Wimp to Spartan Transformation: If Steve Urkle and crossfit had a baby, that baby would be me.

Spartan Crossfit Wimp to Spartan 6 from Peter Murphy on Vimeo.

My Shane-name today was MScanglorious (MomScan says, “Bill O’Reilly eat your heart out”). Fitting considering my day was basically an epic life-fail. But I’ll take it.

Waking up in the morning has always been a challenge for me. I have to set my alarm clock to an hour before I actually have to get out of bed. This is a very bad habit that I picked up from a roommate. I recognize that, but I can’t stop. Well, last night I decided to break the cycle. I set my alarm clock for when I REALLY needed to be out of bed. This morning, I felt the effects. FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATE I arose from my bed in a panic, hating myself for trying to better myself. I threw the only clean gym clothes I could find into a bag, donned some unremarkable office attire and flew like the wind out of my front door.

Fast forward to 6pm. I put on seemingly ok and well-fitting gym clothes, but, and this is a HUGE but, I forgot to pack socks. Ladies and gentlemen, I was THAT girl. I was that girl who wore sneakers without socks. I LOATHE that girl on principle. I’ve never experienced what I would deem an assault on my nose from such a girl or person for that matter (men are WAY worse about this), but I can imagine the treachery. That thought makes me nauseous. So, I was feeling like a failure before my workout began. I likened this feeling to being that freshman girl who wears a “super cute” skirt to school on the first day of high school, and leaves the bathroom, and the back is tucked into her undies. I swallowed these feelings of inadequacy and self-consciousness and dove right into the workout.

A minute later, I started sweating, as is what happens when one lifts heavy things for funsies. This sweat got under my bandage that was beautifully wrapped around my lower calf, and attacked my festering rope-burn-wound-thing like Trojan soldiers: brutally and unexpectedly. Everything from my knees down failed within the first five minutes. I soldiered on, knowing that Mandy Gill would have cheered me on, and Carrie Adams and Katy McCabe would have done celebratory interpretive dances while laughing maniacally. Why this thought fueled me, I could not tell you at this juncture. Ask me in a month. I digress…

So, my posture was not so good. Because of years of riding horses, my back likes to be ultra-arched. This is not good in crossfit apparently. I’m supposed to bring my pelvis (Do you think Elvis had a rough time in middle school?) under and make sure my core is straight and engaged. This proved to be an issue again today. We did some rocking that was meant to show me proper posture for lifting and crossfit life. I understand it now in theory but will have to work extra hard on my own time to solidify this correction.

We then did deadlifts again. I believe I got up to 128 pounds. I maintain that it was more than that, because of the man-calluses I now have on my hands from lifting. They are so large they have their own gravitational pulls, which makes separating my fingers a challenge. I did three sets of five and then we moved onto the real WOD: 10 pull-ups (with the magical rubber bands from Heaven), 15 elevated pushups (there was more grunting), 25 sit-ups (in which I could fake-karate chop Shane in the neck to get some momentum) and 40 squats (knees out!). I had to do that 3 reps for time. The first time, meh. The second time, I shaved off 30 seconds. The third time I added 18 seconds to my second time. I’ll take it for now, because what’s the use of beating myself up over it, right? Right! All of this was followed by a 270-meter farmers carry with a 30 lbs dumbbell in each hand. I have explicitly said that I never wanted to do this again, and yet... Every time I had to put them down, I had to do 15 squat thrusts, but Shane’s a tyrant, so I didn’t do these punishment squat thrusts when I put down the weights. O no! They accumulated into one master punishment at the end. My hands could barely grip these damn torture devices because of having to do the pull-ups and because they were slippery. I had to put down the weights 6 times. THAT’S 90 SQUAT THRUSTS! Shane, feeling sorry for me no doubt, said I could do 45 of them that day and the rest on Friday. I took the deal, because it would take less energy than waging psychological warfare, of which only women are capable.

Now, you’re probably wondering what Steve Urkle, Family Matters’ favorite character, has to do with crossfit. I’ll tell you. Those “clean” shorts I grabbed in my morning confusion and panic are shorts that do not, in fact, fit me. Around my tush that extends into last Tuesday, they fit very well, indeed. Around my waist, it’s like “remember that time you knew what size you were?” During the entire workout, ESPECIALLY THE SQUAT THRUSTS, they were falling down.  I’m not talking like a little down, and we can laugh it off. I’m talking an almost repeat of the Tuxedo, NY race where my shorts tried their damnedest to abandon me. They were falling down to such an extent that Murph had to edit out the squat thrusts.  So, in my exhausted mind, I thought the only remedy was to make myself look the ass. I pulled them up as high as they could go and continued with the squat thrusts. It was at this time that David, Crossfit South Brooklyn’s owner, winked and smiled at me. I must admit to you that we have established that joking rapport, but his timing could not have been more perfect. I mooned his entire gym, and then got a wink. I was MORTIFIED! Let’s revisit that unfortunate high school girl: I felt like that girl, when someone tells her that “my little pony undies” are totally out of vogue. I determined that a) I need a new life and b) when buying shorts, always look for a drawstring. Meanwhile, giant cameraman Murph was laughing at me. I took joking-offense as I was beating myself up, and said, “I’ll make you do this one day,” as if I was anything put the sweaty, red-hot mess trying desperately to keep her pants up. Murph responded, “Yeah right! I’m not stupid.” I frowned, pouted, and thought, “Am I stupid?”

I recognize that I forgot socks; my shorts were falling down (talk about a tan-line), my hair was in my face; I was sweaty and red-faced, and my wound that would take Jesus-like healing powers to cure was stinging, but I kept going. Was this stupidity? NO MURPHACUS! AND NO SPARTANS! THIS WAS FAMILY MATTERS SPARTAN EDITION! AROO!