I do lots of intervals in training, and I love them. One of Ben’s many talents is formulating combinations and rep schemes that fall just outside my abilities. I’m forced to exceed my limitations, suck it up, and go again. More than anything, this enhances my mental ability to succeed or die trying. There is an expectation in these workouts that I will fail. It’s part of the learning process that ensures I will not fail when it matters, right now—at game time. Those failures are why I am supremely confident I will finish the squats in Round 3.
From the moment the buzzer sounds, I’m in attack mode. All the women are even after the first rope climb but I jump up for my second rep first, before everyone else. I’m the first athlete at the SkiErg. I decide I’m going to try to break it. I’ve put dozens of hours in with the SkiErg, and I know every nuance of this machine. I know I can ride it hard with little effect.
With the calories completed, I sprint to the bar and rip it from the ground without hesitation. There is no pacing. My eyes are fixed on the mat in front of me, where the number of reps to complete is marked. In Round 1, we advanced the barbell every 10 reps.
A lifetime of handstands and gymnastics training have rewarded me with strong and flexible shoulders. I remember Amma, my grandmother, razzing me as a child because I spent so much time walking on my hands.
“The only suntan you’ll ever have is on your ankles!” she would say.
It’s paying off now. I wish she could see me.
I keep my grip narrow and focus on keeping the weight balanced. The first 10 reps feel smooth and methodical.
I advance. It’s clear I’m in the lead. My legs are feeling the soreness of the week, but my pace remains unchanged. I finish 20 reps. Beside me, Annie advances in hot pursuit and it spurs me on. With the interval winding down, I step forward once more to bank one more rep. I end the interval in the lead with 31.
“That is a big gamble,” TV announcer Chase Ingraham says to viewers at home.
He’s not wrong. I am gambling.
But I know this event is stacked in my favor. I live on intervals. I’m going to break this workout in half. I can maintain my suicide pace, and the other women are going to be forced to make a decision: match my pace and risk disaster, or watch me collect 100 points.
Image isn’t everything, but it’s important. I made a point to look strong during the rest period. No slouching, no hands on the hips, no obvious signs I was feeling pain. I grab my chalk and immediately return to face my rope.
Everything goes smoothly again through the rope climbs and the SkiErg in Round 2. I run to my bar slightly behind Annie and another Icelandic competitor, Sara Sigmundsdóttir.
“For the two-time defending champion, it’s risk versus reward,” says announcer Brandon Domaigne.
I’ve decided I want both.
I hoist the bar up at once, ignoring my instincts to extend my rest. I’m aware of fatigue in my arms, but I don’t care. The transitions are more frequent now that we are north of 30 reps; we’re moving forward every 3 reps. From the corner of my eye, I can see Annie. She’s chasing me from a few reps back.
After the second interval, I jog back. I have 49 squats in the bank when I begin Round 3. The rope climbs are becoming challenging, but my mind has gone into autopilot and the movements are happening automatically now. The crowd erupts as I leave the SkiErg for my barbell.
There you are, I think, as the rush of endorphins pushes away my muscle fatigue and I feel a tingling sensation run up my spine. There’s my magic.
“You’ve been asking for it all weekend. Where’s the Katrin we saw in 2015 and 2016?” Domaigne says as I jump onto the finish platform and beam a platter-sized smile. “We see her again in event number 12!”
I’m grinning like a crazy woman for the duration of the event. I can’t erase it. I never want it to go away. I find Ben immediately when I exit the stadium floor and shout to him excitedly through a smile.
“I know it’s Sunday, Ben. And I know that it’s late, but I found my magic!”
It’s in this moment I realize what I had been getting wrong all along. All this time I had been waiting for some external force—the venue, the crowd, a wand-toting fairy godmother—to re-create the intangible feelings of invincibility that led me to victory in years past. I had been waiting for it to happen to me instead of making it happen for me. I had to create my own magic.
“My only question,” Ingraham asks, “is why is this happening now, in Event 12? Why haven’t we seen this for the eleven other events?!”
It was the question we had been pondering the entire weekend. Ben and I now agree: Ferocity was the missing ingredient. We had caged the lion. We had changed the winning formula by playing it safe. In training and in competition, we’d been conservative. But it was aggression and some recklessness that had earned me two championships. This event had reminded me of my abilities. I feel reborn heading into the final.
The walk from the Coliseum back to the main athlete area takes us through a short underground tunnel that emerges into the beer garden: an airplane-sized hangar sporting a 100-foot-high widescreen where viewers enjoy food, drinks, and the competition. As we enter, the crowd erupts. They have lined the barrier to greet us with an ocean of high-fives and selfie requests.
Once we reach the athlete area, recovery time is short. After a quick celebration of my event win, our team maximizes the time by focusing on carrying the mental edge into the final event.
“You gotta fight, Kat,” Ben tells me emphatically.
“I know,” I reply.
“I’m serious. You’re not out of the running,” he says.
His eyes are penetrating.
“I know,” I repeat.
“Katrin, you really need to—” he starts.
“Ben, I know,” I interrupt.
He’s trying to convince me to fight when there wasn’t a doubt in my mind I was going out there to fight and win for the final event, the Fibonacci Final:
3-5-8 reps of:
deficit handstand push-ups
5-8-13 reps of:
124-pound kettlebell deadlifts
Then, 35-pound kettlebell overhead lunge 89 feet to the finish line.
In past years, I had taken Amma onto the field with me for the final event, symbolically. I had felt her presence the entire weekend and now, more than ever, I pictured Amma standing alongside me, encouraging me to fight to the end.
More than ever, I had felt her presence throughout the weekend. The love-ball necklace she and my grandfather, Afi, had gifted me is my prized possession. It has accompanied me onto the field for the final event the past two years, and I hold it in my hand now as I look to the sky and meditate on words of encouragement from the notes she often wrote me.
“You are the strongest of anyone in the world, and together we are even stronger than that … can you even imagine?”
I lay the necklace next to the parallettes where I will perform my handstand push-ups. It isn’t an event that lines up well for me on paper. Deadlifts have been a weakness in the past. These are heavy—124 pounds in each hand—and there are a lot of them. But I’ve overcome staggering odds before. It was in a final event similar to this one that I took the lead from Sara Sigmundsdóttir in 2015, deadlifting my way to a gold medal with these exact same kettlebells. Sara enters the final ahead of me again—this time in fourth. Annie and I sandwich her on the leaderboard.
The point separation is impossibly close among the top five women. This single event will decide who takes the gold.
All the women in the race are virtually shoulder to shoulder as we charge through the handstand push-ups and deadlifts. Entering the final round, it’s clear the overhead walking lunge is where the event will be won. Any stumble could spell a loss.
I feel unstable the moment I send the bells overhead. I try to focus on the finish line and the screaming crowd urging me toward it. Annie is already ten lunges ahead of me. From the corner of my eye, I see Sara a few lanes away in lockste
p with me as we begin our lunges. Annie’s and Sara’s presence jolts my brain to override my exhaustion and I charge down the lane, my trailing knee driving into the ground and my lead leg shaking with each lunge. Annie falters. When her bells go down, I dig for one final push. I know Sara is feeding off this surge, too. I grit my teeth. I pass Annie at the very moment she picks up her bells and returns to lunging. We charge, together now, toward the end of the competition.
Annie overtakes me two steps from the finish line. My knee fails to hit the ground. I am forced to retrace 5 feet before continuing. Sara and Annie lunge on to victory. I take third in the heat and fourth overall in the event. I collapse. I know I’ve given everything I could. I sit, dumbfounded on the finish mat as I watch Tia-Clair Toomey fail her final rep of lunges, then recover to tumble over the finish line alongside Kara Saunders (née Webb). They’re separated by nineteen-hundredths of a second.
I’m proud of my performance. But an emptiness is filling me. I realize the Games are over and I haven’t done enough. I experience a terrible new emotion—regret. I stand helplessly on the finish mat and wait for the results to be tabulated. It’s agonizing. Dave calls Annie’s name for third place. She’s elated. She flashes a 100-megawatt smile around the arena. Then he brings Kara and Tia out onto the floor and it sinks in that not only have I not defended my title, I’m not going to be on the podium at all. Dave calls out the name of the 2017 champion, and for the first time in two years, it’s not my name. I watch, heartbroken, as Tia celebrates her victory from the middle of the floor, the same place I had stood last year and the year before.
This is the hardest moment for me. I’ve been in Tia’s shoes. I’ve heard my name called. I know the overwhelming joy of that triumphant moment. My heart breaks.
The massive leaderboard flashes the official standings. I’m in elite company. It’s an honor simply to be among this group of women. It gives me perspective. But it doesn’t make me feel any better. I join Tia on the competition floor to congratulate her. I hug her through my tears. She’s crying, too—from joy.
I’m surrounded by people, many of them my friends, but I suddenly feel overwhelmingly lonely. Wistfully, I scan the crowd for a friendly face. Someone who loves me. Will everyone still love me now that I’m not the Fittest Woman on Earth? I wish Amma were here. She’d be screaming her face off, cheering for me—unaware or unconcerned that I didn’t win. Amma was always so proud of me.
When I walk off the floor into the tunnel, Ben is waiting for me. My eyes well up with tears again. He hugs me.
“I’m proud of you,” he says.
I endure the awards ceremony, but I’m dying inside. The pizza tastes bitter. It tastes like fifth place. I go through the motions of my obligations: interviews, a press conference, drug testing. Then, I slowly pack my things in the warm-up area.
You win or you learn, we like to say. As Ben and I drive back to the hotel, I can tell he wants to wait before debriefing the week. But I’m ready now. I was ready the moment I finished the Fibonacci Final. We start talking, looping through downtown Madison as we consider the minutiae of each moment, eventually pulling over into a parking lot when it’s clear I want to examine deeply.
“We were too conservative,” Ben says. “I thought if I got you here healthy, we’d be okay.”
He miscalculated, he continues, and takes complete responsibility.
An hour later, we have outlined a plan for the coming year. But the big questions in my mind are still unresolved:
How did we get here? What went wrong? And, most important: How do we fix it?
2
FAMILY
FJÖLSKYLDA
What makes a Great Sled Dog? Breed, Ambition, Tough Feet
—JANE J. LEE
The below-freezing temperature preserves every exhalation, exaggerating my respiration rate as long, drawn-out clouds that hang at eye level. The result is a dramatic accentuation of the already icy edge to a rivalry that has been seven years in the making.
We both know what’s at stake. The implications of victory or loss in this setting go beyond any trophy or ribbon. My stomach does more than backflips as I approach the start. Side flips, indos, corkscrews.
I’ve run this course a million times. It’s a short sprint with no tricks. But it feels alien in this light. The bank of the second turn has amassed substantially, compliments of a consistent wind that has built over the course of the week, and the waning light of the Icelandic winter afternoon betrays the slightest shimmer of black ice just beyond the finish line. I do my best to choke back the doubt as we take our spots on the starting line.
The call to action comes from my left.
“Ready…”
Focus, I think.
“Set…”
The familiar count is taking an eternity today.
“Go!”
My mind goes blank. This is it. This is me.
My confidence returns once the race begins. This is always when I’m at my best: in the moment. Just let me work. My spring off the line goes flawlessly and within five strides, I’m at top speed. I can feel my competitor off my left shoulder, ready to pounce. We speed down the course in the formation, like we’ve been lit on fire—clear of thought, driven by emotion. It’s not fear of losing that drives us but a distaste for it.
Every muscle in my body is on high alert as brain chemicals that served my ancestors in battle course through my body. My head is tingling, my thoughts are clear. For some, this would be punishment. It’s the place I’m most happy.
With the finish line in reach, I falter. Clumsily, I’ve clipped my own heel, something I’ll later blame on the ungainliness of the boots I’m wearing. I recover partially … one step, a half hop, my left foot finds purchase. Nope. It’s hopeless, I’m coming in hot. I’m going down. My hands search for the ground as I sprawl, but this is destined to be awkward, potentially painful. Definitely dangerous.
For better or worse, my competitor is entangled in my mess. We are locked as a unit in the chaos, flailing onto the ground and across the finish line in a ball. Our winter clothes provide a small buffer from the concrete, but the impact is still real.
After it’s determined that no one has been hurt, we collapse in laughter. After all, he’s my little brother Jack, and the lamppost that marks the finish line is just one of many arbitrary markers to which we would race on our walk home from school. I gave him a minute or two to collect himself before we carry on racing to the next. That one was a tie, and I still want to beat him.
Jack is two years younger than me and the truth is, he would be just as happy not racing around like a crazy person, but he could never escape when I was in search of a competition. Poor guy. I don’t think he minded that much, but he also would have been happy playing on his own.
I came out of the womb hypercompetitive, and even that is understating it. If there wasn’t a physical challenge available, I created one. I loved competition then as much as I love it now.
When I was home by myself, sometimes I would put a clock on the floor and try to hold a handstand, then I’d try to beat my own time. At school, I would challenge my classmates to see who had the most pencils in their pencil case. Competitiveness is written deep into my genetic code. It came as part of the package.
Home videos of me as a baby are family legend. There is one where I am an infant, still crawling, trying desperately to get up a step. I fail over and over and over again. When my grandmother comes over to help, I defensively push her away. Another shows me on the playground, attempting to climb a slide from the bottom up. The older kids are zooming around me, irritated by my presence. I’m so slow. Still, I refuse any help. Two-year-old me is determined to make it by herself.
My mom encouraged this early determined streak. She was sixteen when I was born. Because she was so young, she was often told she wasn’t ready to be a mother and that she wouldn’t be a good mom. Instead of internalizing it, she went on a mission to make me a wonderbaby. She read countless
books on parenting and bought nearly every learning toy on the market. If children were supposed to say ten words by the age of one, I was going to say thirty. If I was supposed to be 50 pounds at a certain age, I would weigh 60. If I was supposed to walk, I was going to run. It was her mission to see me surpass normal goals and reach for greatness. I internalized this drive for excellence into my athletic future.
I was born in London, where my grandfather Helgi Ágústsson was a diplomat. He was stationed there as the Icelandic Ambassador to the United Kingdom. My mother takes pleasure in reminding me I was two weeks late in being born. A sign of things to come, she teases, because of my reputation for running a few minutes behind.
We moved to Iceland when Jack was two. My grandparents stayed behind in the United Kingdom. I was sad to leave them, but I visited almost every other month.
Iceland is a great place to grow up. Hafnarfjörður, the Reykjavik suburb where we moved, could not have contrasted more sharply to the metropolis of London. Like nearly everywhere in Iceland, it was clean and safe and everyone knew each other. Children can stay outside all day and often do, even well into the night. We lived on a circle drive where there were tons of other kids, and we would play massive games of hide-and-seek and tag.
The year after we moved home, my little sister, Hannah, was born. I can tell you that the world was not ready for that force of nature. If Jack and I are cut from the same black-and-white cloth, Hannah is a purple-and-green, polka-dotted butterfly. From birth, she had the attitude of a hurricane. No one can tell Hannah what to do or when she can do it.
Hannah has no fear. She doesn’t have a filter, either, which got her in trouble a time or two when she was younger. She is also very strong—way stronger than me—but her aversion to conformity wasn’t a good fit for organized sports. Or coaches.
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