You read that right. No typo.
This morning, I was reminded AGAIN why the 'cast and crew' here are so different: they have substance. Stories. Backbones. Issues, sure; but they're real people, not the Teflon-deep routine zombies you meet in so many other gyms.
This morning, Sean dropped a clean wrong. Sean's a competitive runner. And when Sean's kneecap takes a sharp turn to the left…well, I worry a bit. But three minutes later, Sean was doing pullups and pushups – the part of the WOD that he still could do – right beside Neil and Katie. He'll be here tomorrow at 7am.
There's an old cliche about adversity not creating character, but revealing it. And CrossFit is a hard anvil against which to press, fold, and temper your resolution. Being a solid person, true to oneself and one's peers, takes practice. And every day, as I witness the rehearsal of Quality, it always strikes me that it's not just anatomy being built here.
Take Shannon. Rheumatoid arthritis? Meh. Lupus? See you at lunchtime. Instead of "I'm down. What can I DO?" and a hopeless shrug at life, it's "I'm down – now. What CAN I do?" So she's rowing. And walking, and generally restarting for the seventeenth time.
Look at Renni: he gives up a weekend and a few hundred bucks to ride to Toronto….and Twitter for us at Sectionals. Doesn't even ask for a free T-shirt. He just shows up. (Note: he's the Featured Athlete today on the Catalyst Games 2010 site!)
Over here is Kiera: done her Catalyst Kids group, she drops to match her mom, burpee for burpee, when it appears that Mom's struggling to finish her own WOD. That's stuff you don't typically see from an 11-year-old, but we see it every day.
Carolle, two weeks ago, decided to learn more about this CrossFit thing, and shipped herself to Toronto (at large cost and major inconvenience, softened only by a shopping trip) to learn. No obvious reward, no promise for payback. Sunday, she's coaching at 10am (you WON'T want to miss that group.)
Yesterday, 25 of you hit 'like!' when I excitedly posted who was in the gym. Biggest cheers went to the two "at-risk" teens, their counselor (Mitch,)their coach (Josh) and their teacher – Cathi – who came in, two-year-old in tow, to make sure they showed up.
So it was almost no surprise, today, when I heard Mike call, "Hey, Quinn!" to a kid coming in for a visit. With his grandmother, Quinn rolled in – literally – to try some things out before joining Catalyst Kids tonight. A teenager, he's mostly interested in biceps curls and bench presses, but we had him do some pretty awesome stuff before letting him challenge Tanner to a foot race.
This overflow of character doesn't always come as a surprise. Not anymore. Instead, I'm surprised at the outside world: the flat-out bad driving; the inconsiderate "I'm next!"; the dog-eat-everything attitude of most. Immersion in a small but boundless world has raised my expectation of the big one outside our 16-foot door. Maybe there is more to this CrossFit thing than exercise.