2009-10-3 thoughts on a bad CFT
Most crossfit days are awesome, but every so often you get one that is very demoralizing. That is what happened to me on Friday. I have been looking forward to doing a Crossfit Total (CFT) in a long time because I feel that I have been improving and becoming a better crossfitter, especially on the metcons and with Jon’s Oly classes, I think my technique has been improving as well. However, my CFT this time was almost 100 lbs less than my previous CFT. But in the excuse department, I was feeling a lot of pain in my knees from standing around all day Sunday supporting a friend’s wife as she ran the Marine Corps Marathon. I almost think I would have felt better had I ran it instead of just stood around for hours. Another excuse for not doing as well is that I was doing this by myself as everyone else had paired up already. I have found that I always do better if I have a good lifting partner. Which is a goat I need to work on because I should be able to perform the same, partner or not. I did go home and get a very good night sleep (almost 11 hours) which did do wonders for how my knees felt. For those that don’t know I have had ACL reconstruction on both of my knees and approximately 30% of the miniscus was taken out so my knees always hurt to some degree. However, doing crossfit has for the most part been very good for my knees. That being said, on Monday’s wod which had run 1 lap, I mentally crossed over a point and was able to “get on it” during the runs when I haven’t been able to do that before, so I was able to get back into having a good crossfit day and my pathetic CFT day will just be a day to remind me that there can be bad crossfit days and as long as you don’t get consumed by them you will be back having good crossfit days shortly.
November 4, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Nice write up. It does suck to have a bad CF day – somehow it feels worse when it’s a CFT.
November 6, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Dude, of all the CFT days we’ve had at PCF in a year (which is maybe 5-6), I’ve only performed well in 2. Somehow on those other days, events conspired in a way that affected me physically or mentally – whether it was not enough sleep, a rough day at work, bad diet while on the road, etc. And CFT’s are notorious for exploiting those vulnerabilities. To be honest, it’s the only WOD I can think of that I haven’t linearly progressed. But I always seem to bounce back in the other ones, and that keeps me going
You’ll get it next time!!
November 6, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Thanks, that is one great thing about crossfit is that usually you only have a bad day, not a bad week or month.
December 4, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Vaughn,
You may have had a bad CFT, but think of what you gained mentally as an athlete. I’m not saying that you should rely on bad days, but the fact that you 1) continued to push through to the end knowing it wasn’t your best performance (most people could have DNFd) and 2) came back the next day, is all telling that you are getting stronger. When it truly matters your mind will carry you further! And, it’s better to have those bad days in the gym than in competition, that way you know how to handle them. Just don’t focus on what you didn’t gain (more than 100lb) but what you did gain.