After two strong workouts (at least for me), I was due for a lousy one. And today's performance was pretty craptacular. There may have been some warning signs before my "workout" began...
Let's start with waking up this morning. My watch alarm was going off and as I laid in a semi-comatose state, I could not for the life of me figure out what was going on. It was super early, but I didn't have to go to work because it was Saturday. Why else would my watch be beeping at me? I was honestly ready to drift back off to dreamland when I remembered that I had told Giuls I would come to strength at 8 and do some hero WOD at 9. That was such a bad idea. Why did I say yes to that?
I got myself moving (slowly) and stood in the shower. The new shower at our house is great, but the downside is that it has the Las Vegas-like quality of leaving you without any concept of what time it is. Was I in there for 10 minutes? 20 minutes? Did I fall back asleep standing up? It really is just a guess by the time you turn the water off. Walking back into the bedroom, I discovered it was probably closer to 20 minutes and I needed to hurry to get to the gym. Got dressed, packed my bag, and drove to the gym, arriving about 5 minutes late (what's new?).
Being late wasn't a problem though, as I wasn't the only one in a haze. Aimee, Giuls, Marisa, Rachel, and Keith were all there at 8, but no one seemed to be fully awake. We all did some stretching, then did 20 minutes of snatch work (looked like we all went light), then 20 minutes of clean and jerk work (light yet again). Maybe there was some conservation of energy going on since at 9 we were all planning on doing today's hero WOD.
A hero WOD is a special workout in honor of a fallen soldier that tends to be quite a bit harder than your run-of-the-mill WOD. Today's was Badger, which consisted of 3 rounds of 30 squat cleans (95/65), 30 pull-ups, and an 800M run. Unless this is the first post you've read, you know how badly I suck at pull-ups. And I wasn't looking forward to the squat cleans a whole lot because I was still sore from that epic pistol workout a few days earlier. The surprising monkey wrench though was the run. Normally this would be a nice breather from the carnage taking place in the rest of the workout. But today, it was a balmy 14 degrees outside, with a nice headwind during the first 400M of the run. Not exactly awesome bald guy running weather.
After a brief warmup, we got going. Since this workout was going to take 35-40 minutes, I decided that small sets with small breaks was the way to go. I did 3 squat cleans, dropped the bar, took a few seconds, and did 3 more. This was a mistake in hindsight. I really needed to be doing sets of 5-6 reps in that first round and I know I had the capacity to do it because in round two I ended up doing a couple sets of 5 reps. Live and learn. I was the last one done with my squat cleans, which was definitely not part of the plan. I knew I would struggle on the pull-ups, so being behind already was no bueno.
Due to the high volume of pull-ups we were doing, I set up 2 medium sized bands to assist me. This was likely the only thing I did right today. My first set was 10 reps, followed by 5 more to have me halfway done. But once those pull-ups go, they're gone, and I struggled to finish the last 15 reps before being the last one out the door for the run. And that run? Oh, it sucked big time. It is one thing to have your legs burn or your shoulders burn, but to have your face burn from the arctic wind whipping across it on the first part of a run? Terrible.
I got back and tried to make up some time on the second round of squat cleans, but I could already tell that I was in trouble with my calves. I love thrusters, and the squat clean is essentially just the first half of that movement, but I was not enjoying doing them today. Also, 95 pounds isn't a particularly heavy weight, but every time I went to stand after doing a squat clean, there was pain. Some of the other folks in the class had already taken off for the second run as I tried to finish my squat cleans, meaning I was way behind. I slowly finished and made my way over to the pull-up bar, where I slowly did 30 reps there, knowing my reward was to go back out in the freezing cold.
As I made my way back in for round three, a couple people had already finished and I was even further behind than before. I tried to do sets of 3 again, but I was in agony trying to stand up with my cleans. It was somewhere in the midst of round 3 that Marisa came over and told me that I had 5 seconds to get back on the bar every time I took a break. And Marisa meant business. I tried to stay on schedule as much as possible, even if it only meant 1-2 reps. I was already tired, sore, and cold. I did not need an ass-kicking on top of that. And I'm pretty sure Marisa was ready to kick my ass. With nearly everyone done with the workout, I moved over to the pull-up bar.
I don't even remember how I broke those up, other than knowing that Marisa and Giuls (and someone else - it really became a blur at this stage) were on me about getting my hands back on the bar. Even had some no reps in there for good measure. Finally, I pulled one of my chins over the bar for rep #30 and I was headed out for the last run. As I walked out into the cold, I heard a voice say "I'll run with you". Rachel was a real pal and went out and did those last 800 meters with me, even encouraging me to sprint the last 100 meters. My final time was an embarrassing 49:09, but I managed to complete the workout. Thank you to everyone who pushed me along during that last round!
(Tough to find a more embarrassing photo of me than this. Ellie and Megs were there to push me at the end as well. Sorry for blacking out.)
Perhaps I should have scaled the squat cleans. I did set up the bar so that I could strip weight, but I was incredibly stubborn today. Coach Paul dubbed it a "typical Dave workout" and gave me the title of "worst scaler of all time." Tough to disagree.
Not sure if I'll make it in tomorrow. I really want to because it is Open Gym, but I've had terrible headaches all day today and really need to catch up on the sleep I didn't get while I was in Vegas. I'll figure it out in the morning.
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