If Emergency Medicine Physicians Told Hospitalists The Truth…
Latest Posts
The Primal Games: My Life Outside The Comfort Zone
This weekend I accidentally stepped way outside my comfort zone. A friend of mine had invited me to compete in the Primal Games – an event that she described as a “fun time for all fitness levels with some guys dressed up as cave men.” Sounded innocent enough. And it appealed to my sense of whimsy, so I signed up without a second thought. A couple of weeks prior to the event I decided to do a little more research and discovered that this competition *might* be a bit more challenging than I had originally thought. The event website was somewhat vague, but alluded to things like “Atlas balls,” climbing over walls, obstacle trail run, military crawls, and medicine ball tosses. Hmmm. I’d never attempted to scale a wall in my life, nor was I too thrilled about the idea of hoisting around beach-ball-sized cement objects. I was getting nervous.
I soon discovered that my nervousness was more than well-founded. As I arrived at the event, the temperature was rising above 90 degrees Fahrenheit as I was greeted by shirtless male competitors (see photo above). Apparently, almost everyone at the Primal Games was on a team of some sort already, and many had prepared for the event for over a year (mostly at CrossFit gyms). As I gingerly approached the registration tent a well-muscled woman wrote a number in permanent marker on my arm and calf. I was branded and there was no turning back, so I decided to spend some time watching the other athletes warm up. I was astonished by some of their capabilities.
Take this guy for example (photo at left). He was able to hurdle the “women’s wall” that I struggled to scale and climb over. I stood there, staring aghast at the fellow like some kind of animal in headlights. I realized that I belonged on the sidelines as a spectator, not a competitor – but alas, I was in it for the duration.
The women at the event were only slightly less intimidating. Some looked like Olympic weight lifters, others were lean, mean, muscle machines. Very few were as old as I was. My fantasies of a day tossing water balloons back and forth with people in spandex and super-hero capes were fading fast.
And so the games began – three individual events arranged in heats, requiring a whole lot of “hurry up and wait.” My first challenge was a 1.5 mile trail run with obstacles. The distance seemed fairly innocuous so I took off at full tilt when they blew the air horn for my group. About a half-mile in I began passing members of the group that started ahead of mine. I wondered if I had misjudged my pace, but figured I’d deal with that later. I navigated jumping over some hay bales (no problem for a former dairy farmer), threw myself into the Army low-crawl and bolted across a boardwalk to come into the finishing stretch. And that is when I hit the wall. Literally.
I had never scaled a wall in my life and apparently there’s some technique to it. I ran up to the 6-foot obstacle, jumped up and grabbed the ledge and then hung there like some kind of limp towel. Nope, that was definitely not the right way to do it. Race officials tried to explain more successful strategies to me as I failed to scale the wall in a second embarrassing attempt. I opted for the penalty Burpees and crawled under the wall… only to face the next, slightly shorter wall. There was no way around it this time – I had to do it. A miss was a disqualification on the shorter wall.
Panting, sweating, and wearing all black in the midday sun, I somehow muscled my way over the short wall in the least elegant way known. I jogged ahead to the water slide, took a hard dive onto my chest and bolted to the finish line with no energy to spare. That performance was good enough for an 11th place finish in my age group (the “Masters women” – which hardly seemed a fair category title considering my lack of mastery of this challenge!)
The second event appeared deceptively straight forward. I had three minutes to launch 6 medicine balls backwards over a wall. But for every 7 feet closer to the wall you got, you had to do increasing numbers of penalty Burpees. I figured I’d be pretty good at this since I’m built more like a water buffalo than a gazelle, but no dice. This event was 70% technique, and figuring out how to get the ball to make the correct-shaped arc (so it cleared the wall) had a steep learning curve. Even the strongest-looking women often missed the wall because their ball ended up going straight up and down instead of backwards. I opted to get as close to the wall as possible and just “gut out” the high reps of Burpees.
I was relieved to see a familiar face in the crowd as I approached my med ball toss challenge. The owner of my home gym had arrived, video phone in hand, to memorialize my event. She was my only fan, and asked if I’d mind if she yelled out encouragements during my event. I agreed hesitantly, both nervous about the permanency of the video that was being made of my potential “flailings” and unsure if her shouts would induce panic or perseverance. Luckily for me it turned out to be the latter. And here’s the video to prove it:
The final event was a true soul-sucker. I watched some of the men compete, and they made it look easy. It was a combination of cement (aka Atlas) ball carries (up and down a field) and tire rope pulls. Again, as a “water buffalo” I figured I’d have an advantage on this one, but here is where I crumbled. As they started the timer, I ran out to the end of the tire pull rope and started dragging it towards myself, hand-over-hand. The weight of the tractor tire was startling, and it moved at about 1/5 the speed of the men’s pulls as I realized that this event was MUCH harder than it looked. I finally got the tire across the line and had to drag it back to the start. I was the slowest in my heat and could tell this wasn’t going to go well.
And then the race official pointed to the Atlas ball that I needed to pick up and put on my shoulder. I had never even touched one before. I squatted down, got my arms under it and used my quads to get it on my lap. The weight (75lbs) took my breath away. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to get this thing up and down the field and I lost heart. Somehow I managed to muscle it up to my shoulder, where it perched on my clavicle ominously. I started taking steps across the field. The weight was crushing. I marveled at the women in lanes next to me who were managing to make it down the field. Time stood still in the 95 degree heat with no shade and no relief anywhere in site.
By some miracle I got that ball all the way up and back, and made it through the next tire pull. Then back to the start again where the official instructed me to pick up the same Atlas ball and do a second lap. I felt the will drain out of my body. There was just no way I could do it. I struggled to get it on my shoulder again and made it on my third attempt but then got about 20 feet down the field and dropped the ball. I tried to get it up again but couldn’t. I tried to carry it like a baby in front of me but it broke through my arm hold. I asked the official if I could take a penalty and get a lighter ball. Nope. That was not an option. So I spent the last few minutes in a futile effort to move the ball down the field and then finally the merciful timer signaled the end of the heat. I was the only woman who couldn’t get the ball back the second time.
And it was at that point that the infamous words of Dirty Harry Callahan came to me, “A man’s gotta know his limitations.” I had certainly found mine, and the humble pie was bitter-sweet. On the one hand, I was pretty amazed that I had not given up and gone home at any of several understandable points during the day. On the other, I was keenly aware of my physical limitations – and had to bow the knee to the truly gifted athletes who won the day. Would I do this again? Hmmm. Ask me once my cuts and bruises are healed. All I can say is that other competitions seem less frightening now, and maybe that’s the best gift that the Primal Games has given me.
In the future when I’m asked to join friends for a half-marathon or similarly grueling event, all I need to ask is, “does it include Atlas balls?” And if the answer is, “no” then I’m in! Thanks to the Primal Games my comfort zone has permanently expanded. I hope you’ll join me in the zone sometime, my friends! Misery loves company, after all. đŸ˜‰
P.S. The team winners of the Primal Games:
