My senior year in high school – I competed at 125 lbs that year. I’m the girl (maroon singlet).
So now that that’s out of the way, we can get to the fun stuff. It’s more of a funny in hindsight story, because I choose to think of it as funny. Other people, including my parents, would probably file this under the unnecessarily scary story category.
It was my junior year of high school and it was freestyle season (freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling occur in the spring and summer and are club sports). I say freestyle season, because I primarily wrestled freestyle and only occasionally competed in Greco-Roman. Women’s wrestling doesn’t include Greco-Roman. I didn’t typically wrestle women anyway though (there weren’t a lot of women wrestlers in my area at the time).
I decided to compete in Greco-Roman state that year. I had been wrestling at 119 all year. This was 19 lbs below my natural weight of 138. At 138, I was a size 3. At 119, I was a size 00 (for those of you that have never heard of this absurd size, it’s below a 0). I know the weights sound too high to correspond to those sizes. The Body Mass Index system would agree with you. It typically claims I’m obese to morbidly obese, even when I was at 0% body fat. I assure you that I’m not making this story up, my muscles weigh a lot!
I was cutting back down to 119 over the course of 1.5 – 2 weeks. I had had a couple weeks off from competition, so I allowed myself to put on a little weight (this is normal wrestling behavior). But, I quickly realized that the weight was coming off faster than expected. I could have allowed myself to eat and drink a little more than my current plan allowed. Instead, I decided to further restrict my diet and increase the number of work outs. I was going to 112!
After I made it to 119, the weight cutting became more and more difficult. My body wasn’t used to dropping below this weight and began to panic. It wasn’t as eager to get to 112 as my mind was. I had about a week to get the excess weight off. At this point it wasn’t an option for me to wrestle 119. Once I make a decision, there’s no going back.
I made some rash decisions and again stuck with them:
- I would only get to drink water if I hit specific goals that I set at the beginning of the day (ex. If I make it to 115 today, I can drink 16 oz of water).
- Food was pretty much out of the question.
- I had to run a lot. I had to wear sweaters. I had to run in the sun (that rhymes!).
Needless to say, things were not going well. I began feeling a strong heartbeat in my stomach – this was new and off-putting. My stomach was very much concave – if I was lying on my stomach and someone wanted to lift me in the air they could use my hip bones as handles. I could not fall asleep no matter how exhausted I was. My body craved water. My mind began to resent my body.
The internal struggle started to unfold:
Body: I think we might actually be killing Cristy
Mind: Would you rather be alive and fail, or be dead and have been on the path to success?
Body: Well, I really don’t want to die.
Mind: Are you fucking kidding me right now? KEEP RUNNING!
Body: Jesus Christ! Ok!
My mouth was drier than it’s ever been. My lips were cracking. When I attempted to rinse my mouth with water (this would provide temporary satisfaction of having liquid in my mouth) I couldn’t stop myself from allowing a little water to go down my throat. So, one day I put some pieces of ice into a bottle and told myself that if I ran until it was melted I would reward myself with the water. It was wonderful. But the wonderfulness was short lived. I craved liquid.
Body: I’m so thirsty and tired. I just want to cry.
Mind: You should cry! We’ll lose weight!
Body: Can’t I have just a little water?
Mind: Absolutely not. But you know what would be fun? You could make some juice and save it for after weigh-ins.
Body: That actually sounds amazing. Let’s do it!
I asked my mom to buy oranges, lemons, and limes. I would juice them and store them in an old Gatorade bottle and drink them after I made weight. Life was good.
Making the juice was not as amazing as I had imagined. Remember how I mentioned my lips were cracking? Well, my hands were also cracking. I was using a handheld juicer which means I was twisting acidic fruit around a bumpy cone shaped thing and the juices were squirting everywhere. The burning sensation was awful and strong. It was like the scene from Fight Club where Brad Pitt burns Edward Norton’s hand with lye. I had to force myself to finish the juicing process so I could enjoy the sumptuous juices later.
I believe the juicing occurred on the Thursday before the tournament (it could have happened on Friday, after the following part of this story…it’s a little hazy).
I made it to Friday and I was in Spanish class. Normally this class was amazingly entertaining for me because my teacher would sit on a stool in the front of class eating a block of cheddar even though she was allergic to cheese. There was a lot of sneezing and wheezing involved. We would also watch movies with Spanish subtitles – yes the movies were in English and we were asked to read the subtitles to learn Spanish. I don’t think the teacher cared if we actually learned Spanish, as long as she had enough time to finish her cheese.
This Friday I was not feeling my best though. I was one day from weigh-ins and I was hot. My hand touched the leg of the table and it felt amazing. It was cold metal. I decided the best option at this point would be to lay my head on the cool table and get the most amount of cold against my body as socially acceptable in a high school setting. Because I looked like I was half dead and I was now lying on the table, my teacher sent me to the nurse.
The nurse’s office was air conditioned! I fell asleep and would have stayed asleep for the rest of the day, but the nurse decided my time was up and I had to go home.
Nurse: How are you doing? Do you want to go back to class or rest here a little longer?
Me: I’m doing ok. I’ll stay a little longer
After about 30 minutes…
Nurse: Hun, we’re going to call your parents to come pick you up.
Me: No, they’re at work. I can just walk home.
Nurse: We can’t let you walk home; someone has to pick you up. I’ll call your emergency contact.
Me: (Thinking to myself) I wonder who my emergency contact is
After about 15 minutes…
Nurse: It’s time for you to go home!
It turns out my emergency contact was the neighbors who lived behind me. The dad came and picked me up and dropped me off at my house. I apologized to him for disrupting his day. He politely told me it was no problem and to give him a call if I needed anything. I wasn’t going to need anything though. I was going to find a way to cool myself off and get some sleep.
I came up with the most brilliant idea that has ever existed in the world of Idealand. I would fill a water bottle with cold water and sleep on it. I did just that.
It turns out that a water bottle can not support 112 pounds for an extended period of time. I woke up several hours later to my mom standing over me with a very confused look on her face.
Mom: Cristy! Why are you home? And what’s wrong with you? Why is the floor wet?
Me: What? Oh no, the water bottle!
I spent the remainder of the day either making the juice from various acidic fruits (again not sure if this happened on Thursday or Friday), or doing something else to distract myself from the crippling hunger and thirst. The following morning my dad made the several hour drive to the tournament and I weighed in.
Me: I just made weight!
Dad: What did you weigh in at?
Me: 111.6!
Dad: What? (In a distressed tone)
Me: 111.6. (Slightly less enthusiastic)
Dad: Are you kidding me?
Me: What?
Dad: Why are you wrestling 112? Is this why you’ve been working out and running so much? You shouldn’t be cutting that much weight.
Me: I decided I was getting to 119 too quickly, so I should cut down to 112. And then I can wrestle 110 next weekend at freestyle state.
Women’s wrestling has different weight classes, and I was competing in the women’s group to qualify for nationals.
Dad: You’re not doing that. You’re wrestling at 119 or you’re not wrestling. This is ridiculous.
Me: Ok. (Pouting, but also too happy to be on the verge of eating and drinking to care about anything else)
I’m pretty sure I put on about 20 pounds that morning. I took 2nd and qualified for men’s nationals! I have never been back to that weight again.
Oh, and about the homemade juice. It turns out my judgment skills were impaired under malnourishment. I had simply juiced the oranges, lemons, and limes. I didn’t add anything to the concoction. It was the most acidic thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, but I drank it all.
I’m the one in the blue singlet. This is me wrestling at nationals later that year – I competed at 119 lbs.
You are a rockstar and a hellova teammate. I miss these days.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your story!
Z
Thanks Zack! You were a great teammate :)
DeleteI miss these days too...but I definitely don't miss the not being able to eat or drink part!