Monday, November 24, 2008

The Road to Atlanta (day 1)

Monday 24th November 2008

It's been a while since my last post. Life's been hectic and my time has been limited, but caught a minute here so I thought I would throw something down. 

It's Monday morning 6:30am. I have decided I'm going to attempt to journal my road and preparation to the AKC Kettlebell Meet in Atlanta, December 13th. 

Firstly, here's a little background info on recent events in my life and training. Following my CKT certification in NYC last August I suffered a severe hamstring injury which put me out of commission for quite a while. In the quest to work out at lighter loads and allow my leg to recover I stumbled upon CrossFit training and thought I'd give it a try. I was extremely shocked to discover that my fitness level was not as high as I had always believed. The CrossFit WODS kicked my butt initially and I felt humbled seeing the kind of performances other crossfitters were producing! This proved to be the fuel I needed to ignite my motivational fire inside to get back on the road to recovery and ultimately peak condition. So I decided to hit these type of workouts for a while and lay off the K-bells until I was 100% and my fitness level had increased. 

This worked well for me. My hamstring recovered and I feel that my level of fitness right now exceeds where it has ever been, so life was good! I had planned to next not to compete in K-bell competition until the New Year, but then I got an e-mail from my good friend and mentor Ken Blackburn regarding the AKC meet in Atlanta. Which happens to be on my doorstep as I live just outside Charlotte, NC so I immediately wanted to go. I got this info 4 weeks out from the meet, so I immediately went into a panic as I knew that was little prep time and I hadn't picked up the 24's since my last competition in Michigan in July! 

Initially I thought I'm not going to be able to compete, it's not enough time. I'm not the type of person to just enter competitions, If I go, I go to win or at least perform to the best of my ability. The last thing I want to do is show up at Atlanta and post lower numbers than I hit in Michigan! What to do? I pondered a while... Then it became clear, I'm a Kettlebell lifter and I love a challenge! The decision was made. Time to go to work! 

This was a week ago. I managed to hit a short 4 minute jerk set and a 2 minutes snatch set last week before I was hit by food poisoning! Yeah food poisoning, I mean are you F$@*!#ng kidding me! This cost me another week of training! So here I am 3 weeks out, feels like I'm starting from scratch, but I made my decision to compete and there's no backing out now! So today's the day, Day #1. Stay tuned, this should be interesting....... 

2 comments:

Howie B said...

Come on Ross, you can do it!!

We believe in you!!!

Make us proud!!!

(Just don't kill yourself!)

The Edge said...

Howie,

Appreciate the support mate. It's gonna be tight, but I think it's enough time for me to get where I want to be as far as my numbers go.

Had a pretty good first day today, so I'm up and running anyway!