Insert Inspirational Title: June 2012

To my CrossFit Family:

After two years with the Peace Corps in Africa and Costa Rica, CrossFit Flagstaff (and Hoboken) is something of a mythical place for me. I mean honestly, did I really throw loaded barbells backwards over my head outside of the old gym under Steve’s supervision? Could my 4:29 Karen time in 2010 be accurate? Did I actually do Eva, albeit scaled? Did I really do Badger prescribed next to Jaffe? More importantly, did he really beat me? Damn, he really did. Schmuck.

Some of you might be thinking, “Africa, that sounds primal.” It was in many ways. I squatted to shit every day. I ran with the rising sun through fields of sand, chased by flies as big as my thumb. I ate sheep heart, goat liver, and cow testicles. And I picked mangoes from trees with black vipers living in them. I installed a pull-up bar and made some make-shift KBs.

I wrestled in the traditional Nigerien fashion surrounded by hundreds of my villagers, and beat a strong young guy, and gained a measure of respect. Then I got the smackdown laid upon me by a high-schooler. I crashed a motorcycle, distracted by a giraffe. I turned a corner in a market town one morning to find a man with a 250lb hyena on a leash, yes. I smoked a pipe of rattlesnake skin, don’t ask. I fasted some of Ramadan and, of course, slit a sheep’s throat on Tabaski, and I couldn’t help feel my own power and a simultaneous obedience to God. I prayed with the thousands of others that day and lost myself in the chants. I let myself be liberated in that oldest of human rituals.

I often joined women as they pulled water from the wells every morning, afternoon, evening, and night, and walked the 3k back with 50L in two jugs. They were vehement about not letting me help, but I insisted – until their husbands scolded me fiercely. I’m glad I didn’t have the language skills necessary to say what I was thinking.

But other aspects weren’t what I expected. Most days, all three meals were millet and rice ground into a paste, then doused with a canned tomato paste-based sauce. Some days we had rice and beans with fried onions. Only one type of oil, peanut. A few of the miracles that Niger offers its humans are year round onions, garlic, and peanuts.

I went from 188 to 172 over the first four months. I got malaria. The cold shivers wouldn’t let my fingers get the key in the door to my house, so I threw up outside on a chair. I got E. Coli, and stomach amoebas enough times that I laugh about it now. I spent hours in metaphysical crisis squatting over a pit latrine hoping the previous night’s monsoon rains didn’t sully the foundation enough to make it collapse while I was on it – something that happened to a friend of mine. She laughs too.

But remarkably, when I was healthy, I destroyed my bodyweight workout PR times. And I was running longer distances than I ever had before. I’m sure I wouldn’t have slammed Linda or Fran, but escape from a hyena? Well, probably not that either.

Then, what I never expected. Just as I started to adapt to the illnesses, diet, and heat there was a kidnapping in the capitol, Niamey, of two Frenchmen, and their subsequent murder in the desert. They were taken from the go-to Peace Corps restaurant. There followed my rapid and dizzying evacuation from Niger, along with all the other Peace Corps volunteers in the country. My time in Africa was over before I had even settled in.

Long story short: I was given my options, made some choices, fluttered around the night markets of Marrakesh in Morocco, ate clams, got swindled at a shell game, hiked the mountains of Chefchaoen with a chocolatero, hashish producer, saw rainbows in the countryside, danced into the early morning in Málaga, glided through forests in Portugal, and gazed upon Guernica in Madrid. From the time I flew out of Amsterdam for the U.S. I had been out of Niger for two weeks. Two weeks after that, I was already in Costa Rica, starting my twenty-seven month service all over again.

Now I’ve been here for fifteen months. Time flies.

Costa Rica has been much more the primal paradise that we all desire. Ten or fifteen types of trees have edible fruit at any given time. The indigenous territory that I live on has hundreds of edible plants that are like spinach. We often cut down Royal Palm trees and eat the heart, a two foot long cylinder as thick as my thigh. Pork and chicken are the meats of choice, and avocados are around all year.

My first six months were a physical rebound from the famished Mason that I knew in Africa. My weight was up, but my emotions were down. I was in a sort of shock after having the carpet pulled out from beneath me. But, I used exercise as my medicine. I had two friends who wanted to learn about my exercise mentality, so I taught them everything I knew. (They both have gymnastic rings in their houses now.) We ran hills that made me cry faster than running Humphreys ever had. I threw up brilliantly. Eventually, I was in my site, out in the middle of the rainforest, training for my first marathon. I ran the Panama City International Marathon in December of last year. But, there was a slight issue – my back.

It started for the first time after a 150 burpee workout with some friends. The next day I had a weird looseness in my lower back on the left side. The next day, it was worse, and the third day, it was unbearable. I got a wonderful shot in the buttock from the ER and some muscle relaxants. That was two weeks before the marathon. I rested and assumed it was a pulled muscle, nothing serious. Up until the day of the race I didn’t know if I was going to be able to run. And it had since entered my mind that something in my lower back was threatening not only this race, but my future as a CrossFitter, my future as being the most ferocious person in the room. I got down on myself. I realized that I had jumped back into things after Africa really fast and really hard. It was my own fault.

In the end I ran the race. It was miserable. There’s a bridge that still appears in bad dreams, the longest bridge in history – not really.

What I really learned, after two months of physical therapy, MRIs, x-rays, consults, second opinions, chiropractors, etc., is that every person has her own pace, and limits. In this case, I thought a homemade 80lb kettle bell was a good idea. I thought a muscle-up ladder and 150-burpees twice a week was a good idea. They may have been, in that mythical land where I built up to my hard workouts, had people around to tell me to scale something, and when I was 20 years old. Slowly I’m building back my strength. But there’s no doctor or chiropractor who has been able to tell me definitively what is wrong. I’ve had to take a huge step back, and accept a life where I don’t do burpees. And…surprisingly…it’s still a wonderful life. Children still laugh. Roosters still wake me up in the morning.

Here, I don’t have Steve to tell me to scale this particular workout. No Lisa to switch out my kettle bell to a lighter weight. No Matty to use as an example, and scale my own workout because he didn’t let his pride keep him from scaling his. No Ben to skip a tough workout with and go play Ultimate Frisbee. And no group of close friends, nearly family, to keep me from doing any other array of stupid things. CF Flagstaff: it’s been almost three years since I left, but the things you all have taught me, and the memories we shared have been with me the whole time.