Graduation -- CrossFit Open 26.2

Today was a GOOD day for me in the CrossFit Open 2026. Graduation was the word that arose in me as I was driving away from Centerville CrossFit.

Not because I finally got the pull-up in the Open I’ve always imagined I might. Not because I was able to finish the WOD. I think I’m smiling and enjoying the overly-warmish day because the Open always puts a progression-pull-up/muscle-up WOD in the mix, and each time, I’ve come away feeling less-than or feeling as if I’d failed the workout somehow. 

There was none of that in me as I left the building. I was beaming, inside and out.

For at least the last three Opens, I’ve had this fantasy about getting the pull-up during the Open. Each time, I’ve wound up attempting with less regard for my shoulders or my body than was wise. The last one ruined my left deltoid for months, which I’m just beginning to recover from enough to return to the rig for small bits of effort. I like the imaginative-ambitious side of myself, of course. It's made me the poet-scholar I am, even as it can injure me in my less bodywise, overly-cognitive athlete-self. I’ve done a strict-chin-up before, so it’s not out of possibility to imagine a strict pull-up, then or even in the future. 

Before I landed in CrossFit, I worked with a trainer who coached me weekly into strengthening my lats and upper body muscles enough to enjoy the chin-up, strict. That version of me was advocating for the 6th-grade me, who was annually shamed at the pull-up bar for the Presidential Fitness Awards season. Girls would line up, ashamed and embarrassed, unable to even hold ourselves for very long on the pull-up bar, let alone pull ourselves up. When I learned that I could use my hip-strength to throw myself over the bar? I was furious no one had ever coached me to use the strengths I had as a woman. I have hip power like few my age did. Do. My mother tried to cheer me up by saying I had child-bearing hips. She was pointing to my hip-gifts without even knowing she was. Today, I appreciate her heart, but that was NOT what an adolescent girl–or this adolescent girl–wanted, at that moment.

So 10-12 years ago, I decided to confront the challenge directly, as the mid-life woman I had become. I made it a blog-thing, calling it the Pull-Up Project. I got a power-tower for Christmas that year, and slowly, with measured-pacing coaching assistance, achieved a strict chin-up. I don’t remember what happened after that, derailing me from the pull-up proper. I might have gotten bored. Work life may have taken over. A chin-up may have been close enough for me back then. For reasons I can no longer recall, I never returned to the project of the pull-up. In my blog, I changed the alliteration appropriately: I accomplished my Chin-up Challenge instead of failing at the Pull-up Project.

But every Open, the spectre of the pull-up would come back, beckoning as image more than measured-paced work to get it done. And from the last two times, I recognize now that my shoulder mobility is simply not where it needs to be for me to do the prep-work safely and well. I can feel the twinge with the shoulder out of flow or proper form. I now have a list of shoulder-mobility and strengthening-form exercises I can do several times a week…which I simply have not worked into my routine successfully. 

Yet? I don’t know what I want at the moment. The pull-up is worth less to me now than simply being able to move in as many planes of motion as I can, for as long as I can. I want to be able to do foundational-scaled versions of most everything we do in the box, 3-4 times/week. Nothing more, nothing less. I want to be able to keep at my sprints-intervals and Peloton obsessions a couple times a week. As the spring arrives, I want to add the long walks in the preserve with my dog.

So…Graduation. I knew my goals for this morning’s WOD cold. I wanted to get to the jumping C2B pull-ups section of the scaled Masters 55+ 26.2, give it a try 1-3 times, then finish the movements I wanted to, with whatever umph I had left. All so I could return to the box on Sunday without any soreness or difficulty. It was fun doing the walking lunges, particularly as I wasn’t certain I’d be warmed up enough to do them painfree. I was and I did. Alternating DB snatches are my wheelhouse, always. Playing with the pull-ups versions then letting them go with intention and clarity. Continuing with the other movements a bit…then sitting on my stack of plates cheering on friends finishing up their workouts. Perfect.

Any and every Open I may decide to do in the future…I’ve graduated to actually enjoy the easily anticipated WOD with the progressive gymnastics/pulling moves that have plagued me for years. I still had a silly stress dream last night–getting lost while trying to find a CrossFit box in a European city (Paris?) all while while walking with my husband, a good friend from high school, and my dog (who has never been to Paris). I never did make it to the box in time, awakening with a start and some anger. But in reality? A GOOD day in the CrossFit Open, if not perhaps what many CF athletes would consider…yet. 

Every human body out there is aging, and it’s not for sissies. I showed up today, cup of courage and a smile. Another reason to love the CrossFit Open, if you’re savvy to yourself.