I'm yelling as loudly as I can, but no one in the room can hear me. I'm bellowing numbers in descending order: "11!" The crowd roars. "10!" They start jumping up and down. "9!" They're looking at my hands in the air now, as the room heaves with excitement. In front of me, she's standing, hands on hips, trying to pull air down from the ceiling. I'm talking right into the back of her head. But she's gone. Gone to that "other" place. It's a domain reserved solely for the athlete at the paper-cut-sharp edge of the envelope. She's found it. Fourty-three seconds later, she'll collapse into the mob of her fans, shaking all over. Many of them have teared up.
Yeah, but how much does she weigh?
He slid, a thousand miles an hour, under his Harley-Davidson. "You'll never walk unaided," they said. "You'll never work again," they said. "How are your bed sores this morning?" they said. This summer, he ran his first 5km race. At midnight. With his son, for his 18th birthday.
Yeah, but what's his bench?
It's safe to bet that she's never won any single sport in her whole life. She's experienced that hell-on-earth when, on the playground, the teams are chosen, and she was one of the last two to be picked. "Please, pick me. Please, anything but last again. I can do better than that other kid. I'll try really hard. Please, please, pleeeeeease." So last week, when she finished the 500m row portion of the workout in first place and headed to the rower, the crowd was reserved. When she finished the box jumps in first place, they were clapping. But when she dropped the skipping rope first, they exploded. Thirty adults and teens, on their feet, cheering. I told them my voice was cracking from all the yelling, but that was a lie.
Yeah, but how many friends does she have on facebook?
Setting the table, her sister commented on how muscular her arms looked. "Holy crap, girl! What have you been DOING?!?" She told them about CrossFit. About kipping and almost doing pullups. About Barbell Bettys and knee socks and how Fran felt after a night shift and how much she could split jerk. Predictably came the response: "You're crazy. I could NEVER do that stuff." She just smiled and shrugged, quietly knowing that Confident is the new Size 4; that yes, they could do this stuff, but she alone had the guts to pull that particular trigger.
Yeah, but how many calories could she possibly burn in 20 minutes?
I'm already hanging from the bar before the referees start to argue. "He's gotta go back!" says the man in charge. My personal judges, possibly the nicest coaches this side of the 49th Parallel, tug me down from the rack and escort me through the plates, back to the bar. It wasn't a happy reunion. I had to redo 3 squat cleans at 165lbs. And I still had a quarter mile to run, 5 more big cleans and jerks, and 24 more pullups. I was staring down the barrel of a very long day.
The crowd was rowdy. It was only 9am, and many had already yelled themselves hoarse. But I couldn't hear anything: nothing but a small voice, chanting "Go-Daddy-Go! Go-Daddy-Go!" So I went.
Yeah, but he weighs under 200lbs now! He's little!
No scale in the world can measure this stuff.