Regionals 2013: the best laid plans of mice & men

I was so looking forward to this competition. I didn’t have any illusions that I was going to win it, but I wanted to go, do well, finish in the top 10 or the top 5 if I was lucky.

I was just SMSing with Lorinda earlier in the week: ‘No bullshit, no excuses – just have fun.’

And it’s one thing if you go out and don’t perform well. That would have been an ego knock, as there are a lot of other strong girls out there and my gymnastics are not the best, in a gymnastics-heavy competition. But it’s tremendously disappointing to train all year for something and then have your body fail you.

So the first event was Jackie: 1000m row, 50 thrusters with a 20kg bar, and 30 pullups. I was in the first heat because I was a very low qualifier thanks to my 1 rep in Open WOD3. I won my heat by quite a while and wound up finishing 9^th overall in this event but was only 10 seconds slower than the 6^th place finisher, so there’s a good chance I would have done better if I’d had some competition in my heat. I also made a rookie mistake in not stretching out my forearms ahead of time and had some issues gripping the bar on the pullups, but I was overall very happy. Workout went according to the game plan, and I had FUN! I was smiling the entire time.

I wasn’t smiling when it turned out there was no food. The breakfast was gone, and it was 11am so too early for lunch and my next event was at like 1:30 so I didn’t want to be eating at noon. Oh, or the not having any water. That made me a bit cranky. Last year we had amazing catering; they never ran out of snacks, and there was plenty of water, so I didn’t think to bring my own supplies. Another rookie mistake. But it was around this time that I started feeling like I’d eaten something that disagreed with me, and I figured the next event wasn’t a cardio event anyway so it was fine not to eat that much.

When I was warming up for the next event, a 7 minute ladder of overhead squats then 7 minutes of burpee muscle ups, I just felt weak. In this event, the minimum work requirement was three overhead squats at your opening weight, and three burpee muscle ups. I was planning to open at 56kgs (125 pounds) because I knew that opening at the starting weight would not put up a competitive score, but I just wasn’t feeling it.

Then I was standing under the rings and thinking to myself ‘huh, a muscle up seems like a whole lot of effort right now.’ Ha. Now, I’m not going to lie and say that overhead squats or muscle ups are a strength of mine. My muscle ups on a good day aren’t great because I’m still struggling with patience on my kip, so I land too low. But still.

So what happened? I went out to the floor, started at the safe opening weight and worked my way up to 50kgs for two. Then I got to the rings, completed two muscle ups …. And no more. My third one I was over the rings just fine and failed to achieve lockout; my shoulders were tired and I just couldn’t get all the way there. Props to my judge, Brad, for legitimately calling that a no rep because it was close but definitely wasn’t there. Brad is an excellent judge, I must say.

They let everyone who DNF’d on an event to continue in the competition even though our scores didn’t count towards the official rankings, which was great. To be honest I considered withdrawing a couple of times, but I figured I was there and I might as well go out there and try to have fun. Also, I feel like in a way it would have been poor sportsmanship to pull out in a huff after getting knocked out. Plus, I wanted to see how I would have done had I gotten that third muscle up … or at least, that was the idea.

After it was over, I was actually just in shock. Like disbelief. I mean, I’ve done three strict muscle ups in under 7 minutes before (granted, not with overhead squats beforehand). But still! I couldn’t actually grasp what had happened. Then, I started to feel exhausted and a bad headache came on. When I was eating dinner with Beatrix & David I started to feel a bit nauseous.

Yeah. Turns out I had food poisoning. Or a stomach bug; who knows?

The first workout of Saturday was the dreaded 100s workout: 100 wall balls, 100 chest-to-bar pullups, 100 one-legged squats, and 100 dumbbell snatches, with a 25-minute time cap. This time, I stretched out my forearms ahead of time so gripping the bar was not an issue. I could feel that I was not quite myself in the wall balls, which took me 8:20 (it should have taken me about 6 minutes even at a moderate pace). Then the chest-to-bars … I was actually quite happy with this. Pullups have never been a great strength of mine and I was always doing chest-to-bar with a pronated grip (chinup grip), because I had issues actually getting my chest to touch the bar with the supinated grip. However, pronated is a much weaker position because a) it takes the grip more and b) it’s more of bicep move than a lat move, so you’re using smaller muscle groups and are weaker.

Thanks to a tip from Ms Lorinda, I was playing around in the warmup and figured out how to do chest-to-bars with a supinated grip. Then I went out into competition and did 89 reps that way, having just learned how to do it a half hour before. That was a small victory. Still, the pullups took me almost to the time cap, so I only had time for 12 pistols in the minute or so left on the clock. Pistols are a funny thing, I start off slow then once I get my balance I speed up, especially because 100 walls balls & 100 chest-to-bar pullups is a bit tiring. I did my last 6 or so in about 20 seconds; wish I’d been through the wall balls just a bit faster!

Once I stopped moving, all hell broke lose. First, I’d ripped my palm on about pullup 80 (the rip was so bad it scared off one of the most hardcore boys in the sport, who came to see me in the medical tent). Second, I didn’t notice the altitude until I stopped moving … then I was gasping for air like an asthmatic and actually had to sit for a few minutes before going to the medical tent, despite blood gushing from my hand. All this time I thought the food poisoning was mild, but I went to that tent and they started to dress my hand, and after about 10 minutes I had to excuse myself to run into the bathroom.

It’s kind of a ‘thing’ in CrossFit to work out so hard that you throw up. It’s called ‘meeting Pukie’ and in some circles is a badge of honour, although I find that a bit silly. Kind of like thinking a hand rip is hardcore. Now my body doesn’t really work that way; I can be flopping about like a fish unable to walk but I won’t throw up. I think the combination of the altitude, food poisoning, and mild shock finally did me in. I probably won’t meet Pukie again.

After that, I was just flat. The rest of the workouts in the weekend I had no energy. I suppose the fact that I had almost no solid food since I started throwing up on Friday didn’t help. There was a couplet of 93kg deadlifts & 60cm box jumps with an 8 minute time cap and I didn’t even come close to finishing. I would have guessed I’d take about 6 minutes to do that workout normally. And then the chipper with 50 handstand pushups where I didn’t even finish the handstand pushups (I did manage to do about 10 kipping ones which is a plus for me because normally I can’t kip to save my life!).

Or, my personal favourite … the workout I was looking forward to the most out of everything, with 4 rounds of 2 rope climbs & 4 61kg squat cleans. I was so weak & dehydrated that my forearms cramped and I couldn’t climb the rope for my fourth ascent. I actually fell off the damn thing at one point. I was so looking forward to this because Chris had just taught us how to climb with our legs and not our arms to save our grip, and I was looking forward to doing well in this event.

That was actually what pushed me over the emotional edge, and I got some unwanted but quite memorable free counselling from an ex-special forces SAPS officer. He must have seen some things in his time, and you know, it is just a hobby, and arguably a silly one at that. Competitive exercise.

Yeah, competing with food poisoning is not the smartest thing, but my body was too weak to let me really hurt myself. I’m glad I did it. The competition experience was fun and I will say one thing; I did give every workout everything I had (ok not the deadlift one because I would have hurt myself and I knew it). But the utter frustration of not having your body do what it is usually able to do, and at the one event all year that you train for was terrible. There are almost no words to describe it.

I’m certainly not the only one who suffered. I whined more than most, which I’m not proud of, but in my defense it was actually embarrassing for me to go out there and perform so poorly in front of all those people. Humbling, too. In a way it made me feel better about my muscle up failure, but it’s just excuses at the end of the day. Now, I have a legitimate demon I’m chasing. It was so painful to watch the final heat of top women and think that I should be in that heat. Next year, I will be.

Steiny always gets on my case for being negative after all my workouts. It’s not so much negativity as critical self-analysis: here is what I learned. You know what? Most people probably couldn’t do three rope climbs and 4 61kg squat cleans after not having eaten for two days. But hell. It’s not about anyone else, actually, it is about me, and one big reason I compete is because it pushes me to levels that I struggle to achieve in training. My one big aim was not to leave the floor at Regionals feeling like I could have given more; aka not having wussed out mentally. At least that didn’t happen. Usually the mind fails the body. This time, the body failed the mind and it was somewhere between infuriating and sad. So, I gave it my all even if my all on this weekend wasn’t very good. Of that, I am proud.

There is also a bond that forms between two athletes who legitimately feel each others’ pain. Competitions are funny; if you’re doing well someone can be injured or deathly ill and you could care less. Not that you don’t care; just your focus is elsewhere. When you’re down & out, or just not doing as well as you wish you would, you tune more into the others around you.

There was this one moment I am never going to forget, just one athlete to another. There’s some things that words just cannot explain, some feelings that can only be expressed with the eyes.

And the general support was great. The head judge even made a point of telling me that he thought it was great that I was competing at all, which was actually quite sweet of him to say, and he wasn’t the only one. Yeah, well, something like this and you see who your friends are.

So, enough navel-gazing. The entire event was very well put together. The judging and showmanship was first rate, at least in my experience. The catering was lousy and there was the issue with not getting to warm up properly for the last event because they never posted the heat times, then changed them, then changed them back … but all in all it was great. I can’t wait for next year!

Some highlights from the weekend (in no particular order … well except for the first one):

• Ryan proposing to Hes on the floor after the final team event … and she said yes (of course!!))
• Arthur cleaning his PR for 4 reps in the team event
• Steiny doing Jackie in what would have been the fifth fastest time among individual females
• Beatrix beating Sam Briggs’ time in the deadlift/box jump workout (3:33!! Beastess!!)
• Celestie Englebrecht bursting onto the scene (and winning abs of the competition, hands down!)
• Nicole Seymour proving that she’s a damn good CrossFitter
• Seconds before ‘Go’ on the final event, Richard Smith spontaneously running over to his brother Jason and giving him a hug
• … and speaking of the Smith brothers, Richard (aka Ricky Bobby) competing despite a torn knee ligament & finishing seventh, and Jason’s blink-and-you-miss-it rope climb ascents & third place overall finish. I love those boys because they are nice, talented, honest, and real. Talk about family values.
• ….and speaking of them, AGAIN, Jason’s son had his first steps at the competition, and I accidentally witnessed this
• Team CF Platinum winning a decisive victory for the second year running
• Hannes du Toit quietly showing a massive year over year improvement
• Coach Carla’s decisive victory on event 6 that helped propel her to the win
• Ivan Kruger finishing event 6 (the only person to do so)
• Richard Smith doing about 40m walking lunges in a row, to make it over the centre line before the time expired
• Team CCF’s third place finish (they also DNF’d on the muscle ups but finished third place in both the official & unofficial standings)
• Neil Scholtz’s consistency & technique bringing him to a second-place finish
• Speaking of consistency … David Levey, deservedly winning for the second straight year
• Hearing ‘Power’ by Jeremy Loops on the radio just as I arrived at the venue for Day 3

 The weather was also great. Gorgeous, sunny days. Joburg has such nice winter weather (it’s late fall/early winter I’d say). Cold, VERY cold, when the sun is down, crisp mornings & evenings, and days that are actually quite warm.

I was asked the other day how I felt about the event being held in Johannesburg. Actually, I’m kind of happy about it. I like it up here, and it is less travel for the majority of the athletes. And the altitude? Honestly, you only notice it when you stop moving. Like the advice I got the other day: just don’t stop moving!

I can’t say I particularly cared for the venue, though. The lighting was terrible, and it was not in a pleasant part of town. There’s Rosebank … and then there’s downtown. Joburg is sort of like the Detroit of South Africa, where it used to have a thriving downtown, but then urban decay has hit. I was driving to the venue to register on Thursday and I felt like I just passed Eight Mile Road. Then I was mostly interested in getting the heck out of dodge before it got dark. One of the other girls apparently had someone smash her car window while stopped at a traffic light. Not fun.

But most of Joburg is not like that. At some point over the last few days I was almost at the point where I was thinking I might move here after Skyrove, whenever that is, then I realised the utter foolishness of making such plans. I know better by now. The best laid plans of mice & men, right?

Then again, I also know better than to compete with food poisoning.

So now I go back to my main mission: trying to do cool things with Wi-Fi!

• “Well he looks really nice.” “He is nice.… Oh.” – Steiny & Ellie
• “We’re meeting in The Future.” – Levon
• “The animals are winning.” – Levon
• “They sent a delegation.” – Christopher
• “Oh yeah, you were doing overhead squats.” – Jason (dinner table conversation at the Smith house, apparently)
• “My money’s on you.” – Brad
• “I didn’t eat that much today. I had half a chicken.” – Beatrix
• “We have to do 100.” “100??” – Ellie & Elan
• “My hands! I can’t grip the bar!” “I feel like puking.” – Estevan & Ellie
• “I know exactly how you feel.” “I know you do.” – Ricky & Ellie
• “What the hell is a one-legged kip?” “I can’t even kip with two legs!” – Andrew & Ellie
• “Well, you do look better than you did yesterday.” – Sergio (I’m guessing I must have looked like hell the day before!)
• “Go puke somewhere else, Ellie!” – head medic
• “I enjoyed watching you compete.” – Chuck
• “We can’t dictate fate.” – policeman
• “That is SO sweet, it’s actually almost too much.” – Ellie
• “He’s like a monkey!” – Michelle
• “Ouch!! Is that good for it?” “Yes.” “Then do it again.” – me & my medic
• “He can squat clean 100 kilos sixteen times but he can’t stand up.” – Wade  
• “I saw you were on your knees, so I knew it couldn’t be good.” – Wade
• “I really feel for you.” – Ellie
• “You know what you’re capable of. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.” – one of my very sweet fans

Playing chess with sharks

I have a very big idea. Which might mean it’s a great idea, or it might mean it’s a terrible idea. Like the paleo porridge above? OMG heaven!!!

But it’s fun to incubate an idea. The next bit of fun will be to run the numbers, then, if the numbers work, go sell it. Man, I love sales.

Maybe it’s the air in Joburg that makes me go all woozy in the head. We are at altitude after all!

But also I really do like it up here. I like the hills and the trees and that it feels BIG. Cape Town is too small sometimes, and it’s also so beautiful that it’s like a fairy tale. People aren’t meant to live in such a place, fairies and unicorns are.

Probably more importantly, there are a lot of people that I like up here. Even though some of my faves were in Taiwan this trip, there are friends and acquaintances that I really wish I could see more often. It’s also that whenever I’m up here I learn at least one, if not several, valuable pieces of information. This visit has, so far, been no less mind-expanding.

Plus, since the CrossFit Regionals is upcoming, this has been less of a normal visit and more of a chance to catch up with some CrossFit friends: Lorinda & Branco (who did manage to teach me bar muscle ups and help my squat clean) and let me get to see lovely Krugersdorp in the dark and their awesome gym in a high school, bringing back memories of my own boarding school days, and the legend that is Richard Smith, who let me come and do some overhead squats at his gym. Coach may have told me not to go heavy but I still hit a new PB by 6kgs.

Someone did ask me what I was good at in CrossFit. I struggled to think of a single thing, other than, come to think of it, strict muscle ups! Makes up for my lousy kipping ones. No, it doesn’t. But that’s not really the point; we do specialise in not specialising. So I’m not good at anything per se but I’m decent at everything, although any good CrossFitter will be able to tell you their long list of things they’d like to be better.

You know I can only have fun if I don’t take this thing too seriously. The point is to push myself. I guess. Yeah I am a little banged up. Yeah it’s at altitude. Yeah there’s a chance my shoulder will give out and I’ll DNF in the first day. Shit happens. Heck if that happens at least my brain will be in better shape for my 9am Monday meeting (WTF was I thinking …. Oh yeah, sales. That.).

But you know what? I’m going go out there and do the best I can. In preparation for that, I’ve been sleeping 9 hours a night all week. I feel amazing. I won’t about five minutes into Jackie but whatever.

It’s like that lovely song that’s been all over the radio … I’m going to be an optimist about it. Why not? Always smile. You win some, you lose some.

And taking a page out of the book of my favourite vendor I am not seeing, sometimes the best way to win the war is to strategically lose a battle. Oh, you want to go with that cheaper option? Have fun with that.

It’s actually great. People are much more likely to learn by making a mistake than if you tell them the right answer. True story.

But on the other side, if you have a good idea and can figure out how to pull it off, you can maybe even win the battle before a single shot is fired.

If. The world runs on ifs.

It also runs on what might have beens. Those are my worst.

I’m starting to realise one thing, and that thing is that I am definitely not playing in the kiddie pool.

Time to go crush it.

• “So what are you good at? Besides strict handstand pushups?” “Ummmmmm. Nothing, really.” – David & Ellie
• “It’s amazing what people will pay you to do.” – Lance
• “You also can’t tell them too soon.” – Lance
• “When others don't see what you see, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.” – J
• “People underestimate him. But not me. I don’t underestimate him.” – Branco
• “Ag! Nee!” – Lorinda (we were talking about talking behind other peoples’ backs)
• “I know what to look for and why to look for it.” – Harsheen
• “I think a lot of people in this company don’t realise we’re playing hockey.” – Kian
• “He can be a bit …” “…vindictive?” “You said it, I didn’t.” – Ellie & Doug
• “Wouldn’t it be nice to crush them?” – Doug (Yes. Yes it would.)
• “It was a bit scary actually. I could have put together those slides myself.” – Ellie
• “Just don’t stop.” – Richard (easy for him to say … he’s a machine!!)
• “Whenever I get too serious I take a week off.” – Richard
• “They call it re-marketing. They don’t call it creepily following you around.” – Andrew
• “It’s a good idea. The question is how to make it a valuable idea for you, and not a valuable idea for Ken.” – Andrew
• “So yeah I feel great right now but I know that in a week I won’t be able to think. Or walk. Sometimes I wonder why I do this!” – Ellie
• “I hope this is not incorrect.” – Stefan 

Practicing for the test

There’s learning and then there’s test preparation. Two different things. One is general, the other specific.

I’ve never been that good at taking tests, to be honest. Not like my genius brother at least, who scores in the 99^th percentile on standardised tests. But then again, it’s not really fair to compare yourself to an outlier. I’ve always been better at common sense, at least when I’m paying attention.

So a CrossFit competition is a sort of a test. What I like about it is that it kind of forces me out of my comfort zone as I discovered at Fittest in Cape Town. 95% effort is not good enough. Yes, you go out too hard, you redline, you die … but you know, you do know what is too hard and what is not. At least, you do at sea level.

There comes this time of year when the folks at CrossFit HQ, aka the cult Mothership, announce the Regional workouts. They are standardised for the whole world, so they are announced a bit in advance of the first competition. There are a bunch of different regions and the regional competitions are held over four weeks.

Long story short, they recently announced the Regional workouts and since then, most of our training has been preparing for this competition. It seemed like it was longer last year, and maybe it was …. Or maybe I was just stressing over that 32kg dumbbell to the point of near obsession.

This year I’m much more chilled, which is weird because I’m competing individually which is more strenuous physically and probably emotionally, too. Depends on how your teamwork is, but last year I was very close to at least two of the three boys on my team and I felt the emotional support and also stress of having to deliver my part for the team.

Anyway, suffice to say I’m already sick of chest-to-bar pullups, and as much as I enjoy competing and the whole song & dance that goes along with it, in a way I’m looking forward to it being over. When practicing burpee muscle ups this week I did three then on the fourth my right shoulder collapsed and I very nearly fell out of the rings forward. Not even sure what happened but it was scary.

The production quality they are bringing to Regionals actually does make me feel like what I got accused of being a few months back, namely a semi-pro athlete. That’s all well and good, and I’m a lot healthier than I was going into Regionals last year. And yet, I know what would do me best is about two weeks of strict rest and rehab on my shoulder. Rest is part of the programme, too.

I must admit to feeling a bit disorganised in the head this last week. I blame my laptop. It’s hard when you live most of your correspondence life in email, and all of a sudden your emails aren’t where you want them, and half your files are only in the cloud because it takes days for everything to download. The cloud is great when you can get to it, but when you can’t it’s quite frustrating.

Starting to feel like I’m really on to something, though, and just needing to tick some things off the list, put them behind me, and stop wondering if my big crazy ideas are going to work and start trying them out. If you’re going to think, may as well think big.

It’s like that Steve Prefontaine quote that I love so much: ‘The only good pace is a suicide pace, and today’s a good day to die.’

Speaking of thinking big, I had the pleasure of spending much of Sunday with my friend Riaan, who runs a company that is on to some big things. And we had the pleasure of an amazing paleo lunch in about five different colours, many flavours of coconut, and lots of coffee. But what I enjoyed the most was getting in on the strategy and getting to contribute my thoughts to it (one or two of which were apparently quite well taken).

Of all my loves, strategy is probably the biggest one, followed closely by business development. Mostly because these are the ones where you need to be able to see the pieces in the puzzle. I can fall out of bed almost and put together a decent operations plan, so easy to me means not very challenging means not very interesting.

Business development on the other hand requires an ability to think on the fly and figure out quickly whether or not something is going to work in practice or not.

OK, the ones that might work are mights. That’s what makes it fun. But the ones that won’t work, those I can see from a mile away.

As I was saying last night after dinner, the innovation isn’t always the what, it’s the go to market approach (aka the how).

Not unlike the strategy of how to attack a workout like one with 100 chest-to-bar pullups. It’s not all about beautiful gymnastics or brute strength or pushing through pain. I’m still trying to figure out the demon that makes me compete. Maybe when I figure it out is when I can retire from my competitive career.

Not that I’m in any hurry. At least when it comes to that.

• “It’s that very thing that will make your company successful.” – Riaan
• “Come on, Ellie. You know you want to work for us.” – … doesn’t that sound like a cult?
• “This is all coming together nicely.” – Rudolph
• “You teach me how to open my hip and I WILL clean 90!” – Ellie
• “If you think that hurts your arms wait until you’re lunging with an axle in the front rack.” – Chris
• “He answered an email? He must really want to come to Cape Town.” – Ellie
• “Leave no gaps.” – Lance
• “Business is all about dealing with disgruntled people.” – Doug
• “The first thing to do is plug it in and hope it doesn’t catch on fire.” – Craig
• “If it spins up it should be fine.” – Craig
• “Yeah, your drive really is f*cked hey.” – Craig
• “That’s overuse.” – Bryony
• “Support? What support?” – Matt
• “If a computer could have a Freudian slip it would be that.” – Ellie
• “We could just harpoon people as they walk by.” – Claudia
• “To tell the truth … no, it’s not.” – Shirfu
• “Yes. I can tell.” – Kim
• “Oh really? Well that completely changes the situation. That means we have the power.” – Ellie
• “He said the meeting went really well. But I haven’t spoken to him.” – Doug
• “I mean it's not like hitting a moose. But you don't want to hit a porcupine.” – Ellie
• “And it wouldn’t even feel good!” – Kara 

Laptop death, Burger King, and drama

Laptop death. All I have to say is thank God for Dropbox. I lost some stuff but it wasn’t the catastrophe that it would have been were it not for automated backups. Probably the worst loss was my CrossFit workout log, which I had saved on my desktop which, oddly enough, was not backed up to Dropbox.

That and my meeting notes from a two-hour Saturday session with an interesting prospect. Oh well, thank goodness for the old gray cells.

I lost a blog post somewhere in there as well. It probably wasn’t that interesting anyway because my state of mind was not that good. I was stressed.

I was stressed because I was structuring my life in an unhealthy way despite knowing better. Even at the qigong lecture we were learning about the difference between body, intellect, and spirit/soul. You cannot just train two and neglect the third.

It’s like when you know you shouldn’t eat the chocolate cake but you do it anyway. Yes, yes, yes.

So my laptop is still in the shop, I’m running off an old one, nothing is where I want it, and I’m even further behind. But I’m less stressed about it.

I think it may actually have been bad karma or something. But man the day it happened I was a wreck. Stressed to begin with, and this did not make me happy, one little bit. But it may just have been the kick in the ass I needed.

In the last week or so since I posted, a lot happened.

My friend Kara came to visit me (and South Africa!) from Chicago.

We went away for the weekend to Montagu.

I finally saw Cape Agulhas (the southernmost point of the Africa continent.

Jeremy had his first American shows, in LA and NYC. So happy to see him on the trajectory he’s on.

A piece of my feedback made it into new draft regulations from the national regulator.

A new employee started at Skyrove.

We won the Burger King account, I had my first Burger King burger (before the store opened, just because I could), then went to CrossFit and wanted to puke. Well, 3x30 wall balls with a men’s weight ball is hard enough if you haven’t just eaten something you’re not used to.

Three of the girls at my gym got their first muscle ups, and I got my first non-false grip strict muscle up.

There was a Justin Bieber concert. No I didn’t go to it. But I had a laugh about it. In New England, you see, at certain times of year we would plan our day around expected snowfall: ‘I have to leave before the roads get bad.’ In Cape Town on that day it was: ‘I have to go before they close all the roads for the Justin Bieber concert.’

I went to a friend’s housewarming party.

I TWICE had dinner with some other friends I hadn’t seen in ages. Different sets of friends. Amazed they are still friends with me.

I met some very cool creative boys, and drooled over data on two different occasions. I WISH.

Made my sales guy happy a month later than he would have liked, but I think we now have a formula that works. Slowly, slowly, re-working things as I’d like.

One lesson that’s hard for me to learn, as a perfectionist, is that my version of perfect is not the only one. What for me is imperfect might be perfect to someone else. I somehow never thought of it that way. But it also comforts me to know that little glitches aside, I’m on the right path. Outlook is everything.

Hes came by Cape CrossFit on Saturday and for some reason I looked at her and said that the reason she always looks so good is that she’s happy. I mean, sure, she’s also gorgeous. But she’s nice, and she’s happy, and loving life. And she said well of course. You really have two choices in life: you can be happy or unhappy.

And of course, she’s right. But when you’re in the depths of unhappiness or stress, it’s hard to see your way out.

So. Burger King. I had wanted this one ever since I heard they were coming to South Africa. I had actually not been out selling that much myself since my sales guy started being so awesome, because I was busy with a bunch of other stuff. But I learned a couple things along the way and the new approach I’m taking really seems to be working.

What a super group of people to be working with, and this is not the first time in my career I’ve had Burger King as a client. So it’s back to familiar territory for me. It is hard to explain, to people not in South Africa, how much attention this has gotten. It was the first Burger King to open not only in South Africa but in all of Africa. They gave away free Whoppers to the first 1,000 people in line, and there was a very long line as you can see from the photos. It was great fun for me to get to go there and be a part of it, I’m not going to lie.

Also this week they revealed the workouts for the CrossFit Regionals. You’ll hear all about them, don’t worry. But you know what? I can actually do all of the exercises in them.

There are rope climbs and 61kg squat cleans, 50 handstand pushups, 100 chest-to-bar pullups; dumbbell snatches, pistols, burpee muscle ups, and an overhead squat ladder. And the only thing I’m worried about is how my double-unders still suck and how high on the rings I land in my muscle ups.

I was telling some of the girls at the gym the other day about how I didn’t know if I could snatch that 32kg dumbbell last year and even until that day I had never done it on the left arm, and I failed the first two or three attempts on that arm and I could see the concern on the face of my teammate, my judge, and I could almost feel the worry of the crowd. But I did my 10 reps, and that taught me that I could do things I didn’t know I was capable of.

You know what? I have one and only one goal, and that is to push myself out of my comfort zone. I have no illusions about winning; I have too many weaknesses right now.

But I sure as hell am going to give it all I’ve got, same as I pretty much always give everything.

Now, back to these contracts.

• “Are they out of their minds?” – Stefan
• “For me, smashing is the ultimate.” – Grant
• “It’s paleo. No. No it’s not. Not at all.” – Ellie
• “I don’t start small.” – Ellie
• “What about kidney?” – Shirfu
• “Do you want to eat my fat?” “Absolutely.” – Kara & Ellie
• “Oh my God. You’re right. The Wi-Fi really does suck!” – Kara
• “Well, it starts with a three rep max overhead squat.” “I hate when they do that.” “You don’t even know what I’m talking about, do you?” “No.” – Ellie & Adam
• “It’s in Montagu.” “Montague Gardens. Not the same thing.” – Adam & Tim
• “You’re a really good client when it comes to feedback because you actually give feedback.” – Sam (some things just blow my mind)
• “Never let me say you never do anything for me. I never say that, do I?” – Ellie
• “I was looking at photos of Justin Bieber today – WAIT. That came out wrong.” – Ellie
• “You can do a burpee. You can do a muscle up.” – JP
• “I’m sorry. Sometimes I talk to myself when I’m importing data.” – Ellie
• “How can a legal obligation be a gesture of goodwill?” – Ellie
• “Well obviously you don’t!” – Dale
• “How did you think of that??” – Bronwyn (healthy right brain)
• “It’s a bit surreal.” – Claudia
• “It’ll be good for you.” – Conrad
• “it’s all in your head.” “Vertigo?” – Sebastian & Ellie
• “Maybe you can say a kitten up a tree was been attacked by an evil North-Korean chef and you threw a Ruckus AP at the Korean Chef and saved the kitten and they all lived happily every after.” – Mike
• “I’m sorry. Did you just say Herschelle Gibbs was wearing an entire outfit in that colour orange?” – Ellie
• “So do you also think he’s a porn addict?” “Yeah. Heavy.” – Ellie & Adam
• “We should be forgetting about the bloody pie. We should be setting up the bakery.” – Christiaan  
• “That’s a pretty incriminating photo. Good thing you’re a CEO.” – Kara (she hadn’t seen the photo, but she knows the boys involved)
• “I don’t think they have a war right now so you’re fine.” – Kara
• “There’s some rice.” “No, I need to lose weight.” “No, it’s cauliflower.” – Kara & Aya
• “I’m quite a nerd, actually.” “Well, you don’t look like one!” – Ellie & Aya

Radio waves

So on Monday, Henk taught me about TV white space (TVWS). Why does this matter? Well firstly because it’s TVWS that’s taking me into Africa for the first time later this month. Secondly, because he started off by explaining, as one does, some of the basics of radio frequencies and in doing so he drew some squiggly lines.

You’ve all heard of infra-red and ultra-violet? Well, infra-red waves are long and slow, and ultra-violet are short and fast. Which do you think goes further?

It’s kind of the RF equivalent of slow & steady wins the race. Although CrossFit has taught me that slow and steady does NOT win the race, I love the analogy because what it does show is the harm of peaks & troughs.

So you eat sugar and you spike your insulin then it crashes then you’re hungry. Oops. Or you get overly excited by each new prospect, or possibility, or fad, or whatnot. Stay the course. Stay the damned course. Unless the course is wrong; then change it.

I let some data change my course recently, but I’m happy with that. The worst thing is to have a blind spot. I’m sure I do have them, but what really worries me is knowing that we have a cognitive bias towards consistency, not course-correcting when necessary. I would rather admit that I was wrong than fiddle while Rome burns.

Monday morning I was going up a stairwell, with some speed, in a building that should probably be a hard-hat zone and the lifts were broken. Coming down the stairwell was a construction worker with a 2x4 just at forehead level. Only my reflexes saved a massive collision. No the universe isn’t out to get me. But man, sometimes you dodge a bullet.

I’m somehow feeling much more relaxed about, well, pretty much everything. There is some cognitive overload that comes from having a lot on your plate and I made good progress on a large number of things on Sunday, including wrapping my head in ever more detail around our customer database. I had 15 things I wanted to get done, and I got 11 done. That’s actually not too bad. And, it means I set my goal high enough.

This notion of pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is interesting because it’s way harder to do than we think. Signing up for the CrossFit Regionals as an individual was one of those things. Jumping off a cliff in a way, and as much as I felt very left out listening to the team meeting on Wednesday, I am also very glad for the decision.

There was an online blog post somewhere about performance anxiety. I normally don’t get any; but there are times that I do. The distinction is how uncomfortable am I. When I was in elementary school we had this performance art guy come coach us through writing & performing our own play. One of the things he said that really stuck was that there’s a difference between being embarrassed and being humiliated. Being embarrassed is fine. Being humiliated is not.

If there’s no time to think or if it’s ‘just’ a tough workout I love competition with or without an audience. If it’s something I think I might suck or fail at, that’s a whole other worry, as I discovered last year with that dumbbell snatch workout.

I was reading another thing that said you should ask yourself a question: why do I compete? And then ask yourself the why to that question. I have been thinking about this a lot, and I actually have no answer. It’s more complicated than that it pushes me further than I’d push myself. It’s more complicated than that I’m competitive and I want to show off.

At this point, being a competitive CrossFitter is part of how I define myself. But why? And must it be that way? For this I have no answer, and doing something without knowing why is strange, no? I got into it to lose weight and get into better shape. I remember this one overhead walking lunge workout I couldn’t even complete in the time cap. And now I can do things with my body that I used to think were impossible for me. I was telling someone recently that you can really do anything you set your mind to. It’s just a question of how much practice it takes to get there.

I think the closest I’ve gotten is that my demon is the couch potato. It scares me to think I might go back to that, so I define myself as the opposite of what I don’t want to be, and being a competitive athlete just gives me motivation. Eat ice cream weekly, don’t look so good in the mirror, don’t finish so well in competition. That much is simple.

It’s also that I know I’m not getting any younger and part of me is so jealous of the younger girls; not because I’d want to be young again, goodness no, and lose the wisdom of age (I’m finally starting to understand the wisdom of age!). But that my body can’t recover as fast, maybe it’s easier to learn gymnastic things at a younger age, etc., etc. I know like all competitive athletes that I have a limited career, so you don’t want to waste it.

It’s a fear of falling behind as much as a fear of not accomplishing what I might be capable of if I only gave it a chance. It’s so easy to cop out. It’s not easy to stick your neck out. Which is the next thing: getting out of your comfort zone. Competition does that to me. And that’s also a good thing. Whatever floats your boat I suppose.

Wednesday was a public holiday. Workers Day. In America we celebrate this day in September as Labour Day, and actually it’s interesting. Like the 4^th of July, Labour Day is normally about the food. Not so much so in South Africa. This one isn’t National Braai Day. But both are autumn holidays and, if you’re lucky, the weather cooperates.

I actually took the day mostly off; hiked Table Mountain in the morning. Absolutely stunning, from the sunrise to the light on the mountain to the fog rolling over the city. It’s so easy when you live in a place like this to take it for granted. But the weather was perfect, and I mean perfect. Sunny and warm, but not hot. A perfect autumn day.

But it is spectacular. The mountains, the air, the sea, the proteas. I saw blooming King proteas in the wild, and Lions Head from directions I’d never seen. The hike was fun; we went up the India Venster route which involved some scrambling up rocks, which made it much more fun. Then Sindy & I caught the last breakfast order at Sandbar before I hit the gym for some fun with snatching. It’s always a good day when your snatch balance feels better than your overhead squat!

Until the Regional workouts are announced I am trying to work on my weaknesses, yes, but really I’m just having fun. I work on something gymnastic-y every day after class, and on this day which was essentially open gym for me I did another non-unilateral-type workout, this time with kettlebell snatches and overhead squats.

Unfortunately, I know what will happen when the workouts are announced. I will start to fantasise about the ones that are in my wheelhouse, and stress about the ones where I am not proficient at what I have to do.

Maybe this is where the keep calm and carry on comes in. Well, that and sort out my shoulder.

I’m looking forward to May and June though. I’m lining up some very cool stuff at work from the supply side to the marketing side to the product side, and hopefully it will translate to more sales, of course. And then we have Regionals, my trip to Africa (Dakar, to be exact), the resumption of drinking season (some days I miss wine & whiskey), London, and a week’s leave. Summer in Europe.

Kind of like interval training: I enjoy life more when I’m overly busy followed by a chilled period. I wonder what sort of wave length that would be? Maybe not a wave then, but something like a heartbeat?

• “I think we’d have to drop the ball.” – Adam
• “Probably because he thinks he’s better than you.” – Adam
• “Wi-Fi is, by its very nature, not harmful.” – Henk (you had to understand the context!)
• “I guess not every day can be a good training day.” – Grant
• “You bargain like a Persian!” – Jalal (I’m hoping this is a compliment)
• “Ellie, how do you do that?” “What?” “Walk & talk at the same time?” – Rosica & Ellie
• “Looking forward to catching up on the Mediterranean.” – Zach