CrossFit Open 2020

A little curbside validation the day before the 2018 NYC Marathon.

I’m the first to admit that, initially, I was resentful of the timing of this particular Open. The interim six months had been unusually challenging — rehabbing a couple of injuries, embracing some necessary body composition changes, adjusting to a new gym — and this set of ‘tests’ felt like being forced to hit a five-week Pause button just as I was finally finding a groove. We’d deliberately smashed up lots of eggs, and it was frustrating to shift focus away from the early outlines of the omelet.

But, after a bit of pouting, I took a deep breath and straightened out my head. Because, let’s be honest: the biggest challenge of the Open is the mental game — always has been, always will be — and THAT was really what I was reluctant to commit to dialing in. I’ve run this gauntlet eight times now, and I know exactly how taxing it is.

But I also know how rewarding it can be. Right before I dropped my official $20, I wrote in my journal, “I know that, if history is any indication, I’ll likely end up getting more out of this than it feels like right now.”

Truth. (In fact, the existence of this website is an indirect result of the Open!) However, it’s also different from previous years in that, this time, the most significant progress I’ve seen isn’t visible on any leaderboard. I’m a little fitter too — but mostly I feel different on the inside.

There comes a point when an athlete has to learn to distinguish between ‘intuition’ and ‘fear’ — and one of the scariest AND most rewarding parts of this Open was the process of starting to find those edges. In 20.1, the approach that initially felt ’too risky’ — deliberately doing all ten sets of ground-to-overhead as unbroken snatches — was ALSO the one that aligned more closely with what my training had looked like, and, therefore, was ultimately the right way for me to best express my true abilities. However, ironically, that positive experience is part of what led me to misjudge 20.2. My Friday attempt was rock-solid, but so slow that I decided I must have over-paced because it hadn’t been “uncomfortable enough”; yet, on the repeat, intentionally pushing into more pain promptly led to a comparative crash and burn.

But working through those early butterflies and missteps was crucial. It helped me realize that these Open shenanigans are really just the same thing I already do every single day with my regular programming. I show up, I evaluate the prescribed tasks based on what I have done recently, I give the best I have, and I walk away having learned something.

It’s exactly the same process. So why was I letting it feel different?

By week three, I stopped asking other athletes what they were planning. I stopped clicking on Open strategy guides; the only resource I used was my own workout log. By the final week, I actually didn’t even feel compelled to watch the live broadcast. It wasn’t because I expected to be able to crush any task set before me; it was because I knew that I would know, better than any hive mind or Internet stranger, what my own best approach would be.

That quiet trust in myself was a new flavor of confidence that I hadn’t felt before: knowing not just what I ‘could’ do, but what I SHOULD do.

The Open never fails to reinforce the importance of keeping our eyes on our own paper. Comparison to anyone else is fraught with danger, not least because UNDERestimating is just as likely as OVERestimating. What other people do has absolutely no bearing on what I can do. Just because nobody ELSE in my gym was doing their 20.1 ground-to-overheads as snatches didn’t mean it wasn’t the right choice for ME. Conversely, in 20.3, just because my close competitors were beating me by a few HSPU didn’t automatically mean that I myself was capable of more. I initially felt great walking away from that workout — I’d slaughtered my own 2018 score and it felt like a true personal best — but by the end of the weekend, having watched others’ performances, I’d convinced myself that I could do better. So I repeated on Monday — with a virtually identical result.

Those are three pretty powerful lessons. In week one, I trusted my training — and did better. In week two, I tried to override my own intuition — and did worse. And in week three, I let myself be swayed by what others were doing — with zero impact on my own capacity one way or the other.

…All of which combined to make 20.4 into the most satisfying experience of this particular Open, because it brought together everything I’d learned up to that point. The fourth barbell was my working 1RM jerk (145#); however, I also knew my recent training had prepared me to lift beyond that. Staying calm and steady for the first seven segments of the workout ultimately set me up to successfully clean-and-jerk 145# four times with zero misses. Rarely have I been so overwhelmingly proud of a performance, or so certain that I had approached a task exactly right. Just as significant is that I then ACTED on that conviction by immediately submitting my score and posting my pride to social media, in a deliberate attempt to protect myself from feeling pressured into a repeat. As expected, I quickly started to feel like I should have done better — seeing others’ scores roll in, there were moments when I really wanted to try again — but that inevitable second-guessing was precisely why I’d chosen to trust that first moment of joyful certainty.

I carried that same mindset into 20.5, which subsequently ended up feeling almost equally satisfying. I could have gotten frustrated over my current lack of RMU; instead, I chose to savor the unusual privilege of being able to precisely tailor an Open workout to showcase exactly what I CAN do — and how well I can do it. The rowing/wallball workout of 2019 had been my lifetime best Open finish, and I knew exactly what I ‘should’ be able to do with those two movements. So I made an aggressive plan, executed it confidently, and walked away from another one-and-done workout — proud of my fast tiebreak time AND of my peaceful clarity that there was absolutely nothing I could have done any better.

It feels good to see myself maturing as an athlete — progressively internalizing the concepts of self-reliance and running my own race. And yet — another of my very favorite realizations from this Open is that there are also some POSITIVE shades of gray within the ‘comparison’ mental game. As above, “just because SHE can do that doesn’t necessarily mean that I can.” But also… “if SHE can do that, then someday, I probably COULD.” I’m not sure exactly when my mindset shifted on this (and I definitely still have my moments!) — but this is the first Open where I’ve noticed myself feeling genuinely MOTIVATED by the performances of the top Masters women. Somewhere along the way, I stopped looking at those athletes and automatically assuming their accomplishments were beyond my reach. Rather than being intimidating, those scores feel inspiring now — like a window into what’s possible for ME. 

Even cooler, though, is that I’m genuinely JUST as excited for the tens of thousands of baby steps that exist between here and there. Wherever ‘there’ is, I don’t WANT to be ‘there’ yet — because I’m too excited for all the good stuff I get to experience before then. Doing all this ‘testing’ has reinforced how much I genuinely love the WORKING; this is still exactly what I would want to get up and do every day even if there were no such thing as Qualifiers. It’s fun to see improved numbers and realize that all this work might actually be leading somewhere — that I’m inching closer to some potentially big things one day… but what a luxury just to be ABLE to do this, to have the time and the resources and the desire and the drive. What a privilege to have a healthy, strong body that allows effort for effort’s sake.

And I also know that if I do eventually reach a point where the competitive stakes are higher, that I’ll be nostalgic for THIS time — for the learning and growing that’s happening right NOW.

So my biggest takeaway from the 2020 Open is… that I don’t want to be anywhere except right where I am.

I’m savoring the feeling of knowing I have both plenty of time, AND plenty of potential.