From a CrossFit Games Qualification to Postpartum PRs: How One MCU Writer’s Fitness Journey Came Full Circle After Giving Birth

Observable, measurable, and repeatable. 

• It’s at the foundation of the CrossFit methodology and one of the reasons we fall in love with it, as it leads us to feel like rock stars in our first few years as PRs come flooding in and we become fitter than we ever imagined we would be.

But eventually, like with anything else, we plateau, we get a little bored, and maybe even a little scared because we know how much it’s going to hurt. 

• And, if we continue long enough, we age to a place where our bodies just don’t want to do what they did in our 20s or 30s.

And then what?

The honeymoon stage of CrossFit has long worn off, the PRs have slowed or stopped, we’re no longer treating CrossFit as a sport, and the questioning begins:

• Where does CrossFit fit into my life now? Does it even fit into my life? Is it even still serving me? Or is it hurting me? Is it even a smart way to train anymore?

At least, those were the questions that circled in my head and led me to eventually abandon what I call “real CrossFit” for a number of years because I was burned out and tired of the pressure of trying to hit new PRs all the time.

[Related: Best Rowing Machines]

Here’s How It Went Down

I was on the rowing team at university when I first found CrossFit, accidentally, in 2009.

My teammate, Jen Broxterman, and I found ourselves locked out of our boathouse in London, Ontario, unable to do our erg session.

She had just started dating a guy who owned “some weird gym” in the city, and she was pretty sure he had mentioned that his gym had Concept 2 rowing machines.

• Desperate to get our workout in, she called him to see if we could come by to row.

The moment I walked into CrossFit London, I felt like a little kid in a candy shop. 

People were doing kipping pull-ups, a movement I hadn’t seen since I was a gymnast as a kid, jumping on boxes, climbing ropes, and throwing barbells around.

Needless to say, it was love at first sight.

Pretty soon, I found myself on the water in the middle of a rowing training session, but all I was thinking about was getting off the water and racing over to the gym to make the 8 a.m. class. 

• Those early days of CrossFit were a time of innocence for me. Though I was focused on improving my fitness, I couldn’t wait to check the whiteboard to see what was on the agenda each day.

One day, six months into CrossFit, the whiteboard said: “21-15-9 thrusters and pull-ups.”

“What’s a thruster again?” I asked.

• I wasn’t nervous, and I had no expectations in terms of how fast I should finish the workout, so I attacked this weird rep scheme of thrusters and pull-ups with reckless abandon. 

5:21.

“That’s a pretty good Fran time,” my coach Dave Henry said.

“Fran?” I asked.

“That’s what that workout is called,” he replied.

A few months later, after watching a documentary about 2009 CrossFit Games champion Tanya Wagner, I decided to abandon my rowing dreams. 

I was all in, and I knew I wanted to make it to the CrossFit Games. 

Harder Than It Looked

Between a serious double-under deficiency, running weakness, and multiple injuries, including an Achilles rupture at the end of 2010, it took much longer to qualify for the CrossFit Games as an individual than I thought it would back in those relatively early days of the sport.

But it finally happened for me in 2014. 

• I finished second to Emily Abbott at the Canada West Regionals that year and punched my ticket to the Games. 

I was on cloud nine.

By then, I obviously still loved CrossFit, but there was also some stress involved, as my self-worth (and certainly my ego) had quickly become wrapped up in how good I was at fitness.

• Needless to say, placing 37th at the 2014 CrossFit Games certainly made me realize I was nowhere near being able to hold my own with the very top women in the world. 

On the one hand, I was OK with that. After all, my goal had been not to come dead last, as I knew the Canada West region wasn’t that strong at the time. Ultimately I was just so thrilled to finally be there.

On the other hand, you always want more — so I went home and trained harder than ever.

I was definitely more fit at the 2015 Regionals, and all my skills and strength numbers had dramatically improved since 2014. 

• But it didn’t play out that way at Regionals, which ended for me when I sprained my thumb on the handstand walk event. Unable to hang onto the rings to do a muscle-up, I withdrew from the final event.

Time to Move On, But How?

By 2016, at the age of 32, I felt I was ready to end my competitive career, which I had been building from a young age.

Well, in theory, I was ready, but it was tougher to actually let go than I thought. 

• I think it took me two to three years to totally consider myself “retired” from the sport, as I wasn’t sure how else to approach CrossFit other than with a drive to constantly be trying to improve. 

So I kept training CrossFit in 2016 and 2017, albeit less than before. Still, there was a certain amount of emotional discomfort that went along with it, as I found that I wasn’t improving like I did between 2009 and 2015. 

And even though I knew it wasn’t realistic to continue to see my scores get better since I was training half the amount, my ego didn’t like this.

• In 2018, I realized I just needed a break entirely. A break from the stress of the numbers.

So I stopped doing any kind of CrossFit benchmark workouts, stopped trying to PR lifts, stopped kipping anything, and eventually stopped Olympic lifting altogether.

I continued to squat, hinge, push and pull, and threw in some conditioning here and there through the pandemic years and was still fit for the average person, but I wasn’t what I would call “CrossFit fit.”

Did I love going to the gym? 

No. 

I was going through the motions for all those years, but I continued to train because I knew it was good for me. 

Thanks to CrossFit, fitness had become a habit, so although I wasn’t as fit as I once had been, training had become like brushing my teeth.

By 2021, I was at peace with where I was at — a washed-up, retired athlete content with the place fitness had taken in my life. 

It was important, but it wasn’t everything to me. 

That being said, there was an uninspired flatness about going to the gym.

Full Circle at 40

In September 2023, I gave birth to my baby boy, Ozzie, via an emergency cesarean section. 

• I did my best to rehab quickly and get back to fitness, but I was having all kinds of carpal tunnel pain from breastfeeding, as well as back and hip pain (likely from a weakened core or just postpartum hormones).

I felt like a shell of my former self, physically and athletically, and the thought of doing movements like barbell thrusters and butterfly pull-ups was the furthest thing from my mind. 

But four months ago, when Ozzie was 6 months old, I decided to check out the CrossFit gym that was 200 meters from my new house, Kea Athletics in Surrey, B.C. I didn’t do it to get back to CrossFit per se; I just wanted to see if they had an open gym membership so I could work out on my own and bring the little man.

They did, and so I started dabbling during open gym times for the next month, doing my usual basic squat, hinge, pushing, and pulling routine.

Then, one day, Ozzie woke up later than normal, and we missed the open gym time, so I decided to go to the 9 a.m. class. 

I substituted a movement or two, but I had fun. OK, I had more fun working out than I had had in years. 

Fast forward three months, and I’m doing CrossFit classes four or five days a week and loving it. 

• The programming is thoughtful, deliberate, and designed for longevity.

I (gasp) scale when I’m not feeling super energetic and push when I’m feeling good, and ultimately, I feel stronger and more fit than I have in years, and I’m as excited to go to the gym as I was in the early days.

Each night, I eagerly wait for the clock to hit 8 p.m. so I can check Wodify for the next day’s workout. 

• Will I ever be as fit, numbers-wise, as I was in 2015? 

Likely not. But I’m OK with that. More than OK with that. Postpartum PRs are still fun and they’re coming fast and furious these days.

Part of me wonders why I ever stopped doing “real CrossFit.” 

But then again, another part of me knows when it comes to fitness, it’s OK to change things up as the seasons in your life change. The important part is just to always keep doing something — to maintain — and the door is always open to go back to training hard again when the time is right.

A few weeks ago, I checked Wodify and the next day’s workout was Fran.

“Oh no,” I thought to myself. I told myself once, after doing a 2:47 Fran back in the day, that I’d never do Fran again. And so far, I had lived up to my promise.

• “I don’t think I can go tomorrow,” I continued negotiating with myself. “I told myself I would never make myself do Fran again.”  

Then I realized these thoughts were exactly the reason I needed to go to the gym the next day. 

Fran no longer has power over me, and I needed to prove that to myself.

• I’m not going to lie. I was a bit nervous as old thoughts and expectations raced through my head. But then I looked over at my little man hanging out in his stroller eating Cheerios, and it bounced me back to the present, where it no longer matters how fast I do this or any workout. Regardless of how I perform, I can let it go right away and carry on pursuing the more important things in my life.

“3,2 1 Go.”

The result: 5:21

The exact same time I had in 2009, when I was six months into CrossFit (insert facepalm emoji).

• “After 15 years of CrossFit, I’m right where I started,” I thought, laughing to myself.

And then I realized, no, I am not.

I was 25 and a varsity rower when I did my first Fran. Today, I’m a 40-year-old mother with a 10-month-old baby, a husband, a career, a mortgage, and all the other adult responsibilities. 

Today, the gym isn’t my whole life, but it’s a place I look forward to going to four or five days a week because it makes my life better, easier, and happier.

So today, a 5:21 Fran, 15 years into CrossFit, is exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Featured image: Ralph Steele