Aromas is 360 miles north of the StubHub Center, where competition would take place that weekend, and it couldn’t be more different than the sprawling industrial suburb of Carson. Aromas is a typical Northern California agricultural town. Nearby Gilroy lays claim to the title “garlic capital of the world.” The climate is dry and unforgiving, and I could already feel it from my seat on the bus. Especially in the height of the summer months like we were in at that moment, temperatures exceed 100 degrees. On that day, the sun was unforgiving. I’m familiar with heat, but there is a uniqueness to this area. It lowers your defenses with its proximity to balmy Monterey Bay, then shoves a hot, arid fist down your throat.
There is nothing attractive about mud in your teeth. I chewed on it as I fought along poison oak–lined single tracks with scraped, bloody knees and tore into the arroyo for the second time on the trail run. I had kept Sam Briggs and Anna Tobias in my sights the entire race, battling up and down the steep, dusty hills shoulder to shoulder with rookie Kristi Eramo. It was the craziest run I had ever done—treacherous boulders to navigate around, inclines so steep they required both arms and legs, and slippery descents that had me skiing in my Reebok shoes. I took fourth in the event and headed straight to the ice bath.
The trip to Aromas was the most unique experience I had seen at the CrossFit Games. The whole day was gritty and raw, just as I imagined it had been in 2009. At every turn it felt like there were opportunities to panic or lose my head. Before the run, people were offering poison oak preventative lotion. After the run, athletes cast chairs out of the way to warm up on the wet cement floor inside the barn at the Ranch. I kept my cool. I was proud of my ability to remain calm, even in the face of a thirty-eighth-place finish on the deadlift ladder.
“If I could design the worst event that I would ever face at the CrossFit Games, it would be a 1-rep-max deadlift. Now it’s done, gone. I got it out of the way early in the competition, so now I can move on,” I told CrossFit media cameras.
I did move on. Directly to the Ranch Mini Chipper, where the hill that had been made famous at the inaugural 2007 Games lived up to its reputation as a soul crusher. After wall ball shots and med-ball GHD sit-ups, I sprinted up the 1,200-foot vertical gain until the muscles in my legs locked up. It was a unique pain. I collapsed over the finish line into the dirt and straw that lined the path. I entered the event in thirteenth, which meant I was competing in the first of two heats. It was the first time I hadn’t been in the final heat since the 2013 Games, which fired me up. I chased Brooke Wells through the entire event and my time stood up over the next heat, keeping me in the top five.
At CFNE, we talk about an individual’s circle of influence. We identify what factors are potentially ours to control and put a great deal of focus on effecting change in those areas. We give nearly equal energy to identifying elements out of our control—the weather, another athlete’s performance, someone else’s reaction. With factors that are outside our control, we practice letting them go and focusing only inside our circle of influence. It’s a critical skill that is indispensable at the Games where events are unknown and most athletes train in isolation from one another. It’s also a critical skill to a healthy life and it came in handy on our way back to Los Angeles that night.
After the Mini Chipper event, we packed up and left the Ranch for the airport in San Jose early in the afternoon—well in advance of our flight, which was scheduled for 8 p.m. When we arrived, however, everything was upside down. Southwest Airlines was in the midst of a system-wide server outage that canceled thousands of flights. Many athletes took to their cell phones. They complained to their coaches, lamented what would happen and how this would affect their ocean swim the following day. I called Ben to make sure he knew what was going on. Then I put my bag down in the line so I knew it would be impossible to board the plane without waking me up, curled up in a hoodie, and got what little sleep I could.
We got back to LAX at almost 1 a.m. On the bus ride back to the hotel, some of the women were actually conspiring to boycott the swim event.
“What are they gonna do if we all don’t show up? We need to sleep!”
I wondered if them not showing up for the event would change anything about the point standings. Probably not, I thought, as I dozed off again.
I was pleasantly surprised to see my mom and my grandfather waiting for me in the lobby, despite the hour. They had come to the Games to cheer me on and they weren’t going to let a lack of sleep get in the way of a hug. I didn’t talk a lot, but I loved that they were there. I gave them hugs and they walked me to my hotel room. It was just what I needed—for them to be there.
We met for breakfast the following morning in the hotel lobby. We have a rule at the breakfast table when we are at the Games: no talking about the competition. I just want them to be there as my family. I love to be surrounded by my people and we will talk about anything and everything else. But competition is off-limits. I count on my people to keep me grounded and sane in the midst of the insanity. On Thursday morning, we met early in the hotel lobby and drove ourselves to Manhattan Beach.
Thursday, Redondo Beach
The CrossFit Games are arguably the most egalitarian sport in the world. Women and men have earned equal amounts of prize money, promotion, screen time, and recognition since their inception. The sport has been called “wonderfully coed,” and some events provide the opportunity to pit the men against the women head to head on the same course. We had not expected the ocean swim to be such an event. It was an unwelcome surprise.
Dave’s announcement, twenty minutes before the start of the event, that all athletes—men and women—would compete together came as a shock. While I was not afraid to match myself against the swimming abilities of the men, a short sprint like this one was more like combat than sport. We would have to throw ourselves into the waves with eighty other bodies like a school of sardines. I set myself up in the back row at the start and devised a plan to swing wide of the crowd to keep myself safe.
I can actually swim really well, but you would never know it by watching me compete at the Games. In a pool, I can swim. But if you put me in open water, I panic as soon as I put my head under. I come up gasping for air as if I’m drowning. It’s like I forget everything. I’ll resign myself to a breaststroke or a doggy paddle, at least until I get a little bit of distance behind me.
During the swim at my first Games in 2013, my only goal was to survive. I was in zero rush whatsoever, and I had no sense of urgency. Racing was the last thing on my mind. When I finished the swim, I was still only a third of the way done but I took my time getting to my bike, just content to be on dry land. In 2015, I panicked again, despite how much I had worked on it. When this happens, I get disappointed and have an internal monologue about why I should be conducting myself differently.
Kat, you’ve practiced this. What are you doing? You can swim! Get a grip! Here we go again. Kat, are you really doing this?
I had convinced myself that this year would be different. But sure enough, when the mass of eighty bodies exploded into the surf around me, I choked up. I went into protection mode, not daring to put my head down for fear of the arms and legs kicking and splashing all around me. After we passed the breaking waves, I settled into more of a rhythm. In my defense, a mass start with the male athletes was no joke. Ben Smith, the 2015 male athlete, described it as “more of a fistfight and a run than a swim event.” When we hit the waves, it was chaos.
After the first buoy, I forced myself to put my head in the water. My stroke continued to smooth out. By the time I reached the second buoy, I was fired up. I was becoming fearless in the water and it felt amazing. Some people know how to body surf, but I have no awareness whatsoever when I’m in the water. Likewise, I’m cautious on the return trip to the beach, anxious to anticipate when another wave will wash over me and potentially separate me from the little oxygen I was getting. This time I made the final turn for the beach and slammed on the proverbial accelerator. My body felt li
ke I was in an all-out effort on the Assault Bike. Everything was burning. I was so lactic that my body went numb. I knew that if I got buried by a wave, I would probably need to be saved by the lifeguard. With my current state of oxygen deprivation, it would have been impossible to survive even a few seconds underwater. I threw caution to the wind and kept charging.
When I made it safely to the beach, I was thrilled. I bounded out of the surf and tried to sprint, but my legs weren’t working. They were like noodles. I raced along the soft sand and over the finish line in eleventh place. It was my best swim event finish of my career on paper, but more important, in my mind, I had pushed my limits beyond what I thought I was capable of, and the result was tremendous. I was so happy with how hard I was able to push, but I was not surprised. Everything was falling into place as the result of hard work. Hard work that extended beyond the gym. To really excel at the CrossFit Games, athletes have to find little ways to positively impact their performance. This year, changes I had made in the kitchen, of all places, were paying huge dividends.
* * *
When I arrived at the Games in 2016 to defend my title, I was 8 pounds lighter than I had been the previous year. My body was visibly leaner, and seemingly more muscular than it had been the previous times I competed. My placements in the first three events spoke for themselves. After the swim event, people wanted to know how I had done it.
My secret weapon was my newly acquired nutrition coach, Adee Cazayoux. Adee is now well-known for overseeing the performance nutrition of many top names in our sport with her company, Working Against Gravity (WAG). Adee was a competitive Olympic weightlifter herself, and her once modest business was born from what she calls a “jenky little blog” where she documented macronutrient tracking methods that she utilized to compete and make weight while pursuing qualification for the World Championship. Now WAG employs over fifty staff members and has affected tens of thousands of people.
I had never really known how to properly fuel my body for what I was asking of it. With my big days of training filled with grueling protocols I was definitely not eating correctly to recover. Coming out of gymnastics I was deathly afraid of carbs. I would eat very clean, but I didn’t know much about timing or what the composition of my meals should look like. The biggest change that started immediately for me was that Adee had me lower my fat intake and up my carbs a lot! Coming from someone who at most ate maybe some fruit during the day, this terrified me. And not to mention that I relied heavily on fats as the majority of my caloric intake at the time. But Adee walked me through the process and explained why we were doing what we were doing.
I simply had no clue how extremely important it was for an athlete working at my level of exertion to eat carbs! All I was sure of was that it was going to make me gain weight. I had yet to learn about the role carbohydrates play during high-intensity workouts and also what our bodies need to recover after intense exercise. I started adding oatmeal with my eggs in the morning, eating a packet of raisins while I was training, having a banana with my protein shake after training, and adding rice or sweet potatoes to both my lunch and dinner.
I limited my fat intake by substituting whole eggs for a fifty-fifty combination of whole eggs and egg whites. I would limit my avocado intake to one half each day instead of a whole one, and my peanut butter intake had to take a big dip. It took a little time to get consistent and find my new norm, but I started to feel so much better when I did. I had more energy in training and I was recovering faster. My strength numbers, my times on the track, and my weight on the scale were all trending in the right direction. Adee was right! My body was thriving on this new mix of macronutrients. This balance is very personal to everyone, and what works for me most likely will not work for you unless you are training at a similar volume. Having a coach like Adee help you find the specific mix that works for your body is critical to success. There is no one-size-fits-all diet.
I was over the moon at how well I was performing, and honestly, I also felt good about the way I looked. What I didn’t like was the way other people were voicing their opinions about my body. I had been in the spotlight a lot since becoming the Fittest Woman on Earth, which came with tons of perks. There were drawbacks as well, however. Most of all, I found it stressful to be under the magnifying glass of other people’s scrutiny. There are external and self-imposed pressures to look and be a certain way when you are crowned the champion of the CrossFit Games, and that pressure feels compounded when photo shoots, videos, and social media posts are swirling around the internet.
Beauty and what people consider to be beautiful are subjective—a piece of art or a natural landscape. However, when it comes to defining beauty as it pertains to women, the majority of people tend to focus on what they see. Social pressures cause women to aspire to unhealthy aesthetics. Society still tells women that they need to be less. To be smaller. To be thinner. And honestly that is what I had aspired to be the majority of my life and growing up!
Competing with the fittest humans on the planet can make it challenging to be confident in your appearance. Many of the athletes in the CrossFit Games have a tiny amount of body fat covering abs on top of other abs. It’s easy to feel like small imperfections set you apart in a bad way. It would be easy to let the outward appearance of these statuesque athletes make you self-conscious or uncomfortable. It seems easy for people to forget that professional athletes are people. We compete on a bigger stage than others, but we are not made out of wood. I’m a twenty-five-year-old woman who lives and breathes. I’ve created a championship mind-set and work capacity, but that doesn’t make me immune to scrutiny of my body.
In gymnastics, a big focus was always put on being smaller, skinnier, and lighter—especially with the Romanian coaches. I never fit the mold the coaches were pressuring me into and I felt like I was constantly fighting two battles, one with them and one with myself. My body simply was not made for what they wanted. As a girl I relished beating the boys on the playground, but I was still self-conscious when I was bigger than them or had more muscles. When I was young it bothered me that I was bigger than most of the other girls.
Iceland certainly leads the world in women’s rights, and our celebration of strong women shielded us in part from this way of thinking, but that does not mean the island is immune to the pressures and images that come from mainstream media. As social media became more popular, everything from fashion to fitness became more global. This has increased pressures on girls to meet a standard that is deemed beautiful in the mainstream, but it’s not healthy. Iceland set me up for success when it came to loving myself, but CrossFit sealed the deal.
When I first stepped into CrossFit BC, I was amazed to find that I had to go into the bathroom to find a mirror. I was used to gyms that were hyperfocused on how you looked. The CrossFit community is hyperfocused on how you perform. CrossFitters think of our bodies as machines. The muscles and body types that others would mistakenly criticize are visual reminders to us of the hard work that we do daily in the gym and on the competition floor.
Our bodies and the muscles we carry are something we should and can be proud of. We have worked so hard for them. It is amazing what our bodies are capable of doing!
The CrossFit community celebrates strong women and powerful performances, helping to reinforce a new paradigm in which being a strong woman is inspiring and impressive. It’s become popular to be capable in your own body. As a community we put far more value on physiology than on anatomy, and I want to pass that on to all women.
The skills we gain through training give women a new type of confidence. My hands may be rough, but that’s because I can do amazing things with them. All my scars, bumps, and bruises represent hard work and accomplishment. The way I look represents the hurdles and struggles I’ve had to overcome. My confidence is grounded in my abilities; they are not based on a standard of how people think I should look.
None of this means that I don’t like acting like a girl. You can still
be girlie or feminine or whatever you want. The point is that you decide what that means to you. I still live by the motto “When in doubt, sparkle it out.” I love to pamper myself and look my best, but this has nothing to do with beauty. Beauty and toughness are about confidence in who you are, whatever that means to you. That always shines through.
I see the shift toward this mind-set happening in women of all ages. When people first walk into CFNE they often want to look a certain way. Before long they are pulling me over to see their first pull-up. Instead of size 0 dresses, they want a rope climb. Where before they were concerned about getting bulky, now they are posting proud pictures on social media because they worked hard for their physical aesthetic.
I get contacted by young women who struggle with body image all the time, and I am thrilled at the opportunity to help reshape the goals, ambitions, and view of beauty for the next generation. I want to do my part to help them focus on what they can do and not how they look.
Being the best possible version of yourself is a highly personal thing. I want to help women of all ages embrace themselves and have confidence.
* * *
Ben and O’Keefe walked me back to the car. At the Games, I live in my own world. I’m so focused that I sometimes won’t even hear people talking to me. In this moment, however, I was fully lucid. It was a beautiful sunny day and we stopped to take in the scenery. I was overwhelmed by a realization of just how important these two men are to my life and my success. They make sure that I’m fed and taken care of, they take care of all the little details and let me focus all my attention on being great, but that’s really just the start. They are the linchpins for a team of people who surround me and challenge me daily to grow and improve myself. They have become family. They are indispensable.
Everything I do throughout the year culminates in one weekend. Everything is laser focused. I don’t have my phone on me. I don’t call or respond to texts. It’s the one week out of the year where I focus on my thing and that’s it. The Games require everything you’ve got, and they’re what my life revolves around now.
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