Indifference to Obstacles

CrossFit HQ has been throwing a lot of Games and Hero WODs our way including a lot of heavy barbell work. It’s a lot for a body to recover from. Just a couple weeks ago they gave us Heavy DT. I did it at the usual DT weight of 155lbs which is sufficiently heavy to me. I finished just under 19 minutes happy to get through unharmed. As much as I love barbell work, I’m not a fan of DT having tweaked my back on the hang power cleans one time and strained my bicep tendon another.

Labour Day Monday wasn’t the greatest start to the week as I arrived to work on only 4 hours sleep. It was a rough way to start the day but I battled through. At 10am I took on the 20 min AMRAP of ring L-sits, ring push ups and double unders which turned out to be more tiring than I had expected.

When 6pm arrived and it was time to do my second WOD of the day I seriously hoped HQ would throw me something a bit lighter and easier. A run, maybe some pull ups but no more heavy barbell work. I was already tired from Friday’s First Cut and Saturday’s Deadlift 7×3 personal best. Imagine my dismay when I looked online and discovered that they’d programmed Double DT. 10 rounds of one of my hated workouts!

I went through the full gamut of emotions: anger, denial, bargaining, despair, it was all there. Luckily I’d previously listened to this video on the Stoic Indifference to Obstacles. I’m no Hurricane Carter, but if he could suck it up and own his unjust incarceration without devolving into victim-hood surely I could face down the cruelty of a Double DT.

At no time did I want to do it. At no time was a I motivated to do it. I was simply determined that I would do it. So I embraced the suck and got started. The one thing I had going for me was my recent memory of having battled through 5 rounds of this two weeks prior. I had some idea of the pace I wanted to hold: under 4 minutes per round. I also had an idea of how to accomplish that, I recalled clearly that no real rest is required between the push jerks of one round and the deadlifts of the next. Sure, you want to rest, but you do not need to. So this time I didn’t.

As a result, even though I was pacing for the long haul, I finished round 5 at the 16:29 mark fully 2 minutes faster than two weeks ago and my fastest DT to date. As I soldiered on sweat began stinging my eyes until I was blinded. I staggered to my cubby and tied a wrist wrap around my head Karate Kid style to absorb the sweat and I got back to work. While my pace did slow in the back half, I managed to stay well under my 4 minute per round target finishing around the 36 minute mark, almost 6 minutes faster than my previous best!

It was a reminder that how you feel rarely determines how you will perform and sometimes a bad attitude can get you good results. Part of it is just accepting that the experience is going to be painful. Having no goal but just to finish and then bearing down and getting through the suck of it. Life is like that a lot of the time.

I’m grateful to heroes like Hurricane Carter who demonstrate by example how to stand up to life’s most daunting obstacles.

Make good use of Saturday’s make up day, Sunday will be a doozy!

Saturday Make Up Day
1) 20 min AMRAP
30 sec Ring L-Sit
15 Ring Push Ups
50 DU