October 2011, we held the official opening for the skatepark. I went, complete with my wheelchair thanks to a long term illness. I joked with one of the skaters that one day he’d have to teach me to skate.
June 2013 I had an amazing recovery from my illness and no longer needed a wheelchair. I celebrated by partially rupturing both achilles by trying to walk too fast. That used to be the story of my life. Try to be active; injure yourself.
June 2014 and I was four months into training at The Crossfit Place. For me, it was the first taste of a different way of living. Being active didn’t have to mean injury. By now I was close to doing a down and up without needing a box for support, and I could front squat. I was just moving on to very gentle ring rows. And on 7th June, Bangor Carnival day, I got my first taste of everyday life fitness when I managed to stack traffic cones then lift the stacks into the back of a van.
And that’s what Crossfit promises – functional fitness.
It’s now June 2015. I still train at The Crossfit Place. I’ve learned to balance. I’ve got strong. My joints are more stable. My Crossfit is coming on unbelievably well. But it’s outside Crossfit that I’m seeing the biggest changes.
In the last two months, I’ve been putting my functional fitness to the test by trying activities that had always been beyond me. So far I’ve tried and survived horse riding, messing about in a Water Walker ball, a three day kayaking expedition (including pitching a tent in a different camp site each night), my first attempt to run, giving my 23 year old son a piggy back and a raft race on the Menai Straits (which involved a full day of building a raft, paddling several miles, dragging it out of the water, dismantling it and finally carrying the heavy poles to the storage area).
I hadn’t forgotten the joke about me learning to skate, but even though I was starting to be more adventurous I wasn’t convinced it was possible. As a child in the 70s, I had always admired skateboarders but never had the courage, coordination or balance to try. And even when I’d been tempted, the kids with boards said I’d break any board I stood on because I was too fat.
I’ve learned to balance. I’ve got strong.
The local skater hadn’t forgotten our joke either. As my health and fitness improved, he quietly custom-built a longboard for me. Last week I ran out of excuses. He lent me the board to practice getting on and off and just standing on it. Crossfit skills of coordination and balance were put to good use. Then he took me to a gentle hill for my first lesson. And I loved it. The freedom of zooming down a hill crouched on a board was exhilarating. It felt as if all those hours sweating over air squats and squat cleans had paid off. I could control how I put weight through my feet. I could balance. I didn’t fall off once. And I didn’t care that 50 year old women aren’t usually found learning to skate down hills – after all, Crossfit had taught me that there’s no bar in anyone becoming a Crossfitter, so why should there be for any other sport?
I’m still getting my head round the changes. At heart, I still see myself as an unfit middle-aged woman who may have got a bit fitter through Crossfit but who will never achieve anything physically. What the raft race proved is that I’m strong and fit – even in comparison to leaner, younger men and women. And what longboarding brought me was the sheer thrill of speed and confidence in my ability to balance.
Where will June 2016 see me?
Right now, I’m enjoying working on improving my lifting, and starting to think about entering Raising the Bar 2016. Or I may use Crossfit to get better at functional fitness so I can keep challenging myself with new activities outside Crossfit. Whatever I choose, I will be very conscious that I only have the luxury of that choice because of the skilled work of my coaches and because Crossfit lives up to its claims for being scalable for anyone and for functional fitness.
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