Years ago my exercise of choice was running, 3 to 5 days/week. I had a friend who would join me/us somewhat regularly. If we reversed our usual route, the run started with a pretty long hill. There was always debate about how long to walk up before we started “running”. One morning, after starting the upward direction, we passed two people coming down the hill. As we passed them she (running partner) called out “you have the easier direction” in an attempt to make a joke. That struck a chord (or is it cord? accord? ) with me back then. We didn’t know anything about them, how long they’d been out, how far they already walked or if they ran some earlier, are they capable of more or is walking the only option for them due to health issues???? I think about this every so often, now more than usual.

Now it has relevance to me personally. My body has been through a lot – physically – over the last 3 years. This has interfered with my CrossFit activity in lots of ways, and continues to do so. I have stopped/restarted from square 1 a couple times. This is not the first time I’ve brought this up but this week has been harder for me. I’ll come back to this in a sec…

I’ve had a couple scans scheduled this month, in addition to my usual monthly visits to the cancer center. One was a DEXA bone density to compare to my previous from 2 years ago. It’s also related to the medication I’m on hoping to prevent breast cancer recurrence, but it messes with bone density. So now I have osteopenia!! Because why not? I was getting kinda bored with just having cancer.

I also had an echocardiogram to see if my heart has any reason to give me concern beyond the atrial fluttering from last month. The ruling on one of my 3 health portals is ‘within normal limits’ not sure what that means. I still don’t have any idea what caused the fluttering and how the cardiologist plans to proceed – so another week of anxious waiting. And to top off the month will be my next CT scan to look at the tumors again – yay more barium and another IV hematoma!!! All this medical activity raises my anxiety level and I become hyper-reactive to emotions.

Okay back to the relevance of the comment… Because of what I’ve been through, my fitness level is not what it could be if I had these last 4 years to just work on improving. I am also older than most of the others in the box. This combination is a source of frustration for me. I can’t keep up… I try, but it’s not the way things are panning out.

I’m trying to change the focus of my workouts to place more importance on doing things well, not my scores. I am working on proper form when lifting, so I get the most benefit and reduce my chance of new injuries. And I’m really trying hard to focus on maintaining proper standards for movements, not my scores – to give myself a break. Yet, this still creeps in and smacks me in the head now and again. I still really enjoy the activities we do in WODs, my issue is the mentality of CrossFit.

I’ve never been a competitor-type person – loved riding horses, hated showing – loved running, hated racing. CrossFit is a sport, I get that. There is so much emphasis on besting scores, on speed, on “crushing it” with a majority of our group. Even if I wanted to, physically I can’t. Some days my ‘crushing it’ is simply completing a workout while remaining upright and breathing.

What bothers me the most are comments I hear from others, but not directed to me. I don’t know how to react when I hear stuff like “I’d love to use that silver bar” (when they see the lighter bar option being used somewhere else), “I have to use the baby weights” (when picking up a lighter dumbbell), explaining why they “have to scale today” (because they never do). This is often my norm and for me comments like this make it sound as if I don’t work as hard as they do because I did less reps or used less weight – i.e. my scores are not valid. It’s like I’m walking downhill while they are going up.

I’m sure the anxiety makes my perception a variation of reality. But I have to acknowledge where I am now. I’ve been pulling back a bit from talking to others after a WOD, from giving ‘fist bumps’ on others’ scores. Mentally it’s too much for me to see my score at the bottom – again – and to have minimal recognition for how hard I am really working. I feel very alone right now.

I’ll continue to aim for improvement, to work as hard as physically and mentally possible. I am trying to work within the 💩💩💩💩💩💩 normal limits handed to me. This is exhausting on so many levels.