Letter to My Gym Owners

Happy Twenty Ten Sitting at Computer people! Here is what I have been doing(in the form of a letter to my Gym):
Hi Guys,
I just wanted to drop a quick email, to Thank You for helping improve my life over the past year
and to relay an example of how Crossfit has actually saved my ass (figuratively, not literally...unfortunately)!

It happened yesterday, I went Snowboarding at Crystal Mtn. for the first time in 5 or 6 years with a group of friends (including Jason Ingersoll). I have been boarding about 5 times total in my life. I am a novice. The guys I went with was a group of skiers and a few snowboarders who have done it regularly over the past few years.

I was concerned that I would:
A) Get stuck on the mountain and have to take my board off and walk down like a defeated guy who lacks enough coordination to figure it out
B) Hurt myself and have to be sledded down by Ski Patrol in one of those sledding canoe things
or
C) Suck so bad at it, that my friends ditch me (because they were sick of waiting for me to make it down the mountain) and I would end up boarding the Bunny Slopes all day by myself.

Well, I am proud to say none of that happened and although I did injure myself, the workouts I do at Crossfit saved me from a more serious injury.

Here is what did happen:
The first run, we took a chair up the mountain and then a second chair up to the summit. I was worried about going all the way up to the top without practice run, but surprisingly, I did just fine and the balance came back to me rather quickly. Don't get me wrong, I fell pretty hard a few times, but I truly could feel the strength and flexibility I have built in my Thighs and Calves at Crossfit helping me with balance and form. My Buddies were happily surprised that I was not holding them up.

Some of the guys were getting tired after a few long runs, but I felt like I could continue til close. The guys that were tired were ready to break for lunch and we had one last run down the mountain. We somehow got stuck on an icy cat track that went on forever (switching back and forth all the way down the mountain) and was treacherous for any snowboarder, but especially me using all new equipment and doing it for the first time in half a decade. The ice was so hard that it was like a hockey rink. I got going too fast and when I tried to slow down using my toe-side edge I began to veer towards the side of a cliff, so I tried to position my feet down hill and use my heel side edge to slow down, that is when I caught my heel side edge before I got my feet positioned and went hurtling though the air backwards and landed hard on my ass. The ice packed hard like concrete. It hurt so bad that I was and am pretty sure that I broke my tailbone (as trained rescuers do you guys know what it means when you hit your tailbone so hard that your sphincter spasms and it feels like you are shooting BB's out your penis? Yeah me neither, but thats what happened). After the fall, I was able to get back up and limp down the cat track which only got steeper and icier. I fell on my Tailbone two more times and felt like crying each time, but this is where I feel lucky to have been doing crossfit. on what would be my last run of the day (though I was not planning on it being the last), I fell hard a total of 10 to 12 times. Because I was desperately trying to protect my tailbone (which happened on the first fall), I was breaking my falls with my hands and came very close to breaking my wrist (and I mean seriously close as I broke my left wrist two years ago). I absolutely credit my training at Crossfit with saving me from a broken wrist. The Hang Cleans, Push Presses and other workouts that have helped rehab my wrist with extra strength and flexibility undoubtedly prevented at the very least a bad sprain.

Today, the last day of 2009, I am standing here (not sitting) writing this email to say Thank You Kirkland Crossfit! You saved my Ass, well nevermind, you save my wrist! Maybe to work on increasing the resiliency of our tailbones we add a workout where you do 100 wallballs with a 70 pound kettlebell under you (you know to build a tailbone callous).

Love you guys,
Kenny