Every week CrossFitters worldwide are glued to their computers waiting for the announcement of the next Open WOD - the workout they will have to attempt along with everyone else in order to submit a score by the deadline. The movements are unpredictable and the standards are high. Each week the test gets more difficult and is designed to whittle the field of tens of thousands down to the best of the best in each region who then compete for a spot at the Games this summer. Everyone, from athletes who have only been doing CrossFit for a few weeks, to Grandparents, to adaptive athletes and those competing injured, to the elite athletes and past games competitors (and winners), and every level of ability in between, takes on the same WOD and posts their scores to be ranked with everyone else.
The best part of the Open is that beyond the competitions for fittest in the region and fittest in the world, everyone has a weekly opportunity to be fittest in their gym, fittest in their age group, or even fittest self they've ever been. You can measure yourself against a random stranger from Australia, against the scores you posted in last year's Open (especially when workouts get repeated as was the case this week), or even against the score you posted last week. Some people (like me) know that there is no chance on the planet that they'll even make it to regionals and that the Annie Thorisdottirs and Rich Fronings of the world don't even blink at the sight of their score, but in the grand scheme of things that's not what the Open is about for them. That's not what it's about for me.
I hesitated to register for the Open at first based on the fact that you have to do the WOD RX'd (or "As Prescribed" in CrossFit terms - basically exactly as written). The beauty of CrossFit is that it's universally scalable making it accessible to people like me who can't necessarily do every single movement RX'd yet. That isn't the case in the Open. In Darwinian fashion the WODs are designed to weed out the people like me. If you don't have muscle-ups and they're in the WOD, you try to do one until the time runs out, but obviously you're not going to score as high as someone who can do them. But that shouldn't stop you from trying. I've seen many people in just these first three weeks do things that they never thought possible. People adding 10lbs or more to their snatch PR because the prescribed weight is what the prescribed weight is and they might as well try to snatch it... And much to their surprise they were able to do it!
The Open and the environment that it creates pushes people out of their comfort zones and allows them to reach for what they never dreamed was possible. It's an incredible thing to watch. To know someone in your box that's been working on muscle-ups all year (or longer) only to come "thisclose" and not get one and yet after 150 wall balls and 90 double-unders, they jump up on the rings, swing, pull, push, and there they are locked out at the top, exhausted but triumphant. And everyone watching who knows how hard they've struggled to master that skill erupts in screams and thunderous applause. When was the last time you got to be a part of a moment full of that much joy?
I haven't really had a great moment like that in the Open so far. I've set little goals for myself during each phase and I've only met or passed the goal once in three weeks. For the first week I wanted to get through the first 3 parts of the WOD to the 75lb snatches and was 5 burpees short. The second week I wanted to beat my first round score and get through 3 full rounds. I ended up only 10 reps short of 5 rounds! This week the first part of the WOD was 150 wall balls (also know as the benchmark WOD "Karen"). I knew I didn't have double-unders or muscle-ups so I thought of 13.3 in terms of just finishing the benchmark under the 12 minute time cap. I was 21 wall balls short.
It has been a little difficult for me to put all this into perspective in the moment. My first thought at the end of each WOD is always about whether I did or did not meet my goal. What I really ought to focus on is my performance beyond the Open. I need to look at the larger picture. Even though I didn't start CrossFit until after the Open last year, I can still compare myself to last year, just like the people that did compete in the Open. With all my scores at zero last year, I can look at what I just accomplished and know that it is more than I would have been able to do a year ago. I can marvel at the things I can do now that I wasn't able to do 11 months ago. When I started I couldn't do burpees at all. In 13.1 I did 65. In April I did step-ups on 2 weight plates. In 13.2 I stepped up on 20 inch box. In May last year I struggled through a "Half Karen" - 75 wall balls at only 6lbs. For 13.3 I was able to do 129 with a 14lb ball. Even though my scores are low on the leaderboard, I've gone up in the rankings each week so far. Improvement is improvement, no matter how small, and for me those are all HUGE improvements.
I may be in the bottom 50% in the region and in the world, but that's okay. I knew going in that I wouldn't be one of the top 48 athletes to go to Regionals. I obsessively check the leaderboard all day on Sunday and get a little disappointed as more scores get posted and my ranking drops lower and lower and lower. I tell myself the number doesn't matter, but much like I try to tell myself the number on the scale doesn't matter, numbers still hold power for me. They're what I'm used to when evaluating myself. Grades, weight, rankings - all numbers. All those improvements I posted above are quantifiable. Number of reps, weight of the ball or bar, height of the box, cutoff times. All numbers.
The Open, I've decided is another chance for me to move outside of the comfort zone of judging myself by numbers. At the end of 5 weeks it won't really matter if I finished in 45,000th place or 5,000th place. I still won't make it to the Regionals, so the number is irrelevant in terms of that goal. The Open is an opportunity to open yourself up to challenge and change and to what is possible when you give something your all. It can open your eyes to how much you have learned and how much you've improved and how far you still need to go. It can allow you to let your strengths shine and expose areas where you are weak. Every athlete has a different experience in the Open and competes with different goals in mind, but we all compete together. The next two weeks are sure to get more difficult and there will be more and more things I won't be able to do, but that doesn't mean I can't still try to improve myself and to realize I'm more than just my numbers.
At the end of 5 weeks I'll join the thousands of others who didn't make it to the next round and who will return to their box day after day and keep working to better themselves one day at a time. But we will have been part of something. We will have shared the collective suck that is burpees. We can reminisce about how hard it was to sit on a toilet the day after 13.3. We will talk about how cool it was seeing people PR and watching videos of Jenny LeBaw compete on one leg and know what great feats these were because we took on the same challenges. We can do all this because we all tried. We did things we never thought possible. We had the courage to push ourselves to the limit and take on seemingly impossible tasks. We faced down the unknown and unknowable. We were CrossFit Games Open athletes.
