doing it out of habit. (lessons learned from competing)

So today I had my second-ever Crossfit competition, and I was a lot more nervous that I was last week.  Maybe because we were on our home turf, or maybe because last week it was an Oly lift that I know I rock and this week it involved burpees.

Anyway, we hit go on 100 deadlifts with a 4 bar-facing burpee buy-in every time we switched people.  My first teammate went and blew through 30, then our team captain got her 20, and then it was my turn.   I was still nervous and kind of shaking but making it through (the taller you get, and the heavier you get, the less proportionally burpees are made for you.)

Until I hit the last one.  On my next-to-last leap over the bar, which I was trying to jump to get through them as fast as possible, I caught the bar and fell like the graceful coordinated ballerina I am (cough).  But I didn't think twice -- I just rolled over, kept going, got my 20 in and tagged out.  Thanks to the lightening-speed of my teammate Edgar we won the heat (yay for my first competition win!).

Okay, so I haven't seen the video yet, so maybe I did hesitate or grimace or roll around on the ground like a flailing fish for a moment.  And yeah falling hurt, because falling hurts, and it turns out I actually did injure myself and am typing this with a compression wrap on my wrist and Aleve in my system.  But at no point during the fall and recovery did I ever, once, consider stopping, or quitting, or tagging it.  My thought process was like, "Okay, that happened, the clock is running so get back in the game now and don't lose any more time on this."

And I feel like that was a pretty defining moment for me.  I used to be a horseback rider, and I was always big on the "getting right back on".  But sometimes it knocks the wind out of you!  Sometimes it takes a second to get your legs back underneath you and recover.  There were zero moments in my brain during that Becka/barbell collision where I wasn't going to get right back up and bust out those 20 deadlifts.  The fact that THAT is what my brain defaulted to in a moment of pain and adrenaline makes me realize that attitude is my habit -- and that that's who I am now.

I'm tenacious and stubborn, but a year ago I don't think I would have had that gut reaction.  So I'm going to take a little pride in knowing that I'm not going to give up the fight that easily.

Fall seven times, get up eight.