The Dinner Debacle: WOD vs Plans

We have all been there, do we WOD or do we make plans and attempt a social life? Yes you can do both but I am pretty set in my work out schedule and I don’t like to change it. I try hard to make dinner plans around my Monday, Wednesday, Friday WODs and I tend to be more flexible on my “active rest days” but no matter how hard I try, the world doesn't revolve around me.

Last week my girlfriend invited me to dinner with one of her friends and I was ecstatic about the prospect of “girl time”. I had “SIGN ME UP” written all over me until she said it would be on a Wednesday. That is when the struggle began, do I say no thank you, do I go on Thursday (goat work day) instead, do I go to an earlier WOD on Wednesday, or do I ask them to change their day for me?

I didn't want to say no, I really did want to have dinner with them but …. but …. ugh … my WOD. I know non Crossfitters probably don’t understand and I know there are athletes out there that feel the same way about their legs day, running, etc. but unlike them, I can’t do this WOD again. It’s a one night show.

I could say yes and go the next day and do my strength/skill work and then do the coaches choice on the MetCon portion but that still left me missing the actual WOD from Wednesday. Our box is currently doing a strength progression on Strict Press on Mondays and Wednesdays, so if I did Wednesday dinner, I definitely had to come in Thursday and make up my progression work (technical Crossfit talk, sorry).

There is always the option of going during any open class at our box so I could easily sign up for an earlier time, but that has its own set of issues. First off, I am comfortable in my class with my coaches and team mates, switching that is hard for me. Secondly, my body is accustom to working out at 7:00 pm, even if I am doing isolation or skill work during the day, I don't put myself through a rigorous work out like I do during a WOD. Any time we do a holiday WOD I am normally running on nothing but coffee because they are consistently around 10:00 am and I can’t eat more than two hours before a WOD. See, the struggle is real.

I started to text my friend back to say No and stopped myself. What if they were available on Tuesday or Thursday? That would free me from my torture and I would get everything I wanted. Then that nasty little thing call my conscience started talking to me, which sounded a lot like my mothers voice, saying “Carly, don’t be selfish”.

My resolution came down to me expressing that I could change my Wednesday WOD to Thursday and I would be happy to accompany them to dinner. My girlfriend, not missing a beat, expressed her sentiment for my inability to hit the box and said Wednesday worked best for both of them.

Maybe it wasn't as much of a debacle as I thought but it presented a challenge for me and I learned a lesson. Good friends are hard to come by, exceptional friends are even harder. As much of a struggle as it was for me to miss that WOD, in the grand scheme of life, I would rather have her as a friend than post a new time on the whiteboard any day.

#friendswodcrossfit