On being humbled (part 1: the rise)

I’ve been doing CrossFit for over eight years now. When I first started, I was a true beginner. Aside from running casually here and there and playing intramural soccer in college (remind me to tell you about how I got recruited by the Mathletes… a bunch of Math Grad students who basically just needed more girls on the field in order to play), I hadn’t done any true training regiment since I quit playing soccer after my sophomore year of high school. I started CrossFit when I was 23, so it had been a while since I’d done anything athletic.

One of the things I love about CrossFit is that no matter how long you have been doing it, there is always something to get better at. For the first year, I was still very much a beginner. There were so many new movements to learn and my fitness level was constantly improving. Year two I was learning a lot of the higher level skill movements - things like kipping pull-ups and toes-to-bar. It was towards the end of my second year of CrossFit that we opened our own gym. At the time I was just the girlfriend, so I was a part of starting the new gym, while not officially being a part of starting the new gym. I’d say year three is when I really started getting good - I could do almost all of the movements and was getting stronger. It was here that I think my pride really started setting in.

At a small gym, it’s not hard to be on top. Even someone with only a little bit of experience (oh say, two years?) can shine. Thus was my case. Other than my best friend who I had started CrossFit with and maybe one or two others, most of the members we had were beginners. It was basically a three way race for the top of the leaderboard. Isn’t it convenient that most competitions give all three top places a medal? I so easily fell into the pride trap. And let me tell you, I spent years tumbling to the bottom (think of Alice falling down the hole into Wonderland).

I spent years at the top of the leaderboard. At year four and a half, I quit my job and started coaching and working at the gym. Now I was really at the top of my kingdom - I was the fittest in the land, I had the honor and prestige of being a coach, and I was the owner’s wife. I felt real good about myself and all of my accomplishments. And I was prideful AF.

Now don’t get me wrong, I loved our members. I wanted to see every single one of them succeed - both in their fitness goals and life. I genuinely cared for them. But you can care about people and still be totally conceited. Mine was just a subtle, internal conceited. So subtle that I didn’t even realize how bad it was. Maybe those closest to me saw it, but I sure didn’t.

Anyways, my kingdom started to topple the day I got pregnant.