2 Years In

I did my first pull-up when I was 39. Last time I tried to it, I did 100 pull-ups in under 17 minutes.

5 years ago, I was 171 pounds – 5 feet tall and got out of breath going up a flight of stairs at the office. I decided I didn’t want to be the 300 pound mother at my son’s soccer games and not be able to run and play with my son who was already a whirlwind of energy.

I lost 30 pounds on Weight Watchers and started “running” on my lunch hours at work. At first I could run 1.5 miles in about 30 minutes. I worked up to a 5 mile run in an hour. That’s about a 12 minute mile in case you think along those lines. After 3 years on WW and getting bored with just running – on a lark I joined an after work kickboxing class that went on for about a year. I had a lot of fun and realized I really liked the fighting skills.

Enter Brand X.

Jeff Martin took over the kickboxing around Christmas time in 2003. I went on vacation in March 04 and came back to find Jason and Ricky – two Brand X students – had taken over the class for Jeff. Between the two of them, they got me more and more enthralled with the fighting arts, Muay Thai, Krav Maga (that they demonstrated after class) and Crossfit.

“If you think this class is hard, Laura, you should come over to Brand X – you live right there! – and try CROSSFIT.” The 15 or 20 minute workouts they used to “warm up” the KB class were scaled down versions of what they were learning in the Classes at Brand X who became one of the first 20 officially recognized CrossFit affiliates that year. Many times I was one of the only 2 students in the class so it was easy for them to tailor the warm-ups to hit my weaknesses and make me want to curl up and die. We did Burpees, sprints, squats, sit-ups, push-ups and thrusters; Everything but pull-ups and Oly lifting. They kept making the workouts harder and harder. “How should we kill Laura today?” they’d ask each other, eyeing me wickedly. Of course, this made me more determined to complete the workouts with as much effort as I could muster.

Eventually, I decided to visit Brand X and Jeff offered me two weeks of CrossFit classes to try out. At the end of two weeks I signed up for a CrossFit only membership and started taking 2 classes a week. That along with the Kickboxing sessions, started my 2 year journey to being the 40 year old mom who does CrossFit 5 days a week, can do multiple pull-ups, multiple push-ups, run a 10 minute mile, sprint 200 meters in under a minute, and complete many CrossFit WOD as prescribed for Big Dogs at Brand X classes.

When I started, I used to look at other CrossFitters I admired. Ricky and Jason, Jeff, Connor and the other “Big Dogs” and of course the beautiful women, Mikki, Kim and Debbie and think, I’ll never be like them. I’ll never be able to climb a rope or do a pull up.

And though I am still not where I want to be, I am light years ahead of where I was and far beyond where I ever thought I could go. To have other women come to me and say, “I’ll never be like you,” just makes me laugh because even though I have had many compliments on my progress and execution, I still find myself being critical of where I am. I have so far to go but now I know that I can get there. I may not be the fastest Dawg in the Pack, but dammit, I’m a Dawg. I just tell them, yes you will, because I used to be like you.