{Victory}

Chennelle, owner and coach at Raleigh CrossFit, has a knack for writing the best blog posts at just the right time for me. When I see them pop up on the Facebook page, I get a little bit weirded out because it's like she's been in my head ;-)

 

Today was no different:

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies, for the hardest victory is victory over self.” – Aristotle

"Competition. Is the competition against others or within yourself? Or is it both? The goal should be to be the best you can be. For each athlete, their best is up to them. The best could be entering a competition. The best could be getting the bar into a good overhead position. The best could be continuing to work on pull-ups, push-ups or muscle-ups. The best could be winning a local competition or completing a workout in the time you decided you would finish in."

 

It's no secret to most people that know me that I am not super competitive, well, at least not with anyone else. I grew up as an only child, so I didn't have siblings with which to compete. This was an advantage and disadvantage because all it did was fuel my competition with myself.

 

At times this innate desire to compete with myself causes issues, as it has the past few weeks (or months). I guess it started right after surgery - I wanted so badly to get back out there and go for a run or to CrossFit and I couldn't. I knew better than to try and F things up that I had worked so hard for. When it was finally time for me to get back to working out, my competitive streak was in overdrive. Needless to say, my body didn't cooperate with my brain and all I did was get more and more frustrated with myself. But...

That competition with myself has kept me moving in the right direction. I could have very easily just stopped going to CrossFit, or skipped out on every single run. I didn't though. Each time I did a workout, I set a goal - run 3 minutes without stopping, use XX pounds of weight, do XX pull-ups, etc. The runs were shitty not so great. The CrossFit WODs weren't at the heaviest weight. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter than I wasn't the quickest runner on the greenway or one of the first to finish the WOD. Each time I was out doing a run or going to CrossFit, I was beating a goal I had set in my head and that is pure victory.