Young lady, do you adore what you do?

Love is the most powerful thing on the planet. Love will win out over hate, fear, distrust, anger, greed, envy any time. But it’s also a very scary thing: it’s so much easier to be sceptical or tear something down, or criticize than to build something up or put yourself out there. Entropy is a powerful thing as well. But over and over again in the last few weeks I’ve noticed people who are either making incredible leaps of faith and jumping off cliffs without quite knowing how deep the water is into which they will land, and people who are desperately, desperately unhappy or even just unsatisfied who won’t even get near enough to the edge to think about jumping.

A few weeks back I read a blog post by a Canadian friend who is in Durban for a few months and is visiting Cape Town this week. What really stuck with me about the blog post was the question that someone had asked her on the airplane on the way over here, which was the offhanded question: young lady, do you adore what you do? Luckily for her, she could answer yes. Luckily for me, so can I, and I think perhaps I appreciate this more because I have been on the complete other end of the spectrum where I didn’t like what I was doing, didn’t like where I was working, didn’t like a lot of things, complained about it all the time and never did anything about it. For far too much of my life, and that’s one of my biggest regrets. But no sense crying over spilt milk, and lesson learned.

Why do I adore what I do? I’m fighting the good fight, I’m building something essentially from the ground up, I am working with people who I love and respect, I’m learning every day, I’m anything but bored. I also adore where I am living, and maybe part of the reason is this whole thing about South Africa being the teenager to America’s adult. There are a lot of people here who are jumping off the proverbial cliff, and it’s inspiring to be around people like that. It’s inspiring to be around people who push your thinking, don’t let you get away with crap, and think big. Or maybe these are just areas where I appreciate help, because on my own I don’t push myself enough, or think big enough.

Having said that, sometimes jumping off cliffs (or letting go of ropes, perhaps) can result in injuries. Maybe you do run out of runway. Certainly there is collateral damage, and has been in our case where we have tried to do too much with too little money. Plenty of startups hit hard times, and at some point if you are successful it becomes part of the mythology. We don’t appreciate easy victories as much as the hard-won ones. That’s why I take my Ask Jeeves money for granted and why that first muscle-up is going to be so much more exciting than the first handstand pushup. What sucks, though, is the collateral damage although to the degree that there are victims we are adults, and if you understand the risks you’re taking you make your bed and lie in it as far as I’m concerned. But every story has at least two sides, right?

And yes, I accept that I have hurt, am probably hurting, and will continue to hurt people in doing what I’m doing. That’s about what I do, yes, but it’s also a fact of life. Sometimes taking a stand and doing the right thing isn’t about being popular, it’s about doing what’s right, and if that’s for me in my own life or for what I think is a higher purpose, so be it.

Jeremy said yesterday that what is important to him is being a role model for others to show that you don’t have to choose between doing good and doing well; almost to the point of thumbing his nose at his friends who may look at him askance now that he’s doing what he’s doing but isn’t yet making a lot of money. I guess for me, too, this is important: it’s important to act as role models to get good people into this sort of career and show them it is possible, but it’s also a bit of a thing for me because if there is one way to motivate me to do something it’s to tell me I can’t do it.

He was also saying that an important aspect of the work they are doing is bringing the children from disadvantaged areas into contact with more affluent white young people, and this is important because it de-mystifies the “other,” for one thing, and for another since a lot of the children don’t have fathers or father figures seeing male role models of any race is valuable. Two incredibly basic and true insights that had completely escaped me in over a year of working here, although granted I’m not really engaging at that level very much. But you can walk past the same thing day after day for years and never notice it, too.

I am, at the moment, a bit past my breaking point. A week ago I was sick for a day. Last weekend I woke up and I have no idea why I even went to the gym to do the workout because I was so not in the mood, and was exhausted physically and mentally. That feeling lasted for the next three days. I suppose I’m overtrained; I knew I was overtraining even though I felt fine but this is now the second time this has happened to me: I feel absolutely fine, maybe with an injury or two, then all of a sudden BAM I’m overtrained. Or in this case, possibly my ambient stress levels combined with [relative] lack of sleep and heavy training was just too much and my body and mind decided to rebel.

Other than THAT, though, fantastic, fantastic week. We signed all but one of the social enterprises we want to accelerate into our programme, of course we can’t actually do everything we want to do until we can generate the income to hire more staff but, well, you have to start somewhere. And that makes me a glass-half-full type person I guess.

Here’s a quick rundown:
• Signed up See Saw Do, Greenpop, Love to Africa, Urban Guerrilla, and Uconomy to acceleration services contracts.
• Met Matt from Creative Spark because Justin said we should meet. The more I try to get away from tech, the more it sucks me back in.
• Lunch with Henk from Skyrove at the Woodstock Deli. His vision for Skyrove is very cool, actually, and it’s almost even more cool to hear him list off the mistakes he’s made to this point (mainly related to building a product before fully understanding the customer). He’s a smart cookie, and you can bet he won’t make the same mistakes a second time.
• 27dinner at The Wild Fig. Mostly the usual crew were there; had a great time. Managed to wind up in some silly photos and be one of the last ones to leave the bar even though I wasn’t drinking. Wound up talking for 45 minutes or so to one of the guys who runs the biggest VC firm in the country (or at least in Cape Town). He sees the same things that I do, and we’ll be talking further.
• Skype call with Nick Busink in Switzerland. He’s going to be coming down here in 2 weeks, and I couldn’t be more excited. Looking forward to talking through our challenges and opportunities with him.
• The weekend saw a hiking trip, where we overnighted at a tented camp in Kommetjie right by the lighthouse and the water. It was rustic but luxurious and so much fun: a great bonding experience with a ton of awesome CrossFitters and their significant others!
• Braai Sunday night with Katharine, the aforementioned Canadian friend, Roland and Jobst, at Wim & Hanlie’s gorgeous place.
• Over to Peter & Mandy’s new place (in Newlands, right up the road from Trevor Manuel’s heavily guarded pad!) to do some prep work for the Greenpop Jumpstart workshop Monday. By the end of this, I was so tired I couldn’t even speak. Peter was laughing at me; he’d never seen me like that!
• All-day Jumpstart workshop for the Greenpop team. This was quite an intense exercise for me, at least.
• Dinner with Katharine, who is super cool (then again any friend of Ellen Dickenson’s is going to be cool, right??)
• Hanging out for one last evening with Chad & Kathryn Green. It upset me more than I admitted at the time, to say goodbye to them.
• Dinner with Charlotte & Andy at Limoncello (which I’d been wanting to try for ages). Interesting discussion around finding and pushing your own personal boundaries: what I probably love about CrossFit more than anything else is those WODs where I am so in the zone that I get tunnel vision, can hardly feel the pain, and nothing else matters.

A few new PRs in the last week: a new ground to overhead PR of 53kgs on a thruster ladder of all things: can’t wait to see what my 1RM clean & jerk turns out to be: maybe for the first time my ability to get under the bar will be the limiting factor which would be super cool. Also, a new PR on unbroken handstand pushups of 15 … not too bad, and I’m probably one of the weird rare people whose max handstand pushup PR is higher than pullups. Yeah well I’m a freak; what’s new?

But I guess the most exciting thing to happen to my overtrained ass in the last week or so was that Jobst asked me and I accepted the captaincy of the CCF team for the CrossFit Games. This means I get the responsibility of assigning people to workouts, and the sequence within each workout. I won’t bore everyone here with the details of the Regionals workouts. If you’re super curious you can check them out here. I will admit that it’s been a lot of fun to think through the strategy of who to assign to what workout, in what order, etc. I may be snowed in by emails but you can bet the ones that I replied to were those relating to the team workouts.

Our mission at this point as there is no other team competing against us is to complete all the WODs either as prescribed or at the minimum movement standards. Then I can assemble a team for the CrossFit Games in late July in California, which would be a pretty damn amazing experience. So the drama of last week was around the rules for this workout. Check out the text, straight from the CrossFit Games web site:
Team Workout 5
“Amanda”
9-9-7-7-5-5 reps for time of:
Muscle-up
Squat snatch (135/95lbs)

General Rules:
Teams of two are comprised of one man and one woman. The man does 9 muscle-ups, then the woman does 9 muscle-ups. Then the man does 9 snatches, then the woman does 9 snatches with a separate barbell, etc. The pattern continues until they both have completed the entire workout. The ring height will be adjusted so that the bottom of the ring is one fist higher than the tops of the taller athlete’s fingers when standing with one arm extended. Athletes will begin standing under the rings. At Go, they will jump to the rings and perform the workout as described. If the rings are too high, the taller athlete is permitted to assist the shorter athlete in reaching the rings. A team’s result is their total time to complete the couplet. There is a 20 minute time cap for teams. If the team cannot finish in the time cap, their result is the time cap plus a one second penalty for each rep not completed. If both athletes are not able to complete a single muscle-up or a single snatch, they receive a DNF and the team is eliminated from the competition.
Clarification: As long as the team is able to perform one muscle-up, they are not DNF'd. If they reach the snatches, as long as the team performs one snatch, they are not DNF'd. If they perform at least one muscle-up but don't get to the snatches when the time cap is reached, they are assessed the penalty second for each rep remaining in the workout.

Clear as mud, right? The way I read it before the clarification, both athletes must perform one squat snatch. The way I read it after the clarification, it’s still not clear whether or not BOTH athletes must perform one muscle-up or not. According to Jobst, all we need to do is one muscle-up, and then after Andrew does his 9 I can spend the rest of the time cap as I wish.

Anyway on a number of these there are a few things I am not 100% clear on, but we’ll get clarification from the head judge on how the rules will be interpreted so that we can do what we must do (if at all possible: 60kg and 43kg squat snatches were never going to happen!).

I’ll close by saying that I was tremendously inspired by the Greenpop team yesterday. They are all such beautiful, talented, lovely people, and they are part of what is going to change the world. I love how even though they are starting small, they have big ambitions and aren’t afraid to put everything out there at risk: friendship, career, saving the world. Similar, Andy from icologie: that man’s a revolutionary, and he knows what he’s doing, and understands the dynamics of how to get people to change their behaviour. We need to make it more easily accessible, though: “Everyone wants to do something but they just don’t know how.” – Lauren. True?

On a slightly different scale I dropped by the gym late one evening to talk to Jobst about the team workouts for Regionals and I was blown away by the love he showed with the new people in the basics course he was teaching, and then in talking after about the other athletes in the gym, myself included. It’s beautiful also to see the love that Jobst, Roland, and Chris have for the people at CCF. It’s genuine, and it’s really something to be cherished. We all make the world better in our own way (well, actually, a lot of people don’t make the world better, but of those who do there are different kinds of impacts).

• “Is that how you settle things where you come from?” – Jeremy
• “I’m watching him!” – Shaun
• “That’s not your hand!” – Jobst
• “You make people do the weirdest things, with a smile on their face.” – Jacques
• “You can NOT make anything stop you.” – Peter
• “Yeah, you kind of broke all the rules. Well, you’re an entrepreneur.” – Matt
• “Maybe you’ve got some time to do it. Between 2 o’clock and 3 o’clock in the morning.”’ – Peter
• “This movement needs more movement. We need to get more revolutionary in our thinking.” – Peter
• “You’re going to be slamming those things in two weeks, right?” – Graham
• “Elbow pain is usually just overtraining.” – Chris (I just love how he phrased this one … oh, nothing serious, just some overtraining…)
• “There are some corrections you just can’t make if you’re CrossFit HQ.” – Chris
• “I hope that was the right answer. It was the truth.” – Ellie
• “That’s what I have you for!” – Jobst
• “Where’s my scalpel?” – Fadio
• “It’s important to be serious about drinking.” – Daniel
• “It looks like we killed someone in this kitchen.” – Meggie
• “Did you predict a year ago that I’d be doing what I’m doing?” “No.” – Ellie, Jobst
• “Why, because you’re American?” – Jeremy
• “No, but you’ve gotta start somewhere.” – Misha
• “It’s like, take your bad attitude and get with the fucking programme.” – Jeremy
• “Destiny has a funny way of playing its hand.” – Peter
• “Hectic …. Good luck.” – Jaco
• “Hopefully I see you all soon enough to be nervous together with the people I love... ;)” – Chris
• “You don’t look anything like Kristan Clever.” – Andy

South African elections and a new nickname

"It is not the critic who counts; not the one who points out how the strong stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to those in the arena; who strive valiantly; who fail and come up short again and again; who know great enthusiasm and great devotion; who at the best know in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if they fail, at least fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
- Theodore Roosevelt

Another busy week, punctuated by a public holiday in the middle to allow everyone time to vote. Interesting concept; wonder if it really changes voter turnout that much. I am too lazy to look up statistics.

Last year I remember remarking about how different it is to be in another country and experience different holidays. Right now, I think Memorial Day is coming up soon in the States but not here obviously. Another thing that is very different are elections. These were municipal elections, not national elections but it’s an interesting process. I didn’t actually experience it myself but from the sounds of it, long queues, a standardized voting procedure (as opposed to every town doing its own thing), inking of the thumb to indicate you have voted, and ballots that have parties listed in alphabetical order, standardized. So if you start a political party in South Africa, start it with a special character (i.e. non alpha).

Obviously also there is the fact that there is one super-dominant party, the ANC, the ruling party since the end of apartheid, and the party that led the struggle. Broad generalization, but most of its voters tend to be black. The DA is a relatively new party but its voters tend to be white. It’s very interesting to hear people speak about politics in this country because it is just so completely different. I had some fun explaining the differences between Democrats and Republicans, what happened in the Massachusetts special election (and why I’m actually kind of relieved Martha Coakley lost), the concept of gerrymandering, and how much more sophisticated the whole elections shebang is in the U.S. Everything from voter targeting to the get out the vote campaign is in its infancy here, which may partly be a result of the fact that the ANC is just do darned dominant, and the politics so tinged with race. It’s funny, there are most definitely corrupt politicians in government and the DA goes on and on about service delivery and so on so forth. I must say I haven’t had any dealings with ANC officials but on the DA side, government is government. Oh, but if you think Democrats and Republicans hate each other? Yeah, doesn’t compare, and in my experience at least, that’s not due to racism. But politics is so big and so broad it’s hard to say.

What I will say is that it will be interesting to see what develops over the coming years. Like it or not, there is a huge gap between the average white and average black in terms of education, ability to govern, etc. due to the legacy of apartheid. Whites are also quite a small minority. The degree to which stereotypes and race play into the picture doesn’t help anything, obviously. But the ANC has a big perception problem: it’s been in power for a long time, there are quite a few corrupt politicians (again, the Americans are just more sophisticated at corruption, ha!), and people of all races are starting to tire of empty promises. On the other side, the DA has a huge perception problem: I have more than a few non-white and very insightful and politically knowledgeable friends who refuse to vote for the DA because they think it is too white-oriented. Maybe it is. Hard to look outside your own reality. Then of course there are a ton of fringe parties (including one that is so radical it makes the Tea Party look conservative, and I mean that in a nice way).

It’s hard to say what will happen ultimately. But in politics as in life in general, there does seem to be a sense of change but also of impatience. Something has to give, something will give. The jury is definitely still out in democracy as far as I’m concerned. I don’t see it working well anywhere in the world. How are leaders expected to make tough (read: unpopular) decisions if they are so busy trying to get re-elected? This is why the money and special interests control America, to the detriment of the people government is supposed to serve. And that’s America. We haven’t even started talking about France, or South Africa. And those are just the places with legitimate elections and a relatively free press. Well, humans are hectic. What can I say?

What did I find myself up to this week? Writing down the stupid things other people said. Meeting some cool new people. Training. Working. Wasting too much time on chat, and getting behind in important emails. Again. Sorry peeps, I know I owe you, but I’m busy now writing this blog post. Doing stupid stuff. What else is new?

Monday – breakfast meeting with geez, how to describe Justin? Not even sure. Likeminded soul. When my friend Jason came to visit I said it was like talking to myself … similar vibe with Justin going on. Our breakfast meeting ran over by like 90 minutes so we scheduled our next meeting for an evening. Better idea. It’s so cool to meet other people who are like you, who think like you, and who are doers like you, and then the really fun thing is to figure out how to work together. So that was quite cool. Spent a few hours later in the day revising a contract which, oddly enough, is work that I enjoy doing. Did some power cleans that evening although my ankle was a bit sore. Mona kicked the crap out of the power cleans & bear complex. She is amazing to watch. I actually started squatting again and it’s amazing how heavy 24kgs feels like when you haven’t been squatting in weeks (or months??).

Tuesday – A bunch of acceleration meetings, followed by an afternoon meeting with government. Moral of that story: a government has a lot of internal politics, in the middle of which you do not want to be caught. Also, don’t ever compromise on what you know to be the right way to do business. It may well come back to haunt you. Brought my boss to the gym because I was his date to a work dinner (Max was sick), and taking him back to the office in between was not a good use of time. He found CrossFit intriguing. I did 50 pullups without ripping my hands open, died on the pushups, and subbed 50 burpees for squats which I completed in 3:10. Pretty happy with that all things considered. Work dinner with a bunch of people from the Netherlands in Langa. Interesting crew, one of them was the former head of the national police, so we talked a lot about how law enforcement is both a public and a private responsibility. Then on to Hoodwinx for the beautiful Lauren’s birthday party where I met a guy named Devin whose name had come up on many occasions but I never met the fellow. Until now. He is also quite interesting, and the conversation led me to an interesting thought about how to extend the accelerator to tech. But one thing at a time… The swype application on my phone makes a great party trick. And I remembered that tequila is paleo but still didn’t have a single drink. Just not worth it the way I can now feel that the poison affects my sleep.

Last time I said I was going to build some social rest into my schedule? Yeah, not so much. Tuesday was planned to be a chill evening at home and instead … I barely got home in time to get my 8 hours of sleep! Wednesday was the aforementioned public holiday for election day. Got up, went to yoga, then out to Birds Café for lunch with Mona. Saved a bee’s life, and was way more tempted by the coffee on the menu than by the baked goods on offer. Why must milk be non-paleo, darn it all!

Mona, Hermann, Chris and I all met up at the gym to go to the field where Regionals are going to be held and do a workout Chris designed. It was absolutely a killer. 20 minutes of as many rounds as possible (AMRAP, in cult language) of 2 burpees, 100m run, 2 kettlebell swings, 100m run, 4 burpees, 100m run, etc. My ankle was feeling a bit wonky so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to run on it, so I emailed Chris to ask if he could think of anything I could substitute if necessary. The suggestion of walking lunges I didn’t care for due to my knee, so then he emailed back that I could do a 20 minute AMRAP of sitting, and called me princess. Quite uncalled for, and very chivalrous to make fun of the injured girl, I thought. How this moniker got turned into Princess of the Unicorns is a whole other matter entirely. I’m still not sure of the thought process behind that one, but whatever. Anyway back to the workout …. I had brought a heavy kettlebell which I think was a good choice because after the round of 10 it got VERY difficult. I’m done using the “normal” kettlebell and box jump height (once I can box jump again …). Do more difficult stuff and when the normal stuff comes up in competition it feels easy. And, it’s also all about scaling: when it comes to the point that kettlebell swings don’t tax you much, time to move up in weight. Anyway to make a long story short between the burpees and the swings that workout taxed the abs so much that I actually felt somewhat nauseous after. Then we went back to the gym for our second workout which was practicing handstand walks (fun! I’m going to practice this at home!), and then another workout involving burpees. Now I love burpees possibly more than anything else but I must say 200 burpees in about 24 hours was about enough.

Afterwards, in the realm of not-quite-what-I-had-planned, a dinner with Rika where I had somehow assumed her husband Lluwellyn would be at their place and just the two of us turned into dinner with Rika, Lluwellyn, Mona, and Roland. This of course led to all sorts of hilarity including the fact that I didn’t have enough chairs, still haven’t replaced the chair Deon broke, left my coconut oil at work, hadn’t cleaned my oven in far too long, apparently I don’t wash either my glasses or steak knives properly … oh, yeah, and that first time I tried to do a handstand I fell on my head … well, you get the idea. It was pick on Ellie night in my very own apartment. But what the heck. I had a fantastic time, and hey, smiling and laughter is good for you!

Thursday was a FoodTents build at the Philippi Children’s Centre. This was really more of a fun day than anything. Got my hands dirty, played with the kids and dogs, tried to explain to a four-year-old why I ate snails but wouldn’t share his Coke, and couldn’t resist doing some pullups and tire flips on my rest day. Went to acupuncture: the ankle felt awesome from the very beginning and the knee felt like nothing until about 40 minutes in when it started hurting like the dickens. Good stuff. I also must have been exhausted because I fell asleep on the table a few times. Nothing quite like jerking your limbs as you fall asleep when they have needles in them. Anyway after, I had a meeting with half our FutureFit group at the cool offices of Pulling Rabbits, including a floor make entirely out of books. The first floor of their building is mighty spooky. We need to find GreenPop a trailer. Should be all kinds of fun, but hey, nothing like a good challenge, right?

Dinner that night was at the Greens’ place by me in Tamboerskloof. Turns out they will be living in Brewster next year. How ironic. How did I pick my dorm senior year? It was closest to the gym. And it was the only one in the quad that was still a girls dorm.

Friday I spent mostly reviewing and editing another contract, then going over to my boss’ place to check in with him and review it (he had offsite meetings and was working from home). Making good progress but we have a ton of work to do, and actually it does frustrate me a bit that some of the people we are trying to help are a bit impatient. I guess it’s our own fault for over-extending, but I think people should be patient and accept that some free help is better than no free help. Well, actually I guess it makes sense: people are naturally so self-centered that we don’t even see what’s going on around us. The world does not revolve around YOU. Or ME. Well, my world revolves around me but I don’t seriously expect everyone else’s to. Still, frustrating when you’re in a bit of pain and all you get is a bit of a snarl despite the fact that you’re doing your best.

Hey, we’re all fighting our own battles, mostly with ourselves, actually. I was really focused on Wednesday after yoga on the people I cared about finding some old hurt or pain and letting it go. It’s a healthy thing to do. My main focus at the moment is being more forgiving of myself. When I am, things come better. I have one good friend who I’m actually just about ready to tell that he doesn’t need to be perfect all the time … but hey, what you dislike in others is often what you dislike in yourself, right?

Another reminder of course that setting expectations too high often leads to you falling short. That’s one other issue with my own issues with wanting to be, or appear to be, as good as I possibly can be. The bigger they are the harder they fall, right? And reality can’t compete with a myth, so you don’t want someone thinking you’re someone or something you’re not.

Enough deep thoughts. Friday they announced the Regional workouts for the CrossFit Games. No sense speculating too much at this point about movement standards. We decided earlier in the week that I would enter on the team side so that depending on the movement standards and minimum qualifying requirements, we can send a team to the Games this year. I could have decided to compete as an individual but we needed literally every woman at the gym who qualified to enter under the team if we were going to try to send a team, since Rika entered as an individual. This was sort of a cop-out on my part because the individual competition would have been mentally tough, but it’s also like the prisoner’s dilemma: if we all are so focused on ourselves, then everyone loses. Also, my knee being as tender as it is this close to the competition I might re-injure it or exacerbate the strain and really, nothing is worth that.

Seeing the workouts now, I think I could have done quite well overall but we will never know. It doesn’t really matter. All things considered, with a strong team I would rather compete in a team anyway. So the workouts all look super fun except for the one with muscle-ups and heavy (for us) squat snatches. Hence the question on minimum qualifying standards. But in the meantime we are practicing the workouts, so on Friday we did a chipper. I was planning on doing 100 pullups but started to get sub-dermal blood blisters around 60 or so, so went to 65 and stopped, then did 50 kettlebell swings with the heavy kettlebell, and a few double-unders (they are still a bit sensitive on my ankle).

Went home to shower and doctor my hand, which consisted of draining the blood, cutting off the skin, and rubbing salt in the wound to dry it out. Roland said it would help it become usable again faster and I think he’s right. It is also not quite as painful as it sounds, or at least as I was expecting. The level of pain does vary with the severity of the deepness of the wound, however. Went out to dinner in Durbanville with Mona and some of her family. This must be pick on Ellie’s accent week also because when I announced that I was American in answer to some question her father said: “Oh I thought you just had a throat infection.” Haha. This man (ex-pro rugby player) is quite intense although very cool: his first question to me was what was my sporting history. Anyway I had a nice time and got home again just in time for my 8 hours of sleep.

Saturday brought the workout designed by the Greens. I won’t bore you with the details but it was a really fun workout during which I learned that I could muscle clean 43kgs a lot faster and easier than a normal power clean. Now where was that when I was trying to do Grace? But it’s amazing how my technique has improved: I remember in December I could barely clean 45kgs at CrossFit Fenway. Also, when we were doing the workout on Tuesday I was thinking back to when I first started CrossFit and couldn’t do one pullup (let alone 50), and doing the workout probably would have taken me 50% longer even with scaling. Which reminds me: another thing that I really want to do is reach out to all the people over the years who I think have had a big positive impact on me, thank them, and tell them so. I’m planning to do that one by the end of this month, because I bet some of them don’t even know it.

Afterwards I very nearly injured myself quite badly. I was practicing muscle-ups and apparently I’m getting good enough height but am having issues with the transition, so Jobst was assisting me a little bit to get me into the right position so I got to the bottom of the dip, tried to push myself up, encountered some weakness and as I was continuing to push one of my hands slipped right off the rings so I grabbed on with the other (falling from about 7 feet up was not in the cards). This process wrenched my left elbow, and luckily I landed on my good ankle. The worst thing to happen out of it was that grabbing onto the other ring for dear life caused the existing tear in my hand to get caught on the callous on top of it and rip half the callous off. Jobst had to remove it with scissors. Princess indeed. But I have a couple of things I’m going to practice the next week or so until my hand heals. I’m quite sure I can do this before the competition. It’s exciting actually to be so close!!

Quick breakfast at the market, then on to run some errands including to the Biscuit Mill where I (of course) ran into someone I needed to talk to and this caused me almost to be late for the movie we were watching: Pirates of the Caribbean 4. That was fun although sadly it’s the sort of movie that would be way better at home where you could be providing a running commentary the entire time. Later on that evening brought the Greens’ going away party. I am really going to miss them. I was having a great time but I did have to leave later on in the evening to go down to the Jeremy Loops show at The Assembly. It’s a great venue for him and I was meeting some people there. Turns out I got there right on time, and another great thing about not drinking is that going out is very cheap! I also thought the show was amazing: I had a great view from stage left, and somehow live music is way more fun when you know the musician, and they sing to you and your crew. They also played a song I hadn’t heard before called Treevolution, which is part of the Greenpop tagline. Was cool to see a couple of other friends, and just as I was about to leave ran into Devin so stayed another 30 minutes or so.

This turned into a bad joke the next morning when I got up after 5 hours of sleep to accompany my friend Keith out to the race I had entered but couldn’t run. Somehow a 15km trail run on this ankle didn’t seem like a good idea. But I ran into some other people that I knew, and it was very cool that the race organizers recognized me both my face and name from the Summer Trail Series. Turns out Owen Middleton has a sprained ankle as well. I was planning on running some light hill runs but decided I didn’t feel like it so I just took photos. We discussed breakfast spots, drug use, and the supernatural over breakfast at Beleza (Cape Town crew, do NOT go there, I have nothing good to say and that’s saying something). Shortly thereafter I headed out to Constantia for second breakfast with Mona. This was punctuated by this guy who told me I had the worst fake American accent he’d ever heard. I was rendered speechless for the second time in about 12 hours (someone had said something at The Assembly that made absolutely no sense and thereby had a similar effect). I’m still not sure whether he was serious or kidding but by my reaction realized I was the real deal. I am pretty sure my jaw hit the floor. Then he started going off about Noam Chomsky. Very random.

We hung out at Mona’s place then went by her work to train. Due to my condition I did some quarter squats to keep the pressure off the knee, then some power snatch technique work. Mona says my technique is actually great at the low weight (20kgs) I was using. I am also happy to see that for whatever reason although I haven’t been doing them (obviously) my overhead squats have significantly improved. Can’t wait to start loading up the weight and seeing what happens. We discovered that her rowing form needs some help, and then I did some light deadlifting (5x5 @85kgs with about 30s rest in between). I can’t wait to stop being gimpy so we can actually have some real fun training sessions together. Aside from being a fantastic athlete, Mona is also very cool to hang out with: I think we have a very similar approach to the world and that girl is incredibly perceptive, especially for such a young age. Being able to read people is a skill that some people just never develop! She is not as perceptive as my co-worker Shaun, though, who is just a freak of nature in that regard: there is no keeping anything from that man!

One thing I have been thinking about is coaching, and influencing. I was talking above about my issues with one kind of lift (the jerk). My biggest problem is that I don’t drop under the bar, and rather push it up with my arms. Now I know this, and it’s good to be reminded from time to time. But there are only so many times you need to tell me I’m not dropping under the bar. After a while, assuming I’m paying attention, thank you, I get it, I know I need to work on it. Once a day is ok, once every lift is not (not saying anything about any of our coaches here because they are all awesome and continuously push and challenge me, and don’t let me get away with crap. Usually.) But sometimes in day-to-day situations I will either get reminded of the same thing literally every time I do it or every time I talk to the same person, and I’m sure I probably do this as well. Goes back to that focus on the other person: make sure you’re not so busy trying to push your agenda that you forget to pay attention to why the other person is even talking to you to begin with.

• “They all just follow you around!” – Mona
• “That would be pretty crazy, but you can do it.” – Jobst
• “Is that a disease?” – Ellie (I had just said I wasn’t sick, unlike my co-worker, and a visitor from the Netherlands responded with ‘You’re American.’)
• “It’s not safe.” – Guard at Hoodwinx
• “It might look like incense but actually it’s tequila.” – Devin
• “Yes you do.” – Devin (I said I talked a good talk)
• “Okok princess u can do a 20min amrap of sitting... ;)” – Chris
• “Well that would be really worrysome.” – Jobst
• “You look really big.” – Chris (he was talking to a kettlebell … or at least that’s his story and he’s sticking to it)
• “Yes you are.” – Roland (I said I was an easy target)
• “Even the rats in Woodstock are coloured!” – Denzil (one was fighting with his Jack Russell …)
• “No that’s the thing about you, you’re so competitive I think I might lose!” – Jacques (takes one to know one?)
• “Shame, buddy, you didn’t need to bring your own mud water, we had plenty here already!” – Jacques
• “When South Africa swallows you hey, it swallows you.” – Denzil
• “I’ve noticed. I’ve seen you take care of a good couple of beers as well.” – Jacques
• “We wanted to introduce you to the man-whore quarter of our company.” – Jock (yes, he really said this, and yes, I can believe it…)
• “Women are so weird. They are just so so weird. They are such fragile creatures.” – Peter (around this point I told him he needed to stop talking)
• “I thought you just had a throat infection.” – Pieter (I was telling the table that I was American)
• “It’s like Grey’s fucking Anatomy over here.” – Jo
• “I thought you were great, too.” – Jeremy
• “Where’s the rest of my breakfast?” – Keith
• “Why does this sweet creature annoy me so much?” – Ellie
• “That’s the worst fake American accent I’ve ever heard!” – random guy in Constantia
• “The WORST thing is a dumb guy!” – Mona

Somewhere between criticism and self-rationalization is the truth

I’m human. These injuries are reminding me of that daily, and viscerally. My knee is now healing pretty rapidly but my ankle is a bit stalled. Back to acupuncture on Thursday. But, more importantly, when you’re a Type A like me you just want to be perfect, at least at whatever you do: as a person, an athlete, an artist, a cook, a leader, whatever. Especially when you are in a position of leadership and people look up to you, there’s a real responsibility and you want to succeed and not let others down. But of course, your manager, your executive, your coach is a human too. Don’t forget that. We’re not perfect. Not even almost.

Before I get to the real fun stuff, the tail end of last week was quite busy. I’m not even remembering what I did, but I do recall leaving each day feeling like I had accomplished a lot. Introduced my boss to this guy who runs icologie and that was quite the fascinating experience: watching how Peter reacts to each new person and new situation is intriguing. But I think it went well, the two of them organized a dog-walking date for the weekend to get to know each other better so matchmaking achieved, I went to a very cool yoga session followed by reiki with a girl from yoga. I still have no idea who George is. Friday was a pretty hectic morning followed by an introductory meeting between Shaun who now runs FoodTents and Abalimi. I definitely must be back in my groove because I have more things to do than time to do them. Sounds wrong, but for me it’s where I need to be.

Friday’s gym session was frustrating because I couldn’t do any of the dynamic movements and I really want to practice the split jerk, and in the regular jerk that I was doing I wasn’t dropping under the bar enough and the one time I was really happy with my drop, it hurt my ankle a bit. Patience is not one of my strong suits. But, my new friendship with Mona will mean a lot more time doing Olympic lifting (we have big plans, the way all new friendships do), so that was ok. Then the metcon made me mad because the jumping around on the bar-facing burpees put just enough strain on my ankle that I wasn’t able to go all-out, and that annoyed me more than anything. That evening Mona and I met for dinner in Kalk Bay then listened to some Gary Adams followed by Jeremy Loops. Then we left because we needed to get our sleep.

Over the weekend I attended a workshop called FutureFit. It is a leadership skills development, mentoring, and coaching workshop for social entrepreneurs. I am doing it both because I hope to learn something and because I want to understand the program better because we are recommending it to our social entrepreneurs, and also because being part of the first crop of victims we can contribute to the formation of the program going forward. It was hosted in the swanky Waterfront offices of the private clients group of a major South African bank, which is sponsoring the program. As part of the intro we had to say one thing about us others wouldn’t know. I have a few more I can save, but the one I chose (which went over quite well with the guys I know well in the group) was that I actually really REALLY care what other people think. Remember this one.

One of the things this program has reminded me is the importance of a burning platform. People don’t learn lessons until they are ready, and people don’t change when they are comfortable. One other thing that I know is that we as humans have a tendency to want to explain things, to think there is a reason why things are happening as they are. This is why we as a race tend to need to believe in God or a higher power. It’s a chemical thing (I’m not making this up; I’ve read about it in several books). Having said all that, I am seeing what extreme stress can do to people around me. When people are pushed to their limits sometimes the best comes out and sometimes the worst comes out. What doesn’t kill you may make you stronger, but it’s not necessarily either a pleasant process or even a positive process. I am being tested right now by these injuries, and it has certainly been interesting to see how I have responded. I must say … not very well. It’s affected my mood, my productivity, my focus, and even my athletic performance. Deon was saying it’s like I came to South Africa to train CrossFit, from reading the blog, and that’s because that is where my focus has been, because it’s broken. But anyway we’re learning from this crucible, and we’ll all emerge from it stronger.

On Saturday I was explaining to one of the women who organized the program why I had brought my own food. She herself had some sort of a colon problem and isn’t supposed to eat wheat… yet she was eating a biscuit while we were having this discussion. I get it. I do. Biscuits taste good, especially with tea that has milk and sugar in it. But obviously there was a huge disconnect: I should do X, but instead I’m doing Y. There is a breakdown between theory and practice.

Similarly, I have a bit of a tendency to binge eat, or at least munch for comfort. Yes, when I eat a chocolate bar I eat the whole thing. It’s just in my nature I guess. Paleo snacking is still snacking, and chowing on a bag of nuts isn’t going to be very helpful. I could exercise more self-control, I suppose, but it’s easier just to remove the temptation. So my solution to eating too much fruit and nuts? Stop buying fruit, only buy the nuts I need for my protein shakes, and make sure I have little tins of coconut cream at work so I can open one, drink a tiny bit, and go on with my day thereby making fat intake almost like “medicine” rather than “fun.”

One interesting metaphor from this weekend. There are apparently only six types of golf swing. Tiger Woods is the best in the world at five of those six types of swing. Do does he practice to get better at the one he is good at, or the five he is great at? He works on his strengths. Yes, you can apply this to CrossFit too but I’ll leave that analysis to you. Turns out though that the one swing he is bad at is whatever you call that swing when you try to get out from a sand trap. So if he’s so good at the other ones he doesn’t get into that situation often. I bet if he was terrible at putting he would sure as heck work on that all day, because the situation is such that he almost has the luxury of ignoring his weakness.

I am probably my own harshest critic. I want to identify and tackle my weaknesses. But I do have blind spots and of course when someone holds a mirror up to you it’s not necessarily a pleasant process. And everyone sees things from their own perspective as well. Perception is reality, yes, but we do not share perception: one person’s grand opportunity is another person’s nightmare, and some people see things as a problem that other people don’t. The hardest sort of criticism to take is the kind that does point out a blind spot. If someone criticises something I already know about, I’m like, ok cool, but it’s not too uncomfortable. If someone says something I haven’t heard before, now THAT is something else, and I need to process the degree to which I actually agree because often the criticism itself is around a symptom rather than the problem. And hey, somewhere between criticism and self-rationalisation is the truth.

Now I love to identify weaknesses so that I can run out and fix them. That’s the Type A/ENTJ in me (I am a classic ENTJ by the way). So I was thinking about this advice to make sure we don’t forget to develop our strengths and that is when I had my one big “aha” moment: I have no choice but to tackle some of my specific weaknesses because they literally get in the way of my strengths. I was thinking back to a conversation I was having with the Henley professor friend of mine during the first round of the Henley Madness: he had said that my weaknesses I must work on, yes, but my strengths were like these amazing bright shining stars. Maybe true but you can’t be having your weaknesses literally get in the way. The other major insight was to be surprised that I didn’t really learn much new about myself, which is a bit disappointing in a way, but it also shows how much I have learned since we did similar material at Babson. So I know myself very, very well, which is good, but it’s almost like ‘so what’s next?’

The weaknesses I must tackle?
• Perfectionism leading to issues delegating
• Results-orientation leading to controlling rather than managing
• Pushing myself past reasonable limits because it’s counter-productive
• Saying all the right things (about how to manage, how to delegate, how to deliver good customer service, etc.) but then in being such a rush to get things done that I forget
• I care more about getting things done than about the feelings of the people involved, when this is actually the opposite of how people remember most interactions (we go away remembering how we FELT, not WHAT we discussed)

Because this is how my mind now works the best metaphor I thought of this weekend was with weightlifting again. I was saying above how I had issues with the jerk on Friday (this is getting weight from shoulder to overhead). You have so many things to keep in mind: be explosive both up and down, hold your breath before you go, keep upright, don’t grip the bar until it’s off your shoulders, drive with the hip, drop under the bar rather than push it up. So many things to think about and on any given lift I’m messing up at least one of them, usually, or sometimes all of them!

I drew up my weaknesses or things I want to change about myself into a list. It had I think 11 items on it. Paring it down to a manageable chunk was hard, but here they are:
1. Try to be present as much as possible. Don’t live in the future, live in the now.
2. Pay attention to the needs of the other person or people I am interacting with, in every interaction.
3. Simplify, and make sure the focus is where it should be. Do well, and not just faster/better/more, but be more holistic in my approach.

One of the other things I either learned or was reminded is that my focus on self-promotion is a defence mechanism, of course. But I’m starting to find it a bit obnoxious, so maybe I should just chill out a bit. Obviously people do like me. I’m not fourteen any more, either.

But hey while I’m on the subject, we took an entrepreneurial assessment test and it had six broad realms:
• Getting in the zone
• Seeing possibilities
• Creating superior opportunities
• Staying in the zone
• Building capabilities
• Opening up to the world

I score in the 99th percentile on two of these, in the 90th percentile on two others, and 75th percentile on the last two. In 9 of 21 individual areas I score in the 95th percentile or above, and in 16 areas above the 75th percentile. So apparently, I’m a natural entrepreneur, which actually surprises me. On the other hand, had I scored really low I probably wouldn’t have shared. Or maybe I would have, but only to justify why I haven’t started my own business yet, ha!

Interesting question, though: what makes an entrepreneur? What is the difference between the people who are actually DOING something and the people who are just talking about doing things?

I think I read somewhere that 80% of communication is non-verbal. This is probably about right, and it’s also interesting to see how much communication between two people can go on without speaking at all: just through eye contact, or gestures towards one another. A wink, a nod, catching someone’s eye at a particular time given everything else that’s going on …. I think this is one reason why I dislike talking on the phone. I like to be able to read people. I’ve also noticed a couple of times these last few months when people look at me with this look of … I’m not really sure of the right word. Intense interest? Admiration? Sometimes I’m either saying something that they find so interesting or maybe a better way of putting it is that it’s clear that I’m saying something they hadn’t thought of but they really agree with, or I’m just going on with such a clearly different take on things that they find interesting but the look on their face is so striking that I know I’ve hit a chord. You know that look? I know I’ve had that look on my face plenty of times too but it’s always interesting to see it on others.

Here’s some tidbits of interest:
• I do indeed admire people who stand up to me. Actually it’s more fundamental than that: if I’m going to respect you then you MUST stand up to me. Just … do it in the right way. I was quite annoyed with one of my friends for nearly 24 hours just because I disliked the tone with which he disagreed with me on a subject where I thought I had a more credible base of knowledge.
• I don’t take rejection well. This is why I don’t put myself out there in situations where I think I might fail, or, if I do, I pretend I don’t care if I fail even if I do.
• The number one thing that I circled in my assessment because it was so “me?”: The characteristic that people annoy me who continue to discuss an issue after clarity has been achieved.

My blog, but enough about me. I screened this American propaganda this weekend. My story related to this is that when I watched this for the first time as part of the downloaded Super Bowl broadcast, I knew it was propaganda but nonetheless I felt goosebumps and this surge of American pride. Then I showed it to my Northern Suburbs friends, who literally laughed at it. Same thing showing it this past weekend: you can’t help but shake your head at it, but at the same time, as an American, it has a particular effect on me. The sophistication of the marketing in America is so extreme that even when you recognize it, when you’re in it, it still controls you. So yes, even when you know you are being played it doesn’t stop it from happening. Scary stuff, and most of the time we don’t see it just like you wake up one day and realize you’re fat, or miserable, or old and have spent your life doing something you don’t actually like. Don’t let that sleepwalker be you.

The next thing that I really enjoyed this week was this article about attitude. So it’s CrossFit yes and a bit over the top yes, and if you don’t know what Fran is you probably don’t want to but my point is this: the difference between when I do something and don’t do it is when I commit myself. The difference between a workout that I kill where I go in and say to myself “this is going to be awesome” and where pain comes and I think “hmm, cool, but am I REALLY going as fast as I can?” and a workout where I don’t do well because it hurts or I don’t like the exercise, or, or, or ….: attitude.

So, back to the beginning. I’m human. Push me too hard and I will eventually snap. I act the way I do because that confidence is necessary for me to achieve anything, but I’m not superwoman after all. If I trust you, think you’re smart, and you push me, we’ll get along quite well.


• “I can definitely be bribed with coffee.” – Ellie
• “In the modern day system, the slave pays for himself.” – Peter
• “With patience you would get better results. It’s only you that’s impatient. Everyone else thinks you’re doing *so well.* But for you it’s not enough.” – Chantal
• “I’m from the Northern Suburbs so I have to abuse an open bar.” – Jaco
• “I think the worst thing in life is to be in the right place at the right time and not even know it.” – Gary

Getting busy

What I learned in the last week and a half from cluster flies:
• Lesson #1: Problems don’t go away if you ignore them. They just get worse.
• Lesson #2: You do catch more flies with honey.

I had felt for a long while as though I was a bit out of my groove. Out of sync, out of touch, out of flow. Work felt stalled (still does in some ways), I was pretty severely injured (I still am, and new things are cropping up to add to the mix but hey I’m taking 3 of the next 4 days completely off so there). Of course as we also know what you get out of a situation reflects your attitude and energy going into it.

My old boss at Exit41 wrote about me once that he thought I was happiest when I had almost too much going on. I started to get stressed at work late last week and it was the best feeling. Kind of like the workout a few nights back where we were instructed to go “balls to the wall” and not hold anything back for fear of getting tired or whatnot. You try to do that in all workouts but sometimes you reach local muscular failure or there is transition time between exercises that equates to a bit of rest but in this workout no, and the workout finished in 5:42 and it took me another 3 minutes to peel myself off the floor. I love that feeling: pushing yourself right to your limit, and walking away feeling like you couldn’t have given any more. I like going home after a long day of work feeling again like I have pushed myself 110%.

So once the hobbling around stopped, and whatever sequence of events caused this to happen but I have been very busy the last week and a half:
• Tuesday the 3rd, my one-year anniversary at work followed by dinner with Peter, Mandy, and Max in Newlands. My work family.

• Wednesday, my boss closed ½ of a big deal. Kind of a watershed moment. Spent some time at the Waterfront with a doyenne of our space and some others who were in town for a conference (World Economic Forum). Most interesting part of this conversation was when he commented that part of the problem with doing business in South Africa as opposed to ‘Africa’ was that selling products & services to the bottom of the pyramid is challenging in this country full stop, and God help you if you’re white and try and do that. I, in my typically American way, didn’t even think before saying: “Well, THAT has to change.” Which is true. It may not be PC but the culture of entitlement that exists in this country is a huge, huge problem.

• Afterwards, a very strange experience with a random stranger in the carpark who just randomly asked if I wanted to get a drink which of course, I didn’t because I’m not drinking. People are so open here to making new acquaintances: this would never happen in Boston or New York! then to &Union for Sam’s going away bash. Met some interesting people, including a photographer whose art opening I am going to tonight, and actually got to bed on time! Sad to see her go, but time will fly, and while distance matters, intent matters more. We get out of a relationship the energy we put in.

• Thursday, going away get-together at work for beautiful, lovely, wonderful Svenja. Trained with Mona for the first time (more on this below; beat her at burpees, somehow, and boy am I out of cardio shape) and stayed at the gym way too late. This was also my first proper leg workout in about a month and boy did it hurt!! Fashionably late to Svenja’s going away bash at Wim & Hanlie’s place (who I know from the gym, oddly enough!) which looks like it has stunning views during the day or a non-foggy evening. I am going to miss this bright spark terribly, and was actually thinking how everyone at that party was very, very cool.

• Then, putting the “late” into fashionably late at Henk’s birthday party at the Woodstock Lounge. Chatted with Roger about Silicon Cape and driving on the right, and heard someone recite a lovely poem called Silly Old Baboon from memory. Fourth drinking event over two nights, zero drinks, no regrets.

• Friday, internal strategy meeting during which I iced my knee extensively followed by a lot of time reviewing, restructuring, and adding to a very key contract for us going forward. Maybe in a past life I was a lawyer; I really love this stuff. Got told that pulling myself up on bars was “unladylike.” Heh.

• Quite an unfortunate gym session in which we had to do a pyramid of knees-to-elbows and wall balls (or wall push presses in my case) unbroken. Dropped the damn ball on 14 out of 20 (burst out laughing because what else can you do), and it took me three tries to get even close to getting the last 5 knees-to-elbows unbroken. Just could not hold onto the bar. My forearms were still jacked hours later at dinner at the Sidewalk Café with Mona, where we talked for hours and hours. She is a very interesting girl: 22 years old, daughter of a pro rugby player, 3-time karate champ, Olympic weightlifter who should make the SA team next year, personal trainer, and has one hell of a lot of potential as a CrossFit athlete. We have very similar personality types, and I think this is the beginning of a great friendship.

• Saturday mourned the Flyers sweep by the Bruins, easy gym workout, but I was feeling a bit tired so that was ok. Chilled at home, photo tour of the winelands, dinner with Deon in Gordon’s Bay, then to Ralf’s housewarming party in Vredehoek. I was absolutely exhausted by the time I got to this one and didn’t stay too late.

• Sunday, yoga then staying paleo at the Taste of Cape Town (food festival). It’s kind of like being a vegetarian: what you choose to eat depends on what you *can* eat. Man, some of those desserts looked good, but I’d already lost enough points earlier in the week (case in point, wine the night before, causing me to sleep terribly, ugg). Cooked dinner for a sick Charlotte: some awesome grassfed beef, herb salad, and roasted sweet potatoes with coconut oil & cinnamon. Heaven. She told me my arm muscles shouldn’t get too much bigger. I am apparently starting to get comments like these now, so I can sort of understand how some women start to get concerned about the impact of athletics on how they look. I have two things to say about this: firstly, I don’t care, and secondly, I look a hell of a lot better than I did a year ago and even with more muscular arms I’ll still look better than I did.

• Monday, spent almost all day with FoodTents including working with Max and giving great tag-team commentary to Shaun on how to modify his presentation for the next day. Quite mentally tired at the end of that session! Gym: new max strict pullups: 4. Still a significant chink in the armor. Very happy that I got the best time in the gym for the WOD (including beating all the boys, not exactly the same because we used different weight kettlebells but still, happy, it’s certainly not every day that this happens, so now I guess I know what workout to hope for in the Regionals: anything involving burpees!). Chat with Tom Hoole. Water wasn’t working in upper TBK, so drinks with the Greens instead of dinner. My last wine until after Regionals. Skype call from Gary Minkoff as soon as I got home.

• Tuesday, rushed around in the morning followed by the launch of FutureFit in which we got some good mention, met Francois Bonnici for the first time, then rushed off to listen to Shaun speak at the Food Security conference. Max & I were having a grand old time in the back whenever we heard our feedback come out in the presentation. Such a pleasure to work with these guys. Some of the other presentations were interesting as well. Left before cocktail hour the better to get some work done. Acupuncture for knee and ankle followed by gym session (apparently you’re not supposed to train within 24 hours of acupuncture. Oops. Won’t make that mistake again!). New max nose-to-wall handstand pushups to abmat: 14 (failed on the 15th), but done after my metcon as opposed to fresh. Getting stronger all the time. My one-year CrossFit anniversary. Birthday dinner for Jeff at El Burro; he’s going back to the States in two weeks and I’m really going to miss him!

• Wednesday, rainy day, chiropractor then management meeting. Spent what feels like half the day talking politics, and the other half writing emails. Not a good day. Conference call with the USA re: setting up a non-profit organisation registered there.

I have been exhausted the last week or so. Doing a lot yes, indeed, but also getting only 8 hours of sleep on average. This time a year ago I was lucky if I got 7, and really now I realise I should be going for more like 9. Everything’s a choice, including the choice to write an email or go to bed instead. I have a couple emails I really need to write but instead I’m finishing this up and then heading out to the gym. Well, there’s still this evening.

Monday of this week was a really weird one. I had been in a mode the night before and fired off emails to about 10 people that I either needed to re-connect with, or owed an email, or, or, or. Then on Monday, I got emails or calls or chats or Skype calls from a total of 8 different people who all wanted to connect or re-connect with me. That was, in a word, weird. Like an astrological inflection point or something. Well, when it rains it pours. And, I suppose, be careful what you wish for. I wished my life would get back into groove and I would start to be more social (I just hadn’t been in the mood, so as a result my social interactions suffered). Now, I’m on my second week of having two things I’m doing most nights of the week and I’m craving a night at home by myself with absolutely nothing to do and the next one I have totally free is Sunday night, and even then I have a breakfast meeting the next morning so I will need to get to bed early. Of course I can always say no, but I think next week needs to be a bit of a social rest week. Stay tuned to see how that goes for me.

I also did have a bit of a mental breakthrough or insight in this last week. I was talking with Deon about why it is that he can’t just decide to do something and then do it. I’m sure he could if he wanted to and committed. I’m sure anyone could do almost anything if they just decide to do it. But I figured out why I get psyched out by 1-rep maxes (or other challenging things where I fail before I even start): fear of failure. Shocker, right? How to overcome that one, I don’t know. Some people in my gym have a hard time with going all out because they are afraid they’ll hit the wall or something. For the most part I don’t have that problem (Sandy Helen aside, another reason I want to re-do that workout again … one of these days I’ll go in with no fear). Probably something to meditate or practice yoga on.

• “I wonder what it’s like to be inside their brain?” – Peter
• “People always validate their own behaviour. Always.” – Peter
• “Maybe I kissed someone. I don’t know.” – Svenja
• “All you have to say is Sarkozy!” – Johanna
• “The problem with sales is that you actually have to follow up!” – Max
• “Cape Town has me.” – Svenja
• “Some people live in fear and other people don’t.” – Peter
• “I believe people come into your life for a reason.” – Mona
• “I don’t want to be like everybody else. I don’t want to have to compromise.” – Mona
• “That surprises me because he doesn’t seem sensitive to me at all!” – Babett
• “That’s the first time in my life that anyone has ever told me anything about a healthy lifestyle where I have gone, DAMN, that’s COOL! I could totally do that!” – Jacques (I was saying how the healthy lifestyle promotes binge drinking)
• “You’ve come a long way in a year.” – Jobst
• “The mind hijacks emotion as a tool to express the personality and that’s where it all goes pear-shaped.” – Peter
• “They were serving alcohol yesterday?” – Ellie
• “What’s that one thing it is that you’ve got? Oh yeah … self-discipline!” – Jacques
• “Just so, when the cops come we aren’t caught with our pants down.” – Ellie (immediately followed by “I can’t believe I just said that.”)

Paleo stuffed zucchini flowers

At the market on Saturday I saw the most beautiful zucchini (courgette) flowers, so I decided to buy them, irrespective of the fact that the only recipes I had ever seen for stuffed zucchini flowers involved either ricotta cheese, or flour (for battering & frying) or both. Courgette is a much better name than zucchini, don’t you think? Anyway undeterred, I decided to figure out how to make paleo zucchini flowers, and with only what I had on hand. What I wound up doing turned out awesome, so I figured I’d post here to help the next person who does a Google search for a recipe. Essentially, I made rice-less, cheese-less mushroom risotto and used that to stuff the zucchini flowers, drizzled in olive oil and baked alongside the yellowtail I was having for dinner.

• Zucchini flowers (with or without baby zucchinis at the end!)
• 1 small onion
• Garlic to taste (I used 3 cloves)
• 2 mushrooms (I used white button because it’s what I had)
• ½ t Dried porcini powder (soaked dried porcinis would obviously also work)
• ½ t dried thyme
• ½ t dried parsley
• Olive oil
Mince the onion, and cook in olive oil until soft. Meanwhile mince the garlic and mushrooms, then add to the onion, along with porcini powder, thyme, and parsley. You could probably also add salt & pepper if you wanted. Butter would work as well to cook these things if you’re not as strictly paleo.

Wash the zucchini flowers, then gently open each one, stuff with the mixture, close as best you can and lay in a baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil and bake at about 375 F (190 C) for about 15-20 minutes. The filling is already cooked so this is really just to cook the zucchinis if they are attached, and the flowers. If there are no zucchinis you could cook for less time.

Summer, winter, the end of an era and a beginning coming to an end

Autumn is now here in full force. The leaves are turning in Stellenbosch, so I may need to take a drive out there next weekend to take photographs. My favourite seasons are spring and fall, and while the autumns here are not as dramatic as those of New England there are still some quite good colors. Napa Valley has nothing on the Cape Winelands, I’m sorry!

You can also tell that it’s autumn because the days vary dramatically from cold & rainy (or just cold!) to warm and sunny. This happens in winter, too, but as an example Sunday it was something like 29 degrees (84.2) and sunny and we went to the beach, then Monday it maybe got up to about 17 (62.6), and was more like 12 (53.6) and pouring with thunder & lightning Tuesday evening. At least there are proper seasons!

So I was really bumming last week because first of all I could never get properly into the swing of work which was frustrating, I did a workout on Friday that in retrospect I shouldn’t have done (Grace, 30 clean & jerks at 43 kgs for time which was exacerbated because while the first 8 or 10 reps were pretty much unbroken I then completely forgot how to clean the bar and had to take some time to clear my head and my next few cleans after that were VERY ugly, resulting in a massive collarbone bruise), then I went to a braai/bonfire Friday night which was fun albeit cold and because I was standing around so much my knee tendonitis really flared up the next day and doing my one thruster was actually a little bit painful so that was a setback. I was again bummed not to be able to do the Sectional workout because this is one where again I should have been probably in the top 2-3 in Africa if I’d been able to do it but it was not meant to be. To add insult to injury (this is becoming a common refrain) I was doing pullups on Saturday to warm up and re-strained my right bicep so I decided to take the day off which was the right decision but frustrating.

But on the positive side, my ankle is pretty near to letting me run on it again, I did have an awesome time at the bonfire (caught up with Neil for another couple of hours…), and did some research and discovered that the way I was icing my knee wasn’t particularly effective, combined with the fact that since my ankle was injured I wasn’t really able to train my legs at all so I wasn’t getting blood to the joint, which also wasn’t helping so I changed up my tactics and it is now feeling significantly better.

My coach sent me this article about injury recovery which is actually quite an awesome article. Nothing in there that isn’t sort of either common sense or what I already knew but I recommend the section on no fear. A sample: “You must train yourself to control your mind and realize that fear is self-created, and as such you have the power to destroy it. Recognize that fear comes from within. That's why many can experience the same scenario and each have a different reaction to it. Anything that we generate we can also control.” Anything that we generate we can also control. And, we can also control how we react to stimuli that might otherwise push our buttons like the child throwing a temper tantrum or the employee not pulling his or her weight or the person who knows just how to push our buttons. Of course, this takes practice.

What I did realize though is that I was letting my fears get the better of me; that since I do heal fast and since this wasn’t going away immediately and was actually sometimes getting worse I wasn’t sure quite what to do to solve it and I was scared. Now, I am no longer scared because I can feel significant improvement in just a few days due to some major changes in my approach. I suppose on the positive side I never doubted for a second that I could recover to 100%, which apparently is also important: it was just a matter of worrying about how long it would take. I am exploring dark areas physically and mentally I guess, and maybe that is what this challenging time is trying to teach me.

This is also a time of reflection because it was a year ago last Thursday that I arrived in South Africa, and a year ago today that I started work. What a difference a year makes. Someone also asked me on Friday when I started doing CrossFit and I had answered “It will be a year on May 10th. Not that I’m counting or anything.” So that anniversary is coming up too. Now certainly not that I have everything figured out now, but I am feeling quite settled, and happy, and optimistic about the future. Things are changing, and fast. Actually as fast as I feel like things will happen, I am probably going to be surprised. Then again, if the future weren’t surprising life would be about as boring as if we were all exactly alike.

A year ago, and not pulling any punches here, I was lost, scared, timid, and not at all sure what sort of value I could add at work, overweight, out of shape, and not really very healthy at all. Now, yes there are challenges at work, but this morning I was the first one in and opened up the office. I’m now a member of the management team with short-term plans to be launching and running one branch of the business and medium-term plans to be running another, and I’m reminded relatively frequently how few people are mentally and emotionally capable of sticking it out, how I’m in a bit of an exclusive club, and how I’m trusted (and this is the most ego-boosting thing of all, which is actually a bad thing – bad ego!!). It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy I think; just like at St Paul’s when they kept telling us we were the crème de la crème and the future leaders of the country and the world; after a while you start to believe it. Now also I’m solidly the #2 girl at the gym and I can hold my own in many cases against two women who are world-class athletes (one is an Olympic level rower, the other is world-class at martial arts and Olympic lifting). Being the #2 girl at the gym is a small pond thing, all you need to do is check the results from the U.S. to see how far I have to go but being able to be mentioned in the same sort of category as people who are world-class athletes is pretty amazing. Not to mention that I was watching a Lady Gaga music video the other day and could realize that I’m actually not at all jealous of her body (ok maybe a little but mine is darn close but hey if you have a model telling you she hates you because you have no cellulite, well, that doesn’t suck either).

Neil and I were chatting about motivations the other night. He was saying that when people come into his gym and have some vague goals like “oh, I want to look better and be healthier” he usually knows right then and there that they won’t stick. But I told him that a year ago I had an answer like that. What I have learned about myself in between is that firstly, the way that I eat now isn’t a diet it’s a lifestyle and I will never ever go back because I feel so much better eating this way (well that and I am extremely intolerant of wheat and lectins now, so I couldn’t probably revert if I wanted to). Secondly, yeah I do like CrossFit but being as competitive as I am the fact that I’m so into it is because I don’t suck at it and I realize that I have some decent potential and I want to see how far I can go. It’s like I always knew this was inside me but never figured out how to access it before, and now that I’ve tapped in it’s highly addictive.

But what is really humbling is that across a broad range of domains (mental, emotional, spiritual if you can call it that, and physical) I have a tremendous amount of learning and growing to do. A tremendous amount. I will be so much better in another year than I am now, it won’t even really be the same category. And that, my friends, is what we all need to live for: learning and growth. Stagnation, entropy, boredom, fear, envy, death: all very bad enemies.

So Princess Beatrice wore some absurd hat to the royal wedding, and it looks like they killed Osama bin Laden. It certainly is an interesting time to be an American, even this far away I can feel the swells of patriotism even though on one level it’s quite anticlimactic and on another, fighting terrorism is like the war on drugs. Tackling the symptom and not the cause, and doomed to failure in my opinion. In the car last night I was discussing American patriotism and propaganda and it’s quite scary when you look at it from the outside: the whole pledge of allegiance thing, and how we seem to band together and look down our nose at the rest of the world. I may have mentioned this before but I was quite disturbed when watching the Super Bowl a few weeks back; they had this montage on the history of the Super Bowl and American culture and flag waving and whatnot and when I watched this myself I felt my heart swell with pride even though I knew it was propaganda. Then when I watched it with friends they made such fun of it that I felt some shame. Knowing you’re being played doesn’t stop it from happening sometimes.

Having said all that I was feeling very American driving into work this morning when Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ came on the radio for old school. Some songs are just quintessentially American, like Sweet Home Alabama (even though I have never been to Alabama).

I’ve been reading a very interesting book called On Being Certain. Now there is a lot of great content in this book and I don’t want to give away all of the author’s insights for free but one very interesting insight he had that I of course applied immediately to weight lifting (because that’s my new metaphor for everything apparently) is that doing something wrong repeatedly builds neural pathways that are hard to change. He was saying this is why it’s quite difficult to correct, say, a problem with a golf swing, and that changing from the “wrong” to the “right” positioning “feels” wrong at first. That’s the neural pathways. This connection occurred to me when I was discussing with one of our coaches yesterday lifting heavier weights, and he was saying that actually you should never increase weights until your form is perfect (perfect’s a strong word but you get the idea). I was agreeing because if your form isn’t good yeah you can probably muscle the weights up … but I was saying that doesn’t really benefit you then I had the insight (unconscious processing FTW) that not only does it not help but it could actually harm you because you could build inappropriate neural pathways by doing it wrong.

So there you go, all the more reason to break out of those old bad habits. Spring clean your mind: it is spring time for 90% of the world’s population right about now. How funny is that, that only 10% of the world’s population lives beneath the equator?

Hmm what else did I do this weekend? It was pretty chilled … Saturday after my non-workout went to the market and I was amazed … picked up a large chicken, some boerwors (sausage), some sirloin, rump, ribeye, and some kudu sirloin all for R200 (that’s about $30). Score. Then I went to the movies with the boys from the gym, where two of them miraculously avoided a sugar coma and I, again, was not in the least bit tempted by the desserts. Amazing what cutting sugar out of your diet will do for you.

Sunday we had gorgeous weather so I went to yoga, then to pick up Mandy and we had lunch at Sandbar where I had my penultimate omelette, and then went to lie on the beach for a few hours. I did not get any sunburn, yay! Not sure how many beach days we will be getting the rest of this season so definitely enjoyed this one, and the company. I think I spent quite a long time that evening doing physical therapy of one sort or another, which got kind of boring after a while but is important so I sucked it up.

Monday was yet another public holiday (Workers Day), so I slept in then met Roland at Sandbar. This was Sandbar’s last day and so we overindulged a bit … me with three cream cappuccinos (on the plus side losing my 5 points for the day allowed me to eat dark chocolate with Chris that evening!), and Roland had not one but TWO omelettes. That made him officially my favourite person for the day; much respect because I have a hard time finishing one of those omelettes and I eat a lot. Shame, though, I will miss hanging out there and I’m not at all sure where we will eat after our beach workouts, and the poor woman who owned the place was in tears for much of the morning. It’s been there for 16 years and is getting replaced by Yet-Another-High-End-Establishment-on-the-Camps-Bay-Strip. Boo. So to make a long story short what I expected to take 45 minutes turned into a couple of hours so I didn’t meet up with Chris at the gym as promised but did go by there to do some rowing rehab for my knee and stretching/foam rolling/ball rolling/icing. Rowing 20 minutes at 75% effort turns out to be extremely boring!!

But the rest of the day was quite cool. Chris had for a while planned to do one of the opening workouts from last year’s CrossFit Games which I’ll save you the boredom of explaining, but it involves a lot of running, kettlebell swings, and pullups. I was hoping I could run but it hurt a little so I decided instead to do a sprint version of a bodyweight workout (5 rounds of 10 pullups, 15 pushups, 20 situps, 25 kettlebell swings, 3 minutes rest). I was pretty happy with my performance overall. I need to work on my transitions between consecutive pullups, but I happened to set a new PR for max pullups without dropping off the bar (and I ripped my hand open, yay!) just in sets not even going for max effort. Pretty cool. This is a workout you could totally do inside, but it was just so much more fun to do it outside!

What was really awesome was that it started to sprinkle before we got started so we decided to start our workout because we saw some evil looking clouds approaching. Chris finished his workout right as the rain started and it started with the thunder and lightning as I was doing my last round of situps and then literally started pouring when I was doing my kettlebell swings which happily were under some cover. There has been some discussion in the Africa CrossFit community about how it’s such a shame for the Regionals to be held in Cape Town in the winter. I say, bring on the cold and rain! Challenging conditions just make it that much more fun.

Been hanging out quite a bit with the guys from the gym recently which has been great: I actually feel a lot closer to all three of them now than I did a month ago. But it also reflects the fact that work has been disjointed and as Max or Peter would say, “We’re not quite work-fit.” But finishing up this post now over lunch and digging into the mountain of things I have to do will help. Having the rash of public holidays be over will also help, and last but not least the wonderful evening I have planned with my co-workers is sure to make me happy as well!

Oh, and on the subject of goal setting: external measurement and peer pressure can be turned to the good. If I say I’m going to do 5 things by the end of the week and I only accomplish 3, well there might be some personal shame involved but I’ll get over it. But if I tell my co-workers I’m going to accomplish 5 things then I sure as heck am. Naming and shaming put to good use. And with that … back to work!

• “Don’t you see? You’re doing the same thing!” – Jobst
• “Who says we’re not ready for Regionals?” – Chris