Horrible workouts, brilliant people

I took third at a CrossFit competition at the weekend, the mixed pairs in Preston I mentioned last week. The workouts were horrible, but the people were brilliant.

My partner Debs and I got through three workouts at Raising The Bar to make the final, and our reward was a 1,000m row, 40 double dumbbell devil presses, 80 box jumps and 10 synchronised wall walks, for time. It’s fair to say it completely finished me off.

But I forgot about the pain very quickly, and it’s the people I’ll remember. It was a room full of really good people getting after it and supporting each other through every workout, which is what I love about fitness. Between the high fives and the hugs, Debs and I barely stopped smiling, even when we were in bits.

It also made me think about how rarely most of us enter anything once we’re adults. Somewhere in our twenties or thirties we stop, because work and family take over and training becomes something we squeeze in on our own.

But entering something puts you back among people who are chasing the same thing, whether that’s a parkrun, a Hyrox or a CrossFit competition. You get nervous on a start line again, and you get cheered on by people you hadn’t met until that morning.

So I already want another one in the diary; I’m just not sure what it’ll be yet. What should I enter next? And if you’ve done something like this yourself, tell me what it was and who got you through it.

A quote worth sitting with

“What we do really, really well, and what is of vital importance is this community.”

— Paul Sinton-Hewitt, founder of parkrun, speaking to The Naked Scientists in 2016.

In the same interview he said the running is probably one of the least important parts of parkrun.

The Saturday Standard

The final

This is the final Debs and I raced, done on your own.

After the devil presses, the wall walks definitely come hard.