Mid-Atlantic Hopper Challenge: Epilogue

This story may require a little back story so bear with me if you already know this stuff. I have femur-acetabular impingement, which basically means there is a bump in the femur head that rubs the hip socket the wrong way. The impingement causes pain when I'm active (such as squatting or running), and the condition may eventually lead to osteoarthritis and may require a hip replacement way down the road. I saw the same surgeon I talked to earlier a few weeks ago, and he said I should stop doing stuff that hurts while I do it (deep squats). I told him about the MAHC and asked if he recommended participating or not.

He said it was probably not a good idea, and wrote up some doctor's orders prohibiting me from competitions. This wasn't done because he actually thought I would hurt myself, but was done so I could back out of the competition if I wanted to and could possibly recoup the registration fee.

So here I am a week before the competition. Nervous as hell and fairly certain that I will be one of the weakest/slowest there, and I have a get-out-of-jail card, a medical reason for bailing out at the last minute so I wouldn't seem like a wuss. The idea of just going and playing camera man is tempting.

Now here I am a few days before the competition. I'm now no longer nervous but excited. Even if I earn last place I earned it. I worried about looking weak, but to not show up due to nerves is to be truly weak. I'm no longer concerned with how I do relative to others, I just want to give these three workouts everything I have and see how I respond. I joke about my goal, "I just don't want to be dead last."

Finally, it is the day of the competition. I start to truly understand how crossfit is designed to expose any weakness in an athlete so that they may improve in every aspect of fitness. I start to really understand what it's like to workout with a clock counting down, working out with a time limit. By seeing how I "failed", I start to see what it takes to succeed. To be honest there are moments, right after the time expired, where I feel disappointment, but I have nothing to be ashamed of.

So I'm done, I've done three very difficult workouts and have come out stronger. After everything I have found some motivation/focus that should help me keep the intensity up for these crossfit workouts. I want to prepare for the next crossfit competition, and I guess that just means keep doing what I'm doing.

I've been waiting to post this peice until after the hopper's final results were posted online. Turns out I did reach my goal. I didn't come in dead-last: I came in second to last. If I had been only 5 reps faster on the toes to bar I might've moved up by like ten spots, but if you get a DNF you can't place higher than anyone who finished the workout, scaled or not. I was one of three guys who DNF'd both time workouts, but I was middle with regards to deadlift.

As I see the results over a week after the competition, I just kind of mentally shrugged and said, "Oh well, gotta start somewhere." And I am only starting. I've been doing this for only a little over a year, and I forget that I'm still considered a noob relative to all that is crossfit. Since I'm considered a "vet" by many in the pm classes it can be easy to forget that I'm still new to all of this. I mean, in January '08 if you had told me that I'd be able to do a muscle up in about a year I wouldn't have believed you. ...Well, my real reaction would've been "What's a muscle up?"

It's also easy to forget how much stronger I've become. My deadlift max has increased by about a hundred pounds in a year, and I think there's a lot I can do to improve in that area. My olympic lifts are much sturdier now, especially after attending the oly cert back in March. I've been unknowningly trying to push through tendonitis in the shoulder, and now I've figured out what's wrong, got the necessary treatment, and now I'm pain free and the sky's the limit. Everytime the girlfriend comes to visit she notices an improvement in my musculature. If I keep improving while working out the kinks in my body, I should be in a position to place much higher in next year's competiton: like third to last :)