Nancy with Iceland Annie
It wasn't until day four of my Iceland vacation that I made it to CrossFit Reykjavik for the first time. I was in total CrossFit withdrawal... and hoping to catch a glimpse of two-time CrossFit Games champion Annie Thorisdottir.
I walked in the door - and there she was. She was coaching. Now, I'm not usually the type to get starstruck, and I really wanted to play it cool, but this was HUGE. I was ecstatic. I had this silly grin on my face that I could not for the life of me tone down. I had been at a Reebok party in NYC maybe a year and a half earlier that she and a few other elite athletes attended, but I had chickened out of saying hello in that setting and totally regretted it later.
Annie made me feel right at home. She told me to throw my stuff in the locker room. She would put me through a warm-up, check out my overhead squat and then I'd do Nancy (5 rounds of a 400m run and 15 overhead squats at 65# for women). It was Sunday, so there was a very relaxed schedule and no formal class times.
I was pumped and also really nervous. I really didn't want to make an ass of myself in front of Iceland Annie.
When I first got there, a few people were finishing up the WOD, but no one else was warming up. I had Annie's undivided attention. (EEEE!) She watched me squat, first with a PVC, then with the bar, and then she started adding weight. At the risk of sounding mathematically challenged, between the kilograms and my performance anxiety, I truly had no clue how much weight I was using. Had I been at home at CrossFit Metropolis, I would have done the WOD Rx'd, but I didn't know what Annie would select for me and clearly I was going to defer to her judgement.
I was beyond psyched to have Annie to myself for the warmup - she touched my shoulders!- but also relieved that by the time I was ready to start the WOD, two other people were, too. Nancy alone would be brutal. Annie counted down 3, 2, 1, go, and I went after it.
As I got back from the first sprint, I eyed the plates on the bar and figured that since I was using give or take 50#, I'd snatch the bar up overhead. For the first two rounds, I was on fire. By round three, I had to break up the squats, and while I was able to snatch the bar up for the first set, I wound up cleaning the second (and on the last round, the second and third). I wound up finishing at 21:23... way past my goal time. I was too jazzed about the whole experience to care too much, though.
And then Annie congratulated me on doing the WOD Rx'd. I re-checked my math, and she was right. I'd used just over 66#. That made my day. And I knew what I had to do. "I know this is super cheesy," I said, "but could I get a picture with you?"
I went back to CrossFit Reykjavik three more times that week. My drop-in experiences were great, but I never saw Annie again. I couldn't have asked for a better Iceland Annie encounter, though, and I will remember this WOD for the rest of my life.
-Gym Belle-
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Reader Comments (1)
I just came across this older post of yours today, Nancy, while I was researching a post of my own that I was constructing with the title "Iceland Annie."
To explain, I had never before heard of Annie Thorisdottir. The title "Iceland Annie" just happened to be a term that was supposedly used by people in search engines, so I hadn't a clue what I would be posting about.
This is how I often challenge myself with the half-dozen hosted websites I spend so much of my time working on ─ I take any sort of term that I have acquired that somehow relates to the particular website of mine that I'm involved with that day, and then I attempt to do as much as possible with the term as I can.
In fact, with today's post titled "Iceland Annie," I led off with an article about Annie Lennox, but I don't even know if she's ever been to Iceland.
Anyway, I soon realized that there really was someone familiarly identified as "Iceland Annie," so it was not long before the bulk of my huge post became directed towards her.
It was near the end of the post ─ which is mainly a large collection of snippets of website references that a visitor can opt to follow-up on ─ that I came across your post, so I included the reference to it at the bottom of my post. It sits just ahead of a sort of YouTube biography of Annie Thorisdottir.
I have the post scheduled to publish on January 20 (2015) at the website whose URL I linked to as part of my personal details, so it won't be making its appearance for another four days.
But what I wanted to let you know was that I got quite caught up in the emotion with which you told your story of meeting Annie ─ and you even managed to make my eyes burn a little, and water up.
So good for you!
I'm glad you got the experience to visit her stomping grounds and to actually meet her. Working on my post has made an instant fan of me.