Tough and Strong

As friends and loved ones of me, you are, friends and loved ones of a CrossFitter.  Sorry, it is what it is.  For the next five weeks, all the CrossFitters will "compete" against each other all around the country in the same workouts.  The top finishers from each region get invited to Regionals and the winners from Regionals go to The Games.

I have been organizing these events for my gym, where one night a week, we have two athletes face off against each other.  We're trying to have a solid balance between the two that compete, so that someone isn't getting buried by their competitor.  This has made me think a lot more about how I stack up against the other female athletes.

There are a couple of things I can't do (pullups, ringdips, muscleups, and efficient Toes 2 Bar), but there are other things I am good at; heavyish deadlifts and cleans, shoulder to over head, double unders (depends on the day).  And then there are things that I am just terrible at burpees and pushups, but I can still do them.   I'm in this weird middle place, where I am not improving much compared to the people around me.  I'm better than a lot of the scaled women at most of the things they do.  But then So and So will get a pullup.  Someone else moves onto a double bodyweight squat.  And then I'm like:

A lot of days, it doesn't bother me.  I was in a bad place (physically) when I started CrossFit- and sometimes I am amazed at some of the things I can do.  Look me!  I have double unders.  And I can clean like a champ!

And then there are the rest of the days... Days when I remember, I am the fourth oldest woman at our place, and the only one that has had a kid, that was brought into this world with a long cut through the middle of my body.  And the only one that spent 7 years of their life sitting on their ass in grad school.  And it's impossible for me to spend as much time as I want in the gym.  If it were up to me, I would spend three hours in the gym every day.  As it is now, I'm lucky if I get 1.5-2 hours, which usually includes showering, and transporting to and from.

The thing is: I used to think of myself as being strong and tough, which I will take.  At the very least, if I wasn't terribly mobile, or quick, or fast, at least I was strong and tough.  But maybe my conceptualization of strong and tough are different from everyone else's.  Like maybe I am not tough for dragging my ass into the gym when I've only had 4 hours of sleep, when stress is eating my will alive, and when it's really inconvenient to go.  Maybe tough is really only going unbroken in workout sets, or pushing yourself all the way through a workout (and not shifting into survival mode 10 minutes in).