There’s always something.

The bright lights.  The Top 20 pop.  Someone wanting to talk to you about the something about the time you did the thing.

Ignore them.  Not nasty.  Not with distain.  Because now is the time, the moment when you concentrate on the task ahead, on the never-ending belief that what’s about to go down will go down, that you can’t be beaten.

Every ounce of psychic energy you’re about to bring to bear; it’s easy to disrupt, easy to kill.  You have to protect it, feet on the ground, head down, focusing on the simple mental images of success.

There is great power in the singular sight, the sole goal, the only reason you came here.  Your next personal record, better than last time, better than ever, it’s right here in front of you, ready for the taking. 

And now, you have to take it.  Two words, three words run through your head, a tight, concise, pithy description of the end state, the moment right before the chest bumps and high fives and screams like a fifteen-year-old’s cracking voice.

When they try to distract you, jump in on your bar, talk about the suck, borrow your 5s, cure your stress, just stop.  Look up, make eye contact, not angry but ready, and look back down.  This isn’t about Community.  Not now.  This is about winning, succeeding, making yourself believe that what’s about to happen will happen, must happen, that nothing else can happen, the intellectual certitude followed by physical reality.

And then, get ready to go.  Grip the bar.  Chalk up, and remember that your momentary lapse in social nicety will be rewarded with what you wanted, the moment of apex.  Your short, pithy phrase repeats until there is nothing else, no sound, no Top 20, no mats, no platforms, no nothing except a bar and a goal, the universe bent around you in a cocoon of now.

Don’t think heels down, chest up.  Don’t think at all, because you don’t need to.  You already did it, and miracle of miracles, what was supposed to happen happened.  It’s over your head.  It’s locked out.

And now, they fade back in.  The sound of volume slow marching to full blast, clapping, screaming, backslapping rah. 

You can give in, or you can go back.  Sit down, shut your eyes, and bring pithy back.  Because it’s not over, and you can shut it out again.  Accept that this is just a step and not the end, and it will happen all over again.  Another record, not a defining moment, but an ephemeral glimpse at where you were, the shallow footprint of an athlete who’s moving forward faster.

Ignore them, and bring it.  Because there’s always something more.

Neal cleans at CrossFit Boston.  Picture courtesy of CrossFit Boston.

“You know, your grandmother’s been doing CrossFit in her basement.” 

Maybe it’s only a rumor, an exaggeration at best.  But as the potatoes are getting mashed and the pumpkin pies are batting their eyelashes at me from the countertop, as my family mills about the kitchen waiting for the official start of our Thanksgiving festivities, my mother whispers to me and I can’t help but believe it. 

“She’s not telling anybody, but she’s doing it.”

My grandmother is almost eighty years old, but don’t tell her that.  She’s a former nurse, mother to nine children, and wife to one stubborn and amazing old man.  Together, they are the picture of what retirement should be—travel, family, continued intellectual curiosity and the occasional glass of good scotch.  They are the reason I’m not scared of getting older.

So when my mother tells me that my grandmother is doing CrossFit in the basement, she unwittingly jars me from my newfound CrossFit malaise. 

It’s been a week of reading blog posts and endless pages of repetitive comments.  Days of conversations with no real conclusions.  Hours spent trying to determine how I felt about the whole mess, with no result other than disappointment pointed in no general direction. 

But now it’s as if my mother’s taken me by the shoulders and shaken me back to reality. 

I think about my aunt in Virginia emailing me a few days earlier to tell me her “Fran” time.  I think about doing “Daniel” at CrossFit Cape Cod alongside two aunts and a cousin, my uncle across the gym on the C2, pulling himself toward a new 2K PR.  I think about teaching my twenty-nine year old sister how to do pullups with a band and my four year-old cousin showing me what a burpee was. 

Later, after the turkey has been cleared from the table and I’ve finally given in to the pumpkin pie, I sit across from my grandfather.  We’re talking about why the world seems so imperfect these days and I ask him a simple question.  I ask, “If someone comes to you tomorrow and says, ‘Give us the one thing we can do to turn this all around.  One thing, and we’ll all do it and it’ll set us heading back in the right direction.’  What’s that one thing?”

He thinks about it for a few seconds, leans back and smiles.  He says he has no idea, which, if you know my Grandfather, is a rare occurrence.

He says change isn’t so simple, that it doesn’t work like that.  He says the best we can hope for is to positively affect those people within our own circle of influence.  Do right by the people closest to you, and they will do right by those closest to them. 

I make a quick mental list: one grandmother, one mother, two sisters, three aunts, one uncle, three cousins and three college friends.  I claim no credit but being lucky enough to have been introduced to CrossFit two years ago by a good friend.  I was within his circle of influence and they are within mine.  The two women my aunt has recruited to workout with her in the basement are within hers. 

They don’t care about the drama.  They don’t care about the ramifications or the politics.  They care only about feeling better and living fuller lives.

And that’s what I’m back to thinking about now.  Because my grandmother might be CrossFitting in her basement.

The contention, like most that endure, made perfect sense.   Get too strong, and your endurance will suffer.  Too much endurance, and your strength will drop.  You can’t have everything.

Fortunately, perfect sense and reality do not always occupy the same space, their neat relationship thrown askew by the inexorable march of athletic evolution.

The fact that we missed:  previous feats of athleticism will always be surpassed.  Sprinters will sprint faster, lifters will lift more.  Quarterbacks will throw more accurately, batters will hit more home runs.  CrossFitters will get stronger and faster. 

Once, we said that developing the capacity of a novice across a variety of physical disciplines would create the fittest men and women on the planet.  Unavoidably, we’re being forced to remove the word “novice” from this definition; it no longer applies.  Our fittest are not novices, but legitimate contenders in nearly every arena.

For the first time, we’re seeing the strong, the fast, the enduring, occupying the same space.  The guy with the 5-minute mile is deadlifting 500 pounds.  He’s putting out half a horsepower for ten straight minutes.  He’s jumping four feet in the air.  He’s running eighty miles.  He is world class; his accomplishments are not a compromise.

Simultaneously, we are seeing adaption to imposed demand that does not follow traditional pathways.  Now, the strongest are not the largest, the fastest not the most waiflike.  Strength is achieved through increased neurological efficiency rather than mass.    Speed is achieved by getting stronger, not running more.  Athletes are borne from variety rather than specificity, exhibiting unheard of strength-to-bodyweight ratios.

We are throwing training on its ear, and this is just the beginning.  This discipline is in its infancy, still far from widespread, still the province of few.   There may come a day when our definition of fitness is not a compromise, when we no longer sacrifice mastery in one domain for competency in many, instead choosing mastery in all.

That day has started to dawn.

Josh Wagner fights 485 in Aromas.  Picture courtesy of CrossFit.com.

Boston’s Back Bay is surprisingly stable.  Row after row of brick homes, built on top of a dirt-filled marsh, every flagstone basement below sea level.  Logic would dictate that this early nineteenth-century engineering should have calved into the Atlantic years ago, yet it stands to this day, a testament to the audacity of those who built it. 

John and I were driving down Beacon Street, the Back Bay’s main artery and canyon of Victorian-era architecture, when he handed me a manila envelope.

“This is my knee.”

Today marked the first time I’d seen John outside of the walls of CrossFit Boston, where he’d been training for six months.  Headed to a Celtics game at the Fleet Center, we were trading the platform for the parquet.

The son of a world-class powerlifter, John looks anything but.  Six foot five with limbs to match, he wasn’t built to move weight, yet a childhood of ignoring anthropometry had left him crazy strong.  Years without coaching had simultaneously eroded his technique, and we spent months bringing him back to the realm of acceptability.

John’s squat stance was too wide and his depth high, a silent admission to the pain he felt each time he descended.   We worked gradually and steadily until he made bottom, pushing his knees out and his hip backward.  Now, John squatted correctly, fighting his size for every inch.

I opened the envelope and slid out an x-ray film.  Holding it up to the dome light, I saw a blacked out joint, a femur and tibia joined by thin white tentacles and a pile of rubble, the detritus of a destroyed knee.

“This is your knee!  Jesus, why didn’t you tell me?”

My brain cycled wildly between disbelief and regret.  I’d stood beside John, demanding range of motion, demanding bodyweight back squats, the Space Needle built on a pile of marshmallows.   I’d told him to do what no sane man should.

"My ACL is gone, too."

He laughed, and my confusion gave way to understanding.

I hadn’t pushed John down.  He’d pushed himself down, stronger with each descent.  Even more, he’d pushed against decrepitude, reclaiming range of motion that a weaker man would’ve lost forever, and somehow he’d done it in the face of impossibility, a gravel-filled knee with imperfect muscular support.

Like the men who built the land we were crossing, John had seen an end result that was more important than the obstacles in the way, that something beautiful could be built atop something inhospitable, and now he was reaping the benefits, back squatting three hundred and thirty five pounds at thirty nine years of age.

I wouldn’t pretend that we’re all capable of doing what John did, an assertion that would merely belittle his accomplishment.  Nonetheless, I firmly believe that we are capable of more, that we can build something from nothing.

I handed the x-ray back to John.

John overcomes gravity at CrossFit Boston.  Picture by Again Faster.

His name was Brett and he was the fastest kid I ever knew. He was shorter than I was, and lighter. He never seemed to get tired. He ran the 400-meter race every meet, and that confused me. I didn’t understand anybody who would want to do that. Every time he did, though, I was relieved. If he ran the 400, then it meant he couldn’t run the 200, and that was my race.

Senior year in high school, I only lost the 200 was when he was in it. I couldn’t catch him.

The end of the season came, and our team of athletic misfits gathered in the center of the track for the league championship meet. A few hours later, I was setting my blocks for the 200-meter final. Twenty-two and a half seconds after the gun, I crossed the line ahead of everybody else.

Call it hubris if you like, but there was never any question in my mind as to what the result would be. Over my entire athletic career, the only moments of clear, unquestioned confidence came at the start of that event. They were the kind of moments where nervousness somehow transforms into energy instead of dread. The kind of moments where your body is light and your mind uncluttered. The kind of moments I never felt when Brett lined up beside me.

No matter how many races I won, I never believed I could beat Brett. And so I never did.

And that’s a hard habit to break.

From the first CrossFit workout I hit, and almost every subsequent one since, I knew where I would finish before the clock ever started.  I never thought I could win, and so I've finished lower far more often than I have higher.

High school track and field long gone, it’s been awhile since I've felt that unquestioning confidence. Years away from organized sports have dulled my desire to win, and my inability to transcend my own muted expectations have left my progress stagnant in the gym.

I never beat Brett because I knew I never could. I didn’t let him make me better. Instead, I felt sorry for myself. I settled for being good rather than the best. And as a result, I never grew as an athlete.

I’ve watched this video fifteen times now, and every time I do, I am amazed at something. Something other than Usain Bolt and his new world record. It comes at the end of the video, while Bolt takes his victory lap.

The camera finds Tyson Gay, second place in the race and amongst the few men on this planet even remotely in the same league as the Jamaican. The race is over and the results are on the board. Bolt runs a 9.58, Gay a 9.71. With a slightly injured groin, Gay sets the American record and runs the third fastest time ever recorded.

The camera finds Gay, and though we can’t see his face, the gesture he makes is familiar to us all. It’s one of disappointment.

Instead of lining up next to the 6’5” Bolt and thinking, “I’m just going to try and beat everybody else,” he went after the top dog. And because he did, he ran faster than he ever had before.

You can’t learn confidence, but you can earn it. Gay may have lost that race, but he knows he can go faster. He knows what it feels like, and it’s that feeling that he’ll be chasing every race, whether Bolt lines up beside him or not.

I never let Brett make me faster, and I haven’t let James Hobart or Stacey Kroon make me faster, even though I line up with them for every WOD. My progress is minimal and slow and I have grown impatient with it.

I lost my competitive fire not because I’ve stopped wanting to be the best, but because I stopped wanting to be disappointed when I was proved anything less. I have forgotten the single most important lesson we learn from CrossFit: Through struggles, to the stars.

I have beaten James at exactly one workout over the past year and change. It’s time I finally went after the big dog.

Picture of Kevin Williams and Jay Swift, battling it out at a recent CrossFit Endurance cert in Milford. They were doing "Death by 10 Meters". Picture courtesy of the author.

Successful lifting depends on four elements: area of base, center of gravity, combined center of gravity, and torque. If the aspiring coach understands the relationship between these elements and how they inform technique, the quick identification of faults and their respective remedies becomes automatic.

Area of base is a simple concept. It is the field delineated by the outside of the athlete’s feet and the space between them, length and breadth. It changes in size based on foot position, but is always rectangular.

Center of gravity is the point within any body around which its mass is evenly distributed. For our purposes, we can think of it as the point on which gravity acts. While coaching, we must worry about three separate centers of gravity: that of the athlete, that of the object lifted, and that created when they are joined together (the combined center of gravity).

At rest, the athlete’s center of gravity lies somewhere on a vertical line between the pelvis and the navel and just dorsal of the frontal plane, its exact location dependent on gender and individual anthropometry. The object’s center of gravity lies in its geometric center, assuming it is of constant shape, i.e. a barbell rather than a sandbag or water-filled keg.

The combined center of gravity of the two lies somewhere on the line between the athlete’s center of gravity and the object’s center of gravity, biased closer to whichever weighs more.

Finally, torque is the tendency for a force to cause rotation around a fixed point. When lifting, our primary concern is torque about the hip caused by gravitational pull on the combined center of gravity.

Our objective in any lift is to move an object exactly opposite gravity and to hold it in its highest position for an acceptable period of time. To do so, we must vertically align our three centers of gravity (athlete, object, and combined) with the center of our area of base, minimizing torque and thereby maximizing efficiency.

Faults arise when these conditions of vertical alignment are not met.

Let’s look at some examples. In examining the explanations below, note that the combined center of gravity must always remain directly over the center of the area of base or the athlete falls over, so combined center of gravity is never the root cause of an error when the athlete remains standing.

Example 1: Object COG Forward

In the picture above, the barbell’s center of gravity is well forward of the center of area of base, causing the athlete to shoot the butt backward in an effort to keep the combined center of gravity where it belongs, directly over the center of the area of base. This results in a forward inclination of the torso, creating torque at the hip, and making a return to standing unnecessarily difficult.

To minimize torque, this athlete must bring the barbell within the area of base by lifting her chest. Her hips will come forward, resulting in a more favorable alignment of all three centers of gravity (athlete, object, and combined) with the center of the area of base.

Example Two: Object COG Rearward

In our next example, we see that the athlete has pushed the bar behind the area of base. Although we cannot see the area of base, we can infer that it is forward of the barbell, as the athlete has pushed his mass forward to keep the combined center of gravity over the center of the area of base. The torque on his shoulders is clear.

To minimize torque, the athlete would tighten the abdominal muscles and bring the bar forward, resulting in the alignment of all three centers of gravity (athlete, object, and combined) with the center of the area of base.

Example Three: Athlete COG Backward and Object COG Forward

The athlete above presents an interesting situation, in which the bar is forward of the center of the area of base, and the athlete’s center of gravity is backward of the center of the area of base. These faults result in a combined center of gravity directly over the center of the area of base, as predicted. They also create a tremendous angle at the hip, putting torso perpendicular to the direction of gravity and nearly maximizing torque.

To correct this situation, the bar would be pulled against the shins while the hip was simultaneously lowered, bringing the object’s center of gravity and the athlete’s center of gravity over the center of the area of base.

Example Four: Proper Alignment

Here, we see an error-free lift. The athlete’s center of gravity is just behind the center of her area of base, and the object’s center of gravity is just forward of the center of the area of base. Alignment is limited only by the fact that her body is in the way, and torque due to gravity is minimized.

Although the rules of center of gravity, area of base, and torque are not the only ones that inform proper technique, they are very handy in spotting faults. The simple question: are my centers of gravity as close to the center of the area of base as the movement allows? If not, the coach has work to do.

Tanya demonstrates good understanding of our principles, keeping everything vertically aligned at CrossFit Montclair. Pictures courtesy of Patrick Cummings.

This can’t be a cult; the connotations are all wrong. "Cult" would imply that something foolish or devious is occurring, something motivated by greed or vanity, something to do with stars or demigods, the cosmos or the second coming.

The only motivation here is excellence. Caring too much. Pushing the boundaries. All that stuff you say during a job interview and nobody believes you.

From outside the looking glass, I can see the disbelief. I can believe the disbelief. Thousands of people, swearing up and down this is the best thing since solar power, lawn irrigation, and supermarkets, bundled into a free-if-you-want-it package and available daily, changing lives every time. It sounds like a teenager’s drunken promise, whispered sweetly and mired in mal-intent.

Any rational human being would assume that there’s a plot, a cabal at the top, aiming to steal and maim, to prosper at another’s expense.

There’s not. I know, because I’ve sat at the table. I’ve had the conversations, reflecting on the past and predicting the future, wondering at the sheer speed of the rocket ship, the linear progression turning geometric. The discourse isn’t yachts and summer homes; it’s progress.

The driver of this mission is physical superiority; a battle-ready state, general physical fitness spurred by a contrarian philosophy and a general distain for bullshit.

We want our Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen to pummel our Nation’s enemies. We want our sons and daughters to reject a sedentary lifestyle. We want our parents out of nursing homes and into society.

We do not want a cult, togas and Nikes ready for the apocalypse, and we couldn’t have one anyway. CrossFitters are too numerous to track, let alone control. They’re recklessly dispersed in America and the Middle East, Peru and Finland, Prague and Canada, arrayed under a thousand coaches, many of whom would just as soon eat horseflesh as agree with each other.

The only motivation here is the higher calling, the moral stance, and the knowledge that kind of good is not good enough, that health and wellbeing are sacrosanct, that the truth is inviolable, that fitness is everything.

Decry the organization, but know that your arguments are false. This is no siren song, no massive conspiracy to suck dollars from the pockets of the credulous. This is a revolution, righteous, transparent, and effective. It is a philosophy couched in generosity and executed unfailingly.  It is a way of life, and it will continue, with or without you. 

Speal attempts 100 consecutive pullups while the CFHQ training staff looks on.  He got 96.  Picture courtesy of CrossFit.com.

There is no wooden platform. Only rolled rubber, stretched over a concrete pad and coated with the thin, obnoxious dust of the Aromas desert.

Luminaries with red and white lights are replaced by blue-clad Judges, some qualified, some not, all with hands held high.

The contenders eschew the singlet fashion of the sport; their wooden-soled shoes the only vestige of traditional Olympic weightlifting garb.

Dead silence is a joke, drowned out by a fierce, screaming crowd and the hate music rocketing from the speakers.

The California sun slow cooks the barbells, each resting against a log marked with a number that has no bearing on the task at hand.

Ten minutes. A stack of plates. Power snatch or squat snatch, split or not. Rip it up smoothly, press it out ugly, it doesn’t matter. Just get it over your head. Max load wins.

“Go!” slams out of the P.A., and the barbells flash. There are beautiful lifts, and ugly lifts, competitors digging, catching loads that should succumb to gravity, standing to the lion’s ovation, the roar of myriad spectators who know the feeling but not the arena.

They sense revolution. There is no polite clapping. This is gladiatorial fervor, surging crowd thumbs down, kill it now.

There is no need to visit the scorers’ table. The athletes witness the competition in real time, those who would have them slashed from the Games with superior lifts pooling sweat at their feet and crying triumph with each successful lift.

This is not a USA Weightlifting event. It is the future. Hundreds of eyes fixed on a stadium littered with lifters, not one paying attention to protocol or deferentially waiting their turn to lift, none worried if they’ll follow themselves on the next lift—it’s guaranteed that they will.

There are no games to play, no strategy, no energy saved for lifts two and three. They lift until they fail, and then they lift again.

The traditional throng, baited breath in a fluorescent-washed gymnasium, is replaced with the vanguard of training, hundreds of valkyries sucking dirt and spitting fire, CrossFitters who recognize that work done is work done. They know that fitness is not measured in an instant but a series of instants, an endless thread of pain and resolve, held together with the glue of pride and the threat of failure.

It isn’t just spectator friendly. It’s an orgy of entertainment, created by a single rule: Stand It Up. Dumped barbells carom back toward the lifters, thrown unto the duplicitous curbs at their feet, giving a feeling of impending catastrophe and snap-focusing the risk of athletic pursuit.

There are those who would witness such a spectacle and bellow foul. This, they would say, is not weightlifting. This is an abomination.

They would be right, and for every wrong reason. We are no longer playing the same game, and just as you cannot call out baseball for cricket or black for white, you cannot call this a mangled weightlifting meet.

Instead, it is an evolution, a different creature, borne of the need to adapt. Until now, weightlifting was dying, its punctured lungs aspirating and collapsing. With a single hour on a sunburned farm, it now stands ready, the province of Red Bull sponsorships and worshipful ten-year olds, where the best aren’t strong once an hour, but a dozen times in ten minutes, their fitness defined not in one sphere but in many.

There will be a fight, but it will not last long. First, the purists will laugh at the rules and the form, declaring that we couldn’t possibly succeed with such a preposterous format. As the loads increase, they’ll start with the ‘dangerous’, and as the crowds swell to fill the Rose Bowl, they’ll seek sanction and injunction.

In the end, the resistance won’t matter, because superiority survives on its own merit, because this is the future, wood and spandex be damned.

Lindsey Smith fights while Kurtis Bowler looks on in horror. Picture courtesy of CrossFit.com.

I was leaning against the windows of the Walgreens, waiting for the 66 bus to come and bring me to the gym. Evening rush hour was slowing everything down. A young guy was pacing the sidewalk nearby, asking every second or third person if they might donate money to save the children, or the whales, or the trees.

She was a quarter of the way across the street before I saw her. When she stepped off the curb, I’m sure she had the light. But now, as she pushed her walker, the light was changing and a stream of cars could do nothing but watch and wait. Part of me wanted to go over, pick up the old lady and carry her the rest of the way. Every step was progress, but barely.

I admired her persistence, sad that it took her five full minutes to cross the street. I thought it wasn’t as sad as if she couldn’t make it at all, and I thought about a conversation I’d had recently.

I was sitting beneath the judge’s tent at the Northeast Qualifiers, in a beach chair real low to the pavement. A hundred yards away, barbells and bumper plates crashed to the ground. I could hear the pull-up bars shake under the momentum of kips. Rafael lowered himself into the seat next to me.

I don’t remember how we got to talking about it, but eventually he mentioned his father. He said there was no way his father could get in and out of a chair like the ones we were in. He said, “I love my father, but I don’t want to end up like him.”

If he isn’t already, Rafael is close to turning forty, though you’d never guess it. He’s a fighter, a trainer, an athlete, and a constant stream of encouragement. You’re always just a little bit better when Raf is nearby, and as we sat there, the irony of what we were talking about didn’t escape me.

It was a weekend to celebrate athleticism, to marvel at the virility, viability and ferociousness of youth, and we were talking about what it was like to grow old. All around us wandered the chiseled bodies of young gods and goddesses, but Rafael and I were talking about nursing homes. We were talking about our fathers.

My father isn’t in bad shape. He’s in his fifties and stays active. My mother sees to it that he eats relatively well, and when he’s not battling some knee or shoulder problem, he gets to the gym a couple times a week. I’ve tried to introduce him to CrossFit, but he’s a man of routine. Twenty minutes on the stationary bike, some seated shoulder presses and leg extensions and he’s happy. Every now and again, he’ll call me and tell me he got on the Concept2 at the Y, just like I showed him.

So maybe I shouldn’t be worried, but I am. I’ve watched his mother start showing signs of Alzheimer’s. At dinner with her, I’ve watched him put on a smile as she tells us the same story she told us ten minutes prior, and I can’t help but wonder if that smile will be mine some day. I want him to stop eating pasta and bread, but I’m fighting against years of homemade Italian cooking and I don’t know how hard to push. I don’t know how to tell him it’s because I don’t want him to end up like her.

Rafael and I are sitting in beach chairs real low to the pavement and he says, “I love my father, but I don’t want to end up like him,” and I start to wonder if my old man could get in and out of the chair. I don’t know the answer.

It’s so easy to get lost in the vanity of now. In the mirror’s reflection. It’s so easy to focus on the Fran time and the max deadlift and the consecutive pull-ups. What’s harder to remember is that we aren’t doing this for today.

It’s nice to look good with your clothes off, but it’s nicer to know that for the rest of your life you’ll be able to take those clothes off without the assistance of a certified health care provider. That you’ll be able to get across the street without the assistance of a traffic cop.

While my father’s mother forgets, my mother’s parents are on their boat, floating down the Hudson River on a trip they’ve taken many times before. When summer comes, family barbeques are scheduled around their arrival. My grandfather is still one of the strongest people I’ve ever known, and my grandmother is still one the sharpest.

I can’t know all the reasons my grandparents have aged differently. There are too many variables. I can’t know if it was environment, their diet, lifestyle, or genetics, but I do know that blaming randomness is too easy. The choices we make in youth give color to our future selves.

What we’re doing, it isn’t about today.

Raphael teaches at CrossFit Boston.  Picture courtesy of the author.

The car ride to Albany is quiet. The ‘what-if’ conversations and ‘I wonder’ talk gives way to long stretches of silence. The trees that line the Berkshire Highway whip by, and Stacey, in the back seat, says, “How about we just go to Buffalo instead.”

We meet James at the hotel. He’s sunburned and in good spirits. If he’s nervous, I can’t tell. If he gets nervous, it doesn’t show. He unpacks a bag of M&Ms and we leave for Albany CrossFit for registration.

The Northeast Qualifier is the final competition before Aromas. These athletes have watched the videos and done the workouts. They’ve compared themselves to those who have qualified and those who did not. They’ve run through the weekend’s programming, once in the gym, and a hundred times in their minds and in their sleep. The only thing left to do is pick up the barbell and go.

Saturday morning and the sun shines through clouds. With only three heats of women, Stacey doesn’t have to wait long. The numbers aren’t as high as we thought they’d be. Twelve minute AMRAP, thrusters and burpees. Sixes and sevens lead the way. Stacey finds eight rounds and goes into the second workout as the leader.

Nobody knows who he is when James starts his first workout. He’s in the back row, near the trees. I know to keep my camera on him, and it’s all I can do not to scream at him with each thruster. When he’s done, when he’s on the ground, sweating, heart racing, arms and legs sprawled, he looks up and catches my eye. He smiles the smile of a boy who just raced the dog home from the bus stop and finally won.

The second workout, a 2K row, only proves that the first wasn’t a fluke. Both James and Stacey place top 5. The leader board is announced after the sun goes down. After a first and a second place finish, Stacey leads the women’s division. James is in third for the men, only three points behind first.

The Day Two workout is announced, power cleans, pull-ups and KB swings. I hear a single cheer let loose from somewhere in the crowd. I can’t see him, but I know James is smiling.

Stacey spends the morning pacing and watching the men race through the workout. The knowledge that only two women have been able to finish weighs heavily on her mind, and she spends a few hours on the sidelines, as if looking for clues that might show her the secret.

She picks up an empty barbell in the warm-up area and says it feels heavy. She says that she doesn’t do power cleans.

She seems to be the only person in Albany who doesn’t think she can do this.

Ten minutes before the final heat, she wanders around beneath the pull up bars and amongst the barbells. She doesn’t know what she should do about dropping the bar on the cleans. She asks for advice. Asks people to show her. Doesn’t want the heat to start, but can’t wait for it to be over.

I remind her that everybody’s chasing her, that the pressure is on them, and she says she’d rather be in tenth place. That she’d rather be the one chasing. I wonder how somebody so unsure of her abilities has found such success in this test of mental strength. I watch her chalk her hands and try to understand the contradiction. And then I see something.

Camera zoomed in, her face filling the screen, I watch her close her eyes. The two-minute warning blares through the speakers. The crowd not ten feet away is nervous, loud. Camera zoomed in, her face filling the screen, I can see something change. For all the nervousness, all the self-doubt, all the jokes about wanting to go home, Stacey finds the place every great athlete must find. When her eyes open again, she’s different. She’s the girl that everybody’s chasing.

Thirteen minutes and forty-three seconds later, the last kettlebell swing falls from the sky and Stacey falls to the pavement. It’s good enough for third in the event, and more than enough to keep her atop the leader board.

Ten minutes later and the top 16 men stand in a wide circle, the pull up bars in the middle and the crowd surrounding them all. I weave through the athletes with my camera.

I make my way to James. As we stand and wait for the start, I watch as he shakes his judge’s hand. He asks her what CrossFit she’s from and where it’s located. If he’s nervous, I can’t tell. If he gets nervous, it doesn’t show.

The heat starts and ends in what feels like thirty seconds. Between shots, I can’t help but look over my shoulder to watch James. To try to gauge what round he’s on. To see where he stands. I want so badly to be with our friends on the sidelines, screaming my voice away. The only thing we can do to help.

I realize he’s in the lead, but barely. Brad Posnanski and Scott Lewis are close. I watch James finish his second to last set of KB swings. I watch him pick the barbell up, rack it, drop it. I watch him run to the pull up bars. I watch him run back to the kettlebell.

When it hits the ground for the last time, I hear James scream. I watch him get sucked into a sea of arms. I don’t know if I’ve got the shot. In the moment, I don’t know how to marry my job and my friendship. I teeter somewhere in the middle for a moment before turning my camera around in time to catch Scott finish. James wins by six seconds.

The clock stops ticking and the competitors are picked up off the ground. Everybody knows who James is now. He shakes hands and says thank you. The smile on his face, it hasn’t changed. If he believed that this could happen, it doesn’t show.

The final standings are announced, and neither James nor Stacey are sure they’ve won. Their names crackle through the speakers when there are no other names to be read and I watch a mixture of relief and surprise wash across their faces.

Before the weekend, I would have told you that I didn’t think a person could win if they didn’t go into the event convinced of success. I’d seen the calm and confidence of Dutch Lowy in Hell’s Half Acre. I’d met Jeremy Thiel and felt the drive that emitted from him. I’d watched Carey Kepler take the lead the moment she stepped out onto the field.

And I thought that that’s what separated elite from very good. That level of intensity. The kind you can see. The kind you can hear in a voice.

But I’m beginning to realize that determination can’t be measured by my camera. I can’t zoom in close enough to see what happens to somebody when their eyes close and open again. I can’t get my microphone close enough to hear what they say to themselves in the moments before the gun goes off or in the moments when the pain sets in and there are more reps left to go.

Driving home, I think about how that is what we’re all chasing. Those answers. Those secrets. Those short cuts to our athletic potential. But I’m smart enough to know that even if Stacey Kroon and James Hobart, Dutch Lowy, Jeremy Thiel, Carey Kepler and the rest of the CrossFit Elite could tell me what they say to themselves, it wouldn’t matter. I’m smart enough to know that the voice in each of our heads speaks a language only we know how to translate. Their voices are foreign to me. Their answers are no good.

Driving home, I realize that for all the times I’ve witnessed Stacey and James rip through a workout in CrossFit Boston, for all the confidence I had in them, I failed to realize one thing: That they could still surprise me.

Driving home, I ask into the darkness if anybody still wants to go to Buffalo. Stacey in the backseat says no, and soon falls asleep.

Rafael encourages James to row just a little harder.  Picture courtesy of Evan Saint Clair.