The Sucker WOD

Workout date: 1/6/15

One of the best pieces of advice I've ever received at the gym came courtesy of Jim C.  I had only been at KOP for a short time and I was about to make my first attempt at Fight Gone Bad.  Part of what drew me into doing Crossfit was watching these crazy events on TV where the athlete would do 10 reps of this, followed by 20 reps of that, and on and on and on.  So now I would be doing this WOD where I would get to do 5 different things over the course of three rounds, and the best part was that I would get a minute break between rounds.  Sweet!

Or not.  As I was telling Jim how cool it was that this WOD included not one, but two breaks, he explained to me that if a WOD had breaks in it, then I should expect it to be much worse than most other WODs.  17 minutes later, as I was clutching on to a pole or something trying to figure out what the hell just happened, I realized how wise that advice was.  And although I've never forgotten that WODs with breaks are the spawn of Satan, I haven't quite learned my lesson when it comes to Sucker WODs.

What are Sucker WODs?  Those are the workouts that when they pop up on your screen at 10pm cause you to say "nice, I can do that, doesn't even sound that bad!"  Today's workout fell into that category.  It was very simple in design: 1,000 meters rowing, 30 box jumps (24"/20"), 30 wall balls (10' with 20lbs/9' with 14lbs), 500 meters rowing, 30 more box jumps, 30 more wall balls, capped off by 1,000 more meters rowing.  Hey, I can row!  I can jump on boxes!  And my wall balls have gotten much better over the last few months.  This is going to be a piece of cake!

As I laid on the floor of the gym at about 8:15pm this evening, I kicked myself for being naive once again.  The 7:30 class was just me and Mark.  My naiveté didn't extend to the point that I thought I would be the first one done, but it didn't matter anyway after Mark decided he was doing 15 reps on the box jumps and wall balls.  (Note: Mark finished 6 minutes ahead of me.  There is no doubt he would have crushed me on this workout had he done the full 30 reps.)  We got started and Mark was off the rower a solid 10-15 seconds before me, although I was comfortable with doing the first row in almost exactly 4 minutes.  Then came the box jumps and those got sucky quick.  I was at 12 jumps when Mark moved to wall balls, and he was back to the rower before I finished off my 30.  I felt like I was 10 minutes behind him already.  I got to the wall balls and did 11 before letting the ball drop.  I wanted to string all 30 (and Coach Keith might tell you I was capable of doing so), but between being far behind and already breathing heavy, my mental strength was wavering.  I only got 5 in my next set, losing my grip on the ball a bit on my last rep.  Keith came over and told me he wanted me to string the last 14.  Maybe having someone bark at me helps, but more than anything, I think I hate disappointing people.  So that ball hit above the 10' mark 14 times in a row before it hit the ground again.

I thought the 500 meter row would be a nice breather, but that 2:20 or so felt like it took forever.  And Mark was already on his final row!  I made my way back over to box jumps and tried to keep a steady pace, but I was definitely tired, even doing one of my patented "collide into the box instead of jumping on it" moves.  That doesn't make you feel dumb at all.  Wall balls was very similar to the first go round.  I did 2 sets of 7 before Keith came over and told me he wanted the last 16 in a row.  I'm not sure I could think of anything that sounded less appealing at that moment, but once I picked up that ball, I made sure that it hit the mark 16 straight times before letting it touch the floor.

Just 1,000 meters of rowing to go!  Ugh...

I got on the rower, began pulling, and closed my eyes every few strokes.  I knew 1,000 meters wasn't that far, but looking at my speed wasn't gonna help me.  I tried to pull as fast as I could knowing I was almost done, but when I did see the monitor, my split seemed to be fluctuating from as low as 2:10 to as high as 2:20.  My plan was to give everything I could muster once I hit 750 meters and it was at about that point that Keith told me he wanted me under a 2:00 split the rest of the way.  With him and Mark pushing me, I got it under 2:00, eventually finishing with a 1:48 split on the screen.  Final time for the workout: 19:25.

Did I think this workout would take 19:25?  No way.  I thought something in the range of 17-18 minutes was where I would end up.  But that's what happens when you fall for the Sucker WOD.