Kids Cert: Day One!

It's been a long, but amazing 24 hours! What started out as a not-so-great Friday has turned into an excellent Saturday of learning all about the Crossfit Kids program...oh, and a few workouts too!

A brief recap of how things all started going down on Friday afternoon. We had a grad student happy hour after classes and went to a bar that has one of those fancy-schmancy ID swipers. Well, my driver's license is expired and I renewed it online...but I threw away the confirmation receipt/temporary license. This bar didn't accept passports, so the one I had on me didn't matter. I begged and pleaded to be let in, and the bouncer finally relented after 10 minutes of arguing. But then I realized: CRAP! I'm going to need a valid driver's license to rent my car in California! After the happy hour, my roommate and I headed over to the offices to try and reprint my temporary license, but I couldn't access the online system. Then Heather even drove me home so I could dig through my trash - no dice. I thought maybe the car rental place would take a bank statement saying I had renewed the license online, but I called them from the airport and they told me NO! I just about lost it....

I spent my next 30 minutes prior to boarding at the airport calling the hotel, taxi companies, shuttle services, trying to figure out how the heck I was going to get everywhere in California. I ultimately decided that I would have to taxi everywhere - costing about $120 roundtrip from my hotel to Crossfit Kids in Ramona! Blargh! I was so stressed on the flight I didn't sleep very well...which didn't matter all that much because I had the middle seat anyway and it was nearly impossible to get comfortable. Boo.

Fortunately, the hotel staffer was really nice (gave me a free breakfast buffet!) when I arrived and I happened to book a hotel that had a car rental service! Things started looking up! I decided I would book a cab for the morning, maybe try to rent a car (couldn't hurt, right?) and then worst case, also try to find a new friend at the cert who could drive me back to my hotel. I had my list of options all outlined and I woke up extra early today to get everything done.

So, at breakfast I ended up running into the Budget car rental manager and explained my situation to him - and we went right back to the office and he gave me a Camry with a full tank of gas right then and there! He didn't even charge me for being under 25. Lucky day! I drove to the cert, which was a beautiful drive and I started feeling better about this trip that started out so poorly and stressfully. I was determined to stay positive and enjoy my day of learning. When I arrived, I ended up sitting next to a fellow Texan and also two women from Crossfit Centurion in Killeen! And Teddy of Twin Town Crossfit was also there - talk about small world! Even if I hadn't initially met all these friendly folks, I still think I would have had luck finding a ride back to my hotel in Rancho Bernardo 20 miles away. You could feel the community and camaraderie the INSTANT you walked through the door.

The Crossfit Kids staff also really encourage the team-building environment and we would sit through 20-30 minutes of lecture (teaching the squat, maintaining a safe gym, learning and flexibility, etc) and then do a game or team WOD. It was great to see all the great athletes and also be encouraging everyone. We all had a great time, and I feel like I can't even express how invaluable this experience has been in this blog.

I observed a lot of great things that reminded me why I'm doing this in the first place. Of particular note, we got to observe a preschool (ages 3-5) and a kids (ages 5-12) class, and there was one girl in the preschool class who totally froze on the warm-up and did not participate in anything. She also had this complete look of fear and terror on her face. I watched as the head coach encouraged her without being too pushy, and by the end of class, this girl was smiling and laughing and running around with all her classmates. All in 20 minutes! It's that kind of positive change that Crossfit has on people's (and kids'!) lives that make me love what I do.

Another great part of the day that stood out was the lecture on kids' nutrition and the emphasis that we are teaching healthy habits and decision-making, not prescribing a set diet. The goal of talking about nutrition in CFKids is to get the kids to eat more proteins and healthy fats and turn down more gatorade and granola bars. And speaking of granola bars...it finally hit home on the plane how being strictly paleo has affected my life. I managed to fall asleep for about 10 minutes right before I was awakened to the sickeningly sweet smell of my seat neighbor's Quaker Oats bar. I got so nauseous just from one whiff of it - that's how much brown rice syrup or HCFS was in it!

We ended the day today by playing Crossfit Baseball: running around the warehouse building and stopping at the various corners to do 5 box jumps, 10 squats, 10 burpees, and 5 pull-ups. I don't know how long we did this WOD for, but I managed to get 5 rounds and then some. And I did all the pull-ups on the "big kid" bar (thicker than normal bars) without dropping down. It felt really good to be motivated by the competitiveness of the other future kids coaches around me!