My workout, not theirs

One thing I thought I had learned from four years of running, and which I am now finding I am going to have to learn as I get into CrossFit:

I must do my own workout. I must not think about the workout of anyone else around me, except as an inspiration to do the best I can do.

If you're a runner, and especially if you run a much-used path, you are going to get passed by other runners every now and then. Maybe even more than every now and then, unless your name is Paula Radcliffe (and even she'll get beaten in a 10-K by elites who focus on that distance). You'll be running, keeping a comfortably hard pace, and suddenly someone will pull up on your side and then -- boom -- she's in front of you.

Some runners will respond to getting passed by turning on the juice. I learned rather quickly when I started running that this is a recipe for disaster. Trying to chase someone who is in better shape than I am, or who is running three fast miles when it's my day to run twenty slow and steady ones, or who is ten years younger, or who for any reason whatsoever is running faster than the pace that's best for my body and my training goals, only leads to my inability to finish the planned workout at best, and injury at worst. So I don't do it. Early in my running experience, I had to mentally instruct myself to ignore the frustration of being passed and to remember what my goal was. Sometimes I had to tell myself, "Hey, it's a guy passing you," or "You're running eight miles, maybe this chick is just doing two." Eventually, though, I stopped needing the self-talk because my emotions eventually grew to match my thought process. Now, when I run and I get passed, I don't bat an eyelash; I just keep doing what I'm doing.

Yesterday, however, I had my first CrossFit group class, and as it turns out, I haven't quite gotten rid of those emotions with regard to fitness in general, just with regard to running. I did all of my Foundations training privately, so I didn't have anyone to compare myself to while learning the movements and doing the prescribed workouts. Yesterday was the first time when that was no longer the case.

In CrossFit-land, I am still a baby beginner. The coaches do not want anyone trying to lift crazy amounts of weight without first having learned to do the movements with consistently good form. My trainer (who also happened to be the coach for yesterday's group class) has explained this to me many, many times, along with the reasons (to avoid injury and burnout). So I know the rationale. I do.

And I still felt embarrassed to be doing overhead squats with 55 pounds, when the other women in the class were doing one and a half times to twice that. I didn't want to write my squat weight on the big board where people write their accomplishments, and I really didn't want to write how many double unders I was able to do in the tabata session. (It was 27, whereas others in the class were getting anywhere from 85 to 200; although I have the cardiovascular conditioning to have done more, I haven't yet mastered the movement well enough to do them consistently without tripping on the jump rope.)

So, it's time for more self-talk. I need to remind myself that my classmates who are doing way more weight and way more double unders have been doing this for months or years, whereas I've been doing CrossFit for all of three weeks. Hell, I may never be able to do as much weight as that -- and that's okay. To paraphrase Jenn Casey, being upset that I can't do as much as other CrossFitters is being second-handed about my workout; being first-handed, on the other hand, means focusing on what's right for me at this point in my training. At some point it may very well be appropriate for me to be shooting for a 105-pound overhead squat, after I have learned how to do it properly and after I have spent time working up to that weight. That point is not now, and that's okay.