Death By 14.2

Workout date: 1/13/15

Registration for the Crossfit Open is right around the corner, so it was only appropriate that tonight's WOD reminded us of what's to come.  (Has it been a year since the Open?  Yikes!)  Last year was not my best Open performance.  How did the first 4 workouts go in the epic Dave-Flounder duel from the 2014 Open?

Advantage, Flounder.

Open workout 14.2 was a couplet of 2 rounds of 10 overhead squats at 95/65 along with 10 chest-to-bar pull-ups.  You were given 3 minutes to get that work done.  Just as if you were playing Pole Position, completing the task at hand led to "Extended Play!", where you had to complete 2 more reps of each movement per round.  This went on and on until you could not do the ever-increasing workload in the ever-constant amount of time given.  Prepare to qualify!

Part of the reason I encourage people to do the Open (and to do it RX this year, rather than go for the Scaled option) is because it really is exciting the first time you accomplish something you thought you couldn't do.  And honestly, it may be even more cool when you see someone else do it.  As someone who struggles to do pull-ups, the chest-to-bar variety wasn't really a consideration for me.  I had penciled in 10 for my 14.2 score as soon as it was announced.  However, Coach Jason was convinced that he could teach naysayers like myself how to do a chest-to-bar pull-up.  The day of the workout, he showed me in the annex how he does them.  I tried to imitate what I had just seen, but I am pretty god awful when it comes to any kind of kip.  After a bunch of failed tries, I got one.  It was probably an accident.  But I got one!  I practiced a little bit and probably got 1 or 2 more.  Bring on 14.2!

When it was my turn to go, I knocked out the overhead squats quickly and got to the bar.  I got 1 pretty quickly.  Then another.  Then another.  Before I knew it, I had gotten to 8.  I had gone from a certain score of 10 to "get this guy another 3 minutes!".  And that's when failure set in.  I tried like hell to get those last 2, if only so I could knock out 10 quick overhead squats and get a score of 30.  It wasn't to be.  My 14.2 score was 18.  When I got back over to the bench to sit down, I had a conversation with one of the other members that went like this:

Them: How did it go?

Me: Not well.  Only 18.

Them: You got 8 chest-to-bar pull-ups?

Me: <dejected> Couldn't get those last 2.  So aggravating!

Them: Didn't you tell me this morning that you had never done one before?

Me: Yeah, but...

There's a lot of "yeah, but..." with me.  Probably because I view "close" as "failure".  Last night, when I got my ass kicked by Isabel, that was not close.  I need to go lighter the next time I do it.  But when I'm close, I think to myself "really, you couldn't summon just a little more?"  It didn't matter that I had done 8 of something I had never done before earlier that morning.  In my mind, I should have been able to do 2 more.  I get greedy, which probably leads to delusions of grandeur.

Tonight's "death by" version of 14.2 went like this: Death by chest-to-bar pull-ups, followed by a 5 minute break after the round you failed, followed by death by overhead squats using half of your body weight.  (For those unfamiliar with "death by", you do 1 rep the first minute, 2 reps the second minute, and so on.  Super easy at first, then it turns on you with a vengeance.)  In an attempt to not have delusions of grandeur nor easily the worst score of the day, I opted for regular pull-ups with my friend, the medium-sized black band.  I didn't see any way I was getting through 10 rounds, which seemed about the norm for the day.  Sure enough, after 8 rounds, my hands were fried.  For the 9th minute, I did 3 legit pull-ups, 2 range of motion pull-ups, and then got ready for my 5 minute break.

For the overhead squats, I had 105 pounds on the bar, which was no joke, but it certainly felt lighter due to the Isabel debacle 24 hours earlier.  With 14 minutes elapsed, it was time to start overhead squatting.  Some of the other folks in the 7:30 class told me that I was doing some serious ass-to-grass overheads, which was nice to hear, although my only real focus was to stay steady during the movement.  During the break, I had switched to my lifting shoes which really help me keep my balance when overhead squatting, otherwise I tend to start looking like I'm taking part in a dizzy bat race or something.

The first 7 rounds weren't bad, but round 8 started to feel tough.  For round 9, I broke it up into a set of 5 and a set of 4 trying to preserve some energy, but my form had started to go.  In round 10, my shoes couldn't keep me from wobbling.  I did 6 reps, put the bar down and looked at the clock.  Time was not my friend, so I got the bar back up again and tried to do the last 4 reps as quickly as possible.   With 1 second left, I completed rep 10 and knew that I had just finished my last successful round.  After a short break, I attempted to knock out some more reps in round 11, but after 3 reps, one of my calves began feeling shaky, so I called it a night.  

And once again, as it was last year at 14.2, my final score was 18.