Nine Minutes With Isabel

Workout date: 1/12/15

6 days on, 4 days off...maybe it was time to get a saner schedule going.  Or maybe it was time to binge on working out again since I'll be headed to Las Vegas next week.  Probably the latter.  Either way, I finally made my way back to an actual class this evening for what would be another test day.  Tonight's workout was Isabel, 30 snatches for time with RX weights of 135/95.

A few months ago, we had benchmark week at the gym, with one of the workouts being Grace/Isabel, where we got to choose which of the ladies we wanted to take on for the WOD.  That day, I chose Isabel, because I had never done Isabel before.  Part of me wanted to try it at 135 that day, but the night before we did a benchmark workout involving pull-ups and you can imagine how swell that went.  I opted for 115 instead and finished in what I thought was a respectable 3 minutes and 45 seconds.

That performance led me to the delusional belief that I should do 135 tonight.  To be fair, there was a logical argument behind going for it.  Earlier in the day, Rich A and Pete did the workout in around 6 minutes and 8 minutes respectively.  That was a little daunting, since they are two of the better athletes in the gym, but I really didn't think something in the 6-7 minute range was nuts.  That would be 3 minutes on top of my time using 20 pounds less.  Reasonable, right?

Option B was to do 125 pounds.  It was a slight bump higher and it would probably keep me in that respectable "close to 5 minutes" range that the workout was designed to be done in.  This was the more sensible choice, so the chances of me going down this road was pretty much zilch.  I mean, if you're that close to doing it RX, you might as well just go for RX!  (Poor decision making at its finest)  And there was also the fact that I had missed 4 days at the gym, so I felt the need to go above and beyond tonight.

We ran the workout in 2 heats with one partner counting for the other during that person's heat.  Conn was my partner and he decided to go with 95 pounds as he had done a heavy squat routine yesterday.  Despite that, he blew through his 30 snatches in under 3 minutes.  In fact, most of the first heat was done in around 3 minutes.  Which meant I was in trouble already.  It wasn't long before my heat began.  Once we started, my plan was to try and keep a nice steady pace with form being more important than speed.  I knew I wasn't putting up a super fast time and with the weight being what it was, I needed to make every lift count.

1 rep, 2 reps, 2 reps...shoot, right off the bat I couldn't even string 3 snatches.  The 3rd lift came up to eye level and came back down.  Not a good start, but I kept plugging away.  I made it to 11 reps at around the 2:15 mark, which meant I was still around 6 minute pace.  The weight didn't feel awful, but my form was deteriorating noticeably.  Coach Giulia mentioned that my shoulders weren't back in the setup, so I made an adjustment and started doing some better reps.  I forget where that got me, but I started creeping up on 20 reps.  Around 22-23 reps, I hit the wall.  Good reps were interspersed with bad reps.  I think the clock was at about 7:15 when I managed rep #27.  The end was near!  Or not.  A couple bad reps before #28 was complete.  More failure before #29 was a success.  And when #30 went up, Barbell Club may have been over.  The official time for Isabel was 9 minutes on the nose.

So that was horrible, but I do need to thank Conn, Giulia, and Kate K for giving me tips on how to finish.  And to Cline for making me laugh by yelling out "do it for Kesha!" at some point during that ordeal.

After the workout, I practiced pull-ups again (5 sets of 5 strict pull-ups on the medium black band).  Also did 1 unassisted by bands strict pull-up (yay!).  Needing double under practice as well, I got out my new rope that arrived yesterday and had immediate success surprisingly.  My first attempt tied my PR with 6 strung double unders.  On my next attempt, I got to 7.  After a bunch of attempts in the 4-5 range, I managed to get 8 once, but that would be as high as I would get.

Tomorrow is a 14.2 flashback with chest-to-bar pull-ups and overhead squats.  I can do one of those two things!