The Day Crossfit Made Me Cry...Damn You Cancer

I walked slowly towards my car, my thighs quivering so badly that I found myself silently directing each foot, “step and plant”.  As the car door closed around me, it was as if the sound of the door connecting with the car uncorked a champagne bottle of tears that had been slamming against the inside of my eyes for the last hour. I sobbed “it’s not fair” with ugly, body wracking tears, my head against the steering wheel until the cold seeped in enough to remind me to start the car.

I am the girl that loves running, I love sit-up and squats and burpees, oh my.   I really love crossfit, except today I hate it. 

 I need exercise, not just to be healthy (blah, blah, blah) but because my sanity depends upon it.  I am the girl that makes time for an extra gym session when work gets stressful.  When I spend 3 hours sniping and picking arguments with my husband for not knowing that when he asked where I wanted to eat and did not realize that when I said “I don’t care” I meant “the Bluebird Inn”, I lace up my sneakers and hit the pavement in search of clarity.  Somewhere along the way, on a back country road, my soul typically jumps out of a corn field and slaps my face, making me realize that if I would have simply said “ I would like to go to the Bluebird Inn,  please” instead of shrugging out a muttered “I don’t care”,  I could have saved myself a whole lot of hassle.  You would think I could come up with that on my own, but that is not how I work.  

I need my heart to be beating fast, I need sweat pouring down over my eyes.  It is then that I see clearly and feel deeply, it is my therapy and I freaking need therapy (or so says my last overpriced shrink who got traded in for an overpriced pair of sneakers with arch support.)

From the day I was diagnosed with cancer till the day I found out I beat it, I counted the days until I could get my life back.  I came up with a plan and my plan included getting my butt back in shape…literally. 

This weekend I hit the gym for a jaunt on my favorite treadmill…it was dreadful…but running is always dreadful after too long of a break… so I pouted for a minute and forgot about it.

Today was different, today I hate everything. Today my soul is broken.  Today,  I got a clear picture of just how much of a climb it will be to get back to where I was,  not back to where I want to be, but just back to where I was and IT IS NOT FAIR (she says in an angry pout as she stomps her foot).

Today, I sat down for a 500M row, to warm up before class started.  Less than three minutes later, I stood slowly, my quads shaking as my eyes darted around for a way to sneak out without anyone noticing. With no fire alarms to pull in sight, I realized I was in it till the end.  The warm-up winded me (although truth be told the warm-up typically winds me)…this was pretty much expected.

The rest of the class was an ugly look in the mirror as I realized what the last 7 months have done to my body. 

 I generally do exactly what crossfit coaches say not to do and I look at the days workout and if it’s a good one I go and if it’s a mean one…well,  I get stuck in traffic or called into a late meeting.  So when todays’ workout posted, I knew it was a good one to return to.  Ab Tabata followed by a WOD of DB snatches/jumping squats and pull-ups…Woot woot!  I can do ab work all day every day.  

Except that now for the first time ever…I can’t.  It took all I had to hold back the tears as I realized how weak my core had become. When we worked on split squats my legs shook uncontrollably after the first round.  I held back tears for the entire class as I convinced myself over and over again, to not walk out in the middle. 

I realize things could be worse, I do BUT right now, I don’t care.  Right now I am sad and I am angry and I want to give up.  Instead, I am going to limp through the next few days (quite literally) and try desperately to cut myself some slack and I am going to pout and probably cry again.  I handled cancer with a stiff upper lip but this, well this sucks, it sucks way more than I expected and that is something I just was not prepared for.