Competing for Myself

“I want to get more comfortable being uncomfortable. I want to get more confident being uncertain. I don’t want to shrink back just because something isn’t easy. I want to push back and make more room in the area between I can’t and I can.”

― Kristin Armstrong

When I first moved to Colorado, I was pregnant with my daughter. I left behind a tight-knit mom tribe in NYC where my son was born two years earlier.  Around this time, I remember reading a story about a mother who used a community tennis league to combat the loneliness and isolation of new motherhood. She described how she would line up her little plastic tennis trophies on her mantle and smile. She was embarrassed that these small trinkets brought her such a sense of accomplishment, but she didn’t care. Raising babies and toddlers was a tough job without reviews, evaluations, ribbons or trophies. She was searching for herself and proving that she could still set a goal, work hard and accomplish it. Her struggle resonated with me. I had pretty much accepted settling into motherhood on the sidelines.

Little did I know, it is almost impossible to live in Colorado and not embrace an active lifestyle. Only months after giving birth to my daughter, some of my new neighbors convinced me to sign up for my first 5k. I was terrified. I had never run that far in my life. I was a sprinter in high school, but that was 15 years and two kids ago. Would I completely embarrass myself and fail miserably? Thankfully, these fears were not realized. As I finished that first race with my neighbor and husband running alongside me, I was exhilarated. I had stepped outside my comfort zone, tried something new and felt completely proud of myself for doing it.

I signed up for my next race and then eventually moved up to 10k races, marathons and a 24 hour team relay race. I had caught the bug. Soon, I was reading books like Mother Runner and Kristin Armstrong’s Mile Markers. There was an entire community of mothers who found great satisfaction in doing something for themselves, and they were welcoming me with open arms. Although I was not collecting tennis trophies, I beamed with pride each time I added a race shirt or finisher’s medal to my budding collection. I was not competing with anyone other than myself, and I held the tangible evidence to show I was improving every time.

When we moved to North Carolina, my husband convinced me to try this crazy new CrossFit thing. It was so intimidating. I thought I was a fit runner, but my first WOD (workout of the day) left me humbled. Surprisingly, I decided to go back again, and again, and again. Eventually, we invested in some equipment and started doing the workouts at home. Neighbors showed interest and wanted to get involved, which leads us to where we are now - owning our own CrossFit affiliate. Again, I was in a position where I experienced how rewarding it can be to step outside my comfort zone and try new things.

In the beginning, I was not competing with anyone else in CrossFit. I was working against my own PRs (personal records) and trying to pick up new skills: pull-ups, push-ups, deadlifts, cleans, snatches, etc. There was so much to learn. But as I developed my skills, I began to lose a bit of perspective. I am going to be a coach! I need to beat people to prove myself. When you take away the context, it seems pretty silly that in my mid-thirties I became consumed with exercising better than other people. It sounds quite ridiculous. Yet, there I was with knots in my stomach before every workout, worried that I would embarrass myself.

I completely lost sight of my goal of staying healthy and active while cultivating friendships and enjoying myself. Once exercise became a source of stress, I was undoing the good I did for myself by working out. I was no longer competing with myself to prove what I could do. I fell into the dangerous trap of comparing myself to other people in real life and on social media. In these comparisons, I always fell short and lost in my mind. The self-induced pressure became too much, and I was no longer having fun. I needed an extreme shift in perspective.

Kristin Armstrong writes, “Pause today and notice something you have worked hard on and recognize yourself for it. Acknowledge your effort.” I decided to take her advice. I was proud of how far I had come as an athlete. I was also proud that I managed to find some balance between career, marriage, parenthood and fitness. My first instinct was to drop any competitive approach to CrossFit and focus solely on exercising to maintain my health, but I soon recognized a golden opportunity for personal growth. What if I could compete against myself and show up but without the pressure of holding myself to unrealistic standards? Perhaps it was possible to have fun competing along with friends and family as a means of celebrating personal achievement. This sense of accomplishment, the same feeling I craved as a new mother, had been lost to me, but I could find my way back to competing for myself.

A close friend convinced me to step outside my comfort zone and sign up for my first actual CrossFit competition. I decided to prove to myself that showing up is more important than the place I finish. In time, I signed up for local competitions at our box, partner competitions with my closest friends, and some team competitions where my kids got to watch me compete alongside their dad. It has become much less important that I have only had one podium finish, and to be honest, there were only four teams and one team got injured. Oftentimes, I have been at least 15 years older than the strong, fit girls I am competing against, which is actually pretty cool. “Take a look, ladies. This is where you will be in 20 years and two kids from now.”

I wish I could say that I have completely conquered feeling like I need to prove myself to others. Beyond the expected pre-competition jitters, I still battle the excessive Crazy Jaime factor and try to avoid becoming engulfed in a state of utter panic. As with any transformation, the process is often more circular than linear. It’s also true that I always had to be convinced by someone else to participate and get off the sidelines. I needed that push to sign up for my first race. My husband dragged me to try CrossFit. Just this past weekend, a friend made me get on the competition floor with sixteen other women from my box at a local all-female competition. It is possible that without these people in my life, I would have stayed safely in my comfort zone and never known my true potential. Instead, my children see me getting in the game and standing up to my fears on a regular basis. And, as painfully happened this weekend, the younger competitors can look at me and say, “I hope I can be out here doing this when I’m your age.”

Don’t count me out quite yet, girls. I might still be here competing in twenty years.