess it’s pretty serious.” “Oh, hi Jeremy!” – Hollie & Ellie

Fittest in Cape Town 2012

Epic. Last year there were 7 female competitors and 11 male competitors. This year, something like 45 women and 65 men. Then again, that’s the scale of the growth of the sport of CrossFit that you see overall.

Fast forward to the end. I didn’t win this year, and I wasn’t on a team that was battling for the title (we’d been divided up into ‘Core Teams’ for the training season, and two of my core team members were not able to participate). But I did finish second and to be fair, there was no chance of beating the women’s winner Rika on that day with those workouts. Honestly, she laid down the gauntlet for Regionals with today’s performance. She won every single event, and by a good margin. Unlike the men’s side which saw all sorts of lead changes, the women’s battle was really a battle for silver.

But so much fun! The event was held at Camps Bay High School. I was as ready physically as I could be, I’d slept 9 hours or so the previous two nights and had eaten extra food all week so I was rested. I should also mention at this point that one of the rock stars of the CrossFit world, Carl Paoli from San Francisco, was in town this weekend because he was doing a gymnastics seminar on Sunday. I met him Friday afternoon when I went to the gym to get my mobility work in, and he immediately got on my good side by proclaiming his appreciation for the fact that I cared about my mobility (for THAT I can credit my coaches thank you very much), and then diagnosed and fixed a mobility issue in my right hip which made him my favourite person of the day. Super nice guy, funny as hell, AND knows his shit.

But in all seriousness … you have two sides. If you don’t time your stretches, seems to me you’re doing it wrong. Just me, maybe? Eh…

Anyhow, Saturday dawned rainy and cold. Suited me fine, but the organisers had set up the first event to be outdoors so had to move all the equipment inside, which caused a slight delay, but I didn’t really mind.

The first event was a ground to overhead (i.e. clean & jerk) ladder, similar to the thruster ladder in last year’s Regionals. You had 20 seconds to make each lift, then 10 seconds to rotate to the next bar. The weights increased in ~5kg increments, starting at 24kgs for women and ending at 68kgs. We were unseeded going into this so I was one of the first athletes to get to the relatively high weights (I think most people failed somewhere in the 40s). I did what I always do, and had no problem with 52, and 57 was relatively easy. I got to the bar at 61, and I just lost it mentally. Got it high enough for a squat clean but I’m not very comfortable in the receiving position of heavy squats and after I missed the first lift I panicked and didn’t take the time to set up properly for a second attempt.

So Carl congratulated me immediately after, told me what I already know which is that if I could just get under the bar I’d be able to lift a lot more. THEN he came out with the compliment of the weekend:

“Do you know who Jenny LaBaw is?”

“Yes.”

“You’re her.”

(She was sixth in last year’s CrossFit Games)

- pause -

“Wow. That’s a huge compliment.”

“You’re strong as shit, you look like her, and you even move like she does.”

I’m not even sure what happened for the next hour or so because I was floating on air. Carl coaches her (she’s based in Chico, CA). Anyway it was a nice compliment, and one that still makes me happy but I am certainly not an athlete of anywhere near her calibre today, and anyway the most important thing, as we were discussing later in the evening, is to be the best athlete YOU can be, and always growing and learning, drilling your weaknesses and having fun pushing your strengths. If competition pushes you there as it does for me, great.

So, comparisons to superstar CrossFit athletes from CrossFit coaches aside, what else happened?  Other than Rika, no one else in the field lifted more than I did. I think there were about five of us tied for second place. But, again … I should be able to lift a lot more than this, because relative to the rest of the field and presumed relative strength levels, I should be lifting more than I am. Really need to work that technique. But I already knew that.

The men’s thruster ladder proved very dramatic with about fifteen athletes finishing the ladder and moving up a heavier ladder. It was great to see the form and raw strength on some of these guys – Neil from Ballistix Fitness in Somerset West had particularly nice form, but he’s been practicing the Oly lifts a lot, and it shows.

The second event was a three-part event. The first bit was a max l-sit for time, followed by max double unders in 60 seconds, followed by a complicated shuttle sprint/sandbag shuttle sprint agility drill. My double-unders as anyone who reads this blog knows, are pretty terrible. But oddly enough that was the part of the workout I did the best in, compared to the competition, finishing with 43 (the best I’d gotten in practice was 38). I just kept calm and did my thing, as relaxed as I could. The l-sit was a bit of a disaster, I firstly got a bad grip with my right hand, and then my right hamstring cramped and I had an involuntary muscle contraction and my leg just went down. Very frustrating. But I finished that with 13 seconds which was disappointing but not catastrophic. The shuttle sprint I expected to do better in because I used to be a sprinter and I fancy myself pretty agile, but I was so focused on making sure I had three points of contact that I lost a lot of time. Overall I finished seventh in this event, leaving me tied for third with Lynda from CCF and one point behind Diane from CrossFit Jozi.

Then there was a loooong delay. They briefed the next event(s) which were the final two individual events, held outside where by now the weather had turned sunny: a 1,000 meter row for time, followed, without any rest, by 30 burpees onto a plate followed by 40m overhead walking lunge, followed by a 400m run on grass (should you get there within the time cap). There was a time cap of 4:30 on the row, and 9 minutes total for the workout. The delay wasn’t so much in getting going, as it was that the top two heats of women and men were going to decide the outcome of the competition, so they were held until last. There were something like 20 heats before mine (mine was the second to last heat, the leading men being the final heat). Yaw that was a rough wait, because you’re nervous and you want to cheer on your teammates, but it also psyches you out in the head to see athletes whose work capacity you know, struggle on the rower and then the burpees. Our pal Carl Paoli meanwhile was busy being MC, and doing a great job at it. Natural born crowd-pleaser.

So here’s what happened. I was so scared by the rower that I didn’t go very hard on the row, at all, and wound up finishing fifth in that event (second in my heat behind Rika, but there were some strong girls in the prior heat). Another few seconds faster (I finished in 3:54) and I would have been in second place, and really, there’s no reason I should have gone as slow as I did other than fear. The second part of the workout was really my kind of workout. I rock at burpees (slightly less so at the ones onto a plate), and I can run. Walking lunges are a bit of a weakness but I could power through that. As you might expect, Rika won that event too because she had a good lead coming off the rower and it taxed her less than the rest of us, but also I was maybe 4 or 5 burpees behind her, so she really pulled way ahead on the walking lunge. I was a solid second in that event, and Lynda came third despite a very slow row. I had a bit of a laugh as my judge, Wayne, started whining as I took off on the run: “Oh no, I have to run! Oh my God, I have to keep up with you!”

Overall on the women’s side Rika was first, I was second, Diane was third, and Tammy from CCF fourth. Lynda finished seventh or eighth, her slow performance on the rower hurt her badly in the standings. Now I learned a couple of things from this. Firstly, I should have ignored the other athletes crashing. I knew I could easily hold a sub-1:55 pace … but I didn’t out of fear. This didn’t hurt me today but it easily could have if the field had been different. Secondly, I was of course analysing everything and this got me thinking … I used to LOVE the rower and be psyched every time it came up in a workout. But recently I’ve been scared of it. I think I traced the origin of this fear down to the time we had to do the max 500m row after finishing a deadlift-double under workout and it smashed me so badly that I couldn’t walk for 10 minutes. So basically, this competition uncovered a fear that I didn’t understand the extent of. I guess I know what I’m doing at open gym on Saturday…. 2K row, at target 1:52-1:55 pace.

From a competition standpoint, I did make a few mistakes (of which that was the biggie). Won’t bore you with the details but it was perfect in that I could learn in a fun competition where the results didn’t matter for much, it was a good tune-up for the competition season, and I did face down pain in that final event. I wanted to slow down, make the pain stop, but I pushed through it. As Carl was saying in just about every heat: it’s not just about work capacity, it’s about intelligent application of work capacity. And being strong in the head, and the heart. I’ve won races in the past I wasn’t supposed to have won, just by wanting it more and refusing to let someone else beat me. It wasn’t wanting to show off in front of a crowd that kept me going, or even knowing that I would be disappointed in myself later, or that I’d look bad to be seen to give up. It was actually something else … something hard to describe, but I guess the only way I can is to say that I kept going hard because that was the plan, and I was already committed. Like once you decide to pull out into an intersection, the most dangerous thing you can do is stop and not follow through with the movement. Just. Like. That.

Again, from a focus standpoint aside from on the row where I was all over the show, mentally I was in a good place. The clean & jerk ladder had enough waiting time built in that I was peripherally aware of people cheering for me as I got to the heavy weights, but I couldn’t pick a single person out of the crowd. Same the rest of the day, especially on the burpee/walking lunge bit – I could hear my name but I was only vaguely aware of where I stood in relation to the other athletes. Playing my own game, knowing my own capacity.

So that ended the individual competition. Next up was the team competition (along with a weather change, this time to rain!), which consisted of two events (individual scores from the prior events were also added together into team rankings). The first was that the team had to assemble two barbells: a men’s with 100kgs and a women’s with 60kgs, carry it maybe 10m, and then do 80 team deadlifts, carry the barbells 20m, do another 80 deadlifts, another 20m carry, then reduce the weights to 60kgs and 38kgs, respectively, and do 80 power cleans, then get all the weights back to the original platform, and disassembled. There was a mix up with the announcers; they announced a team name that wasn’t us, but it turned out actually to be us so we held up the start of our heat and didn’t get to warm up … not an ideal set of conditions but what the heck, I guess you can warm up with 60kg deadlifts, right??

This was really a lot of fun! As mentioned above, I was on sort of a cobbled-together team, so we weren’t in the running for the title which in some ways is of course frustrating but in other ways is liberating because again, that pressure is off. It also happens that these are relatively light weights for me (about 50% of my max deadlift and 60% of my max clean), and my teammate Emma was very easy to coach throughout the day and was very easy to work with here, too: we both knew I was way stronger so she would do 8 or 10 reps and I would do 15 or 18, then we’d switch up. It gave us both enough time to rest and recover and go touch & go. Even still we wound up finishing our 40 a few ahead of the guys, so we cranked out another 5 or 8 in both rounds to finish it up.

The power cleans were another matter: 38kgs was near Emma’s max so I did something like 10, then passed to her, and she did 3 slow ones then failed twice. At this point I’d had 20 seconds of rest or so, and I cranked out maybe 15 or so unbroken (our judge Kerry: “come on Ellie! It’s just like Grace!”) before passing back to her, but then she failed twice more so I just stepped in and kept going as fast as I could, because letting her try would just waste time and we both knew it. A bit of a miscommunication here as we started to load our bar for the return carry when the boys were only on 30 (I misheard their judge and thought they were at 38 and 39 when in fact it was 28 and 29 … I was at 38 and 39), so we unloaded and I cranked out another 5. So something like 40 power cleans to finish it off … fun stuff.

The second team event was 100 team box jumps, and then medicine ball tosses for reps in something like 4 minutes. That was fun, although jumping onto a 40cm box almost caused my calves to cramp so I had to do some serious stretching before we got going. Our team wound up finishing fourth, apparently, just off the podium. The second place team was quite strong, I think my ‘normal’ team would probably have been third. The CCF “A” team finished at the top of the podium, which was great. So for the second year in a row, CCF won the women’s side and the team event. Let’s hope we can do the same thing at Regionals, where it counts!!

Recapping the men’s competition is a mission in its own right, with lead changes after each set of events. The results aren’t up yet and I didn’t take photos, so I’m actually not 100% sure of all the details! Suffice to say that the usual suspects featured in the top 8 or so places: last year’s Regionals winner Danie du Preez, 2010’s winner Neil Scholtz, CCF’s own Chris Oman, and a few others showing up in the top of the rankings. At the end of the day, someone I didn’t know named Richard Smith won, Danie was second, and Jason Smith third. We were all, of course, rooting for Chris, and he didn’t have a very good performance on the row. Difference between him and me, of course, is that the men’s field is deeper than the women’s. But we got to watch him in an epic performance on the burpee/lunge/run event come from behind (waaay last in his heat off the rower), catch up and finish first in the second part! Super dramatic, but at the end of the day that’s CrossFit … you have one weakness or one bad event and if the field is too deep, it’ll kill you.

That was one of the cool things about the day I must say, I had a number of people come up to me and not just congratulate me but comment that they learned something from watching me compete. CrossFit is a very young sport in South Africa and I think that’s really just the key lesson: the concept of the hopper teaches us in theory and competition teaches us in practice. Consistently do ok, and you’ll wind up doing quite well in the overall rankings. Now I can’t wait for my body to get back to normal so I can get back to drilling my weaknesses.

A completely different event than last year …. Much less strain on the body, and I think actually more of a fair event. Last year two of the four events were clearly work capacity events (a 12 minute AMRAP and a death by thruster/burpee workout), with a sprint event and a strength event in there for fun. Although this was also more of a CrossFit competition, because ground-to-overhead and double-unders are skill-type movements that the general population probably isn’t very good at. Then again, neither am I, ha!

But the crowd was also great, and I just had such a fun time hanging out with everyone, cheering on the people that I knew, coaching, giving tips …. One girl had lower back pain so I showed her a few stretches and she nearly kissed me, and Emma even told me after that she wasn’t sure she could have made it through the day without my encouragement, tips, coaching, etc. I think that’s a huge exaggeration, she did amazingly and she did it all herself, but this is a very important aspect of the sport (or any sport, really …) the camaraderie. And so cool to see guys from all over the country, who you mostly only stay in touch with via Facebook and even some of the Jozi boys who weren’t competing but were down to spectate. Super, super cool. Yeah, I’m a natural-born extrovert (and a genetic freak with A negative blood … if I didn’t look just like my parents and share various other traits with them I would seriously wonder if I wasn’t swapped at birth!).

A final word on athlete integrity and judging (note the order in which I write that): for the most part it was quite good. The judges did a very good job up until the burpee/walking lunge event where there were definitely some no reps that should have been called for open hips on the burpees. They were doing a good job with the hand-release bit. My judge, Wayne, was fantastic in everything: counting each double-under including being clear which were fails, and calling me out when I didn’t open my hip on one of the burpees (and he was also correct with every call, which also helps). But I did see some athletes not following the rules, in particular with regards to keeping the weight over head. I’m sorry but behind the head is NOT over the head. In all honesty, this is what Chris and Jobst drill us on, and one of the reasons I love Chris as a coach: it must always be the athlete’s place to maintain movement standards. If Wayne hadn’t called me out on that burpee I would have jumped back on the plate anyway because it was the right thing to do … I didn’t mean not to open my hip but sometimes you move so fast you’re back off before you’ve completed the movement properly (sloppy, I know … something else to work on).

So! After the awards ceremony I helped clean up the trash around the venue, then helped the team move the equipment back to the gym. It was all loaded up into the van, so all we had to do was move it from the van into the lift, and from the lift into the gym itself. This was actually a lot more fun than it sounds like; I call that functional fitness. I was actually surprised I was the only athlete helping to be honest, but the braai couldn’t start until we got back with the meat. I never got to operate a lift like that before, old-school with levers where you physically must stop the lift where you want it and gates that must be closed on both sides before you can move … by the end when I was lift operator there was quite a bit of joking around about such things as my level of accuracy (one of the 10 physical skills you’re supposed to be good at as a CrossFit athlete) when I landed the lift perfectly level on two consecutive trips. I also nearly lost my finger tips at one point, so the adrenaline from that also had me quite punchy.

Back at the venue most people had left but there was a group of maybe 20 people left for the braai. So we chatted, braaied and then devoured our meat. I also ate about a half a chicken and two sweet potatoes in the car outside CCF before unloading, so unlike some other people I wasn’t as ravenous as I could be. Good fun though just chatting after the event, under what would have been stars if we could see them. Carl was saying, in language that I can completely understand, how he’s somewhat jealous of us living here, and that he feels something of a pull to this place. Hell, I get it. I get it like a virus. But I also get how for the work he does, he has to live where he does, at the epicentre. It got me thinking, too … I’m living in Cape Town because I want to be here. I could up and leave tomorrow, and there may come a time in my life when living here becomes constraining. This is not the epicentre of social enterprise in the world, and if our model is as unique as we think it is once we’ve worked out the kinks I may be living a bit of a Carl Paoli-style life myself with a home base maybe here, and traveling all over the show. Do I want that? I don’t know. Sometimes you just fall into things, and they become comfortable, and you don’t really think. The difference between being in a groove and a rut is not only the depth, but the perspective.

But also … how damn surreal and cool is that, to be chatting for hours to a legitimate coaching superstar of the CrossFit world, talking about everything from the lifestyles of the Silicon Valley rich & famous to my time living in California to how success doesn’t matter for shit if you don’t have people around to share it with, to the general stuff CrossFit nerds talk about: progressions, and how you have to get your first pullup before you start thinking about getting 50 consecutively. Not naming any names, but some of the CrossFit superstars I’ve met leave a bit to be desired in the ‘would you want to have a beer with them’ category. Carl, not so much.

What a day. I’m not sure Fittest in Cape Town 2013 can top this one.

• “No one ever comes into my gym and asks to use a stopwatch to time their stretches! You care!” – Carl
• “You’ve got your game face on!” – Thatch
• “But I’m a disaster, too. … No, actually, I’m a really nice guy.” “You notice how he just said two opposite things in two consecutive sentences?” – Carl & Ellie
• “Ok there, Spiderwoman!” – Carl (I was demonstrating some halfway decent agility … one of the 10 physical skills)

Jozi & Final Preparations

Well, I finally got my head out of the sand and went on my first business trip to Joburg for about a year. I attended a conference run by Echoing Green, a U.S.-based non-profit that provides angel funding to promising social innovators. This was their first Africa-based conference, and I’m very glad I went! I wrote a full summary for our web site’s blog, so I won’t repeat myself here.

What I didn’t include in that post was how well I got along with some of the people there. In one of the discussions, a venture capitalist from Gauteng actually specifically pointed to me (and Heart) as being experts in the field and while of course we think it’s true, external validation never helps. But it’s great to be able to go there and hold your own socially and intellectually.

I was feeling pretty smart after the first Brain Trust which really was somewhat in my sweet spot (and I even got to quote Greg Glassman … always fun), talking about how to get mentors and learners to ‘pay it forward,’ similar to how non-coaches help coach in a CrossFit gym. In any event organisational structures and operations are an easy area for me (relatively speaking of course). But in the second one I was pretty quiet because people who knew a lot more than I did were doing all the talking. That was interesting too, although sometimes it is the non-expert who comes in from left field: near the end Elizabeth finished off an anecdote to which I replied “Well why don’t you just find someone you TRUST to partner with, and have them enter that side of the business?” to which there was an echo of agreement around the room. So I left without feeling totally useless.

Also, a reminder of how small a world it is …. At the conference I encountered someone I know from Cape CrossFit (!), and someone who had worked at Singularity University with my old Ask Jeeves buddy Caitlin Sparks on the Matternet project.

When I first landed, I was probably the happiest person alive because the temperature was about 20C (I guess that’s around 70F), which was a nice break from the scorching weather in Cape Town. What I did find strange was the time difference, rather, the lack thereof. All of South Africa is in one time zone, and Johannesburg is a two-hour plane ride northeast of Cape Town. It’s essentially equivalent to the difference in sunset and sunrise between D.C. and Boston, which is to say, noticeable. It’s still late at nearly 8pm here, whereas it was pretty dark around 7 in Jozi.

I hadn’t ever spent much time in Johannesburg (and I’m not counting two days as a lot of time), but I can start to understand why Cape Town has a bit of a chip on it’s shoulder about it. Cape Town is a very small city, and Joburg is big. VERY big. You drive into downtown and it’s like driving into Chicago, or something similar (grunginess included). But you also get a very clear sense of being at the beating heart of something, a feeling you just don’t get in Cape Town.

So that’s the good. The bad? Well I was staying in Sandton in a nice part of town, and it was like we were living in compounds, literally. Here in Cape Town there are more burglar bars and the like than in the States, but in Sandton there are literally 15-foot high walls around EVERYTHING. It’s like living inside a very nice, secure prison. I’m not sure I could live like that for too long. I’ve heard stories of some of the rest of Joburg (my one experience in the mafia hotel a few years ago aside … ).

Arrived back to Cape Town safe and sound, and was immediately annoyed because Cape Town rarely has traffic but when it does, there is gridlock. On this occasion there were road closures to allow for the practicing of the State of the Nation address, and it took me nearly an hour to get home (it usually takes 12-15 minutes). This caused me to be late to the Sea Point pool, where I wanted to get in some technique training before Fittest in Cape Town (just in case). I’m glad I did, because I needed to work on my breathing rhythm, and I’m glad I practiced it. Some people call this the most beautiful public pool in the world … judge for yourself.

I’ve been enjoying eating whatever I want this week (so long as it’s paleo that is). Chris told us to eat as much as we want, as much as we can, and I haven’t been so hungry because I haven’t been training but I’ve been forcing food down the gullet. Sweet potatoes, how I have missed you!! Ahh rest week … Monday & Tuesday I had no desire to train, by Wednesday and Thursday I was starting to feel antsy, and today I feel like I’m ready to go rip the head off of something. So with any luck by tomorrow morning I’ll be ready to go! Been doing a pretty good job with daily mobility and have gotten a ton of sleep so I’m as ready as I’m going to get. Excited for tomorrow, and possibly even a bit nervous, although I’m feeling a lot less pressure than I was before Durban. Maybe because there is not such clear sense of intention to win, that takes the pressure off?

Had a lovely meeting of my media/tech women’s group Thursday evening where we discussed my perennial favourite topics of user-centered design, usability testing, learnability vs usability, etc. It was also a chance to meet some other interesting women, one of whom I’d actually connected with on Twitter but had yet to meet in person (weird how that works!). Friday morning’s talk was a smash hit with Chloe Feinberg, an Ashoka employee working out of Amsterdam walking us through a case study of a health care services social enterprise in rural Punjab province in India, then engaging with about 6 or 8 of us in a discussion of the challenges of youth unemployment in and around Cape Town. Lots of good stuff going on as well with Wines with Heart and the hub; very excited about those two projects.

On a more sad note, our receptionist abandoned us. She just stopped coming to work, and didn’t have the courtesy to inform us that she had found another job. Meanwhile, considering that she lives in a township and has health issues, we were concerned that she might have been hurt in some way. This is particularly shameful to me because Peter and Mandy plucked her from being a child care worker, taught her computer skills, and gave her a chance to transition to a white-collar type job.

Now, goodness knows I’m a believer that you must do what you think is right for yourself, even if that hurts other people. And I’m certainly not saying that she owed Peter and Mandy or us any eternal gratitude or something like that: they upskilled her out of love, and that’s an end in its own right. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it, and the right way is in person, as soon as you have made up your mind. Ordinarily I wouldn’t mention such a hurtful thing, but it is a hurtful thing, and it’s been weighing on me. So there it is. But in a week where I also caught an ex-co-worker lying right to my face … well, people will do what they do I suppose. Life goes on, right?

• “I think it’s a shame.” – Pascal
• “The genie’s not going back in the bottle.” – Cheryl
• “I’m struggling not to become despondent about people.” – Mandy
• “I think for sanity, continue to dream big, even if you don’t know if you’re going to survive tomorrow.” – Chloe
• “You don’t learn from people who think the same way you do.” – Sonja
• “It’s crazy to think that a good idea is not enough.” – Anton