More Botched Strategery

Workout date: 3/13/15

While passionate discussion over the format of 15.3 continued throughout Friday, it would do nothing  to change the actual workout.  Those folks with muscle-ups were welcome to do the workout RX, while the rest of us would be doing the Scaled workout.  The Scaled version was incredibly simple, but even the simplest workout can be a beast depending on how long it is and how much intensity you put into it.  Because this is the Open and the competitiveness in the gym gets ratcheted up a few levels, you had to expect to see some exhausted athletes at the end of it.

To be fair, I'm not sure I was anticipating as much carnage as I saw when I walked into the gym late Friday night.  Work had kept me from getting to the gym earlier like I had planned.  I also had the unpleasant surprise of getting home and finding that the dryer had stopped shortly after I left that morning, meaning my Team Orange gear was still damp.  Scrambling to get to the gym without my "spirit gear" was not how I wanted to warm up for 15.3, but that's the way things go sometimes.  I got to the gym around 6:15 to find that the final listed heat was already going.  And everyone who was participating looked like they had been working out for a half-hour, yet the timer had not reached 10 minutes yet.  Uh-oh.

After that heat ended, I got to join in one additional heat with Rachel, Michal, and Faby.  Pretty sure I knew who was finishing 4th in that heat before we even got going.  Faby was going RX, while the rest of us were going Scaled.  As a reminder, the Scaled workout was a 14 minute AMRAP of 50 wall balls (20 lbs/10 lbs) to 9 ft and 200 single unders.  I had devised a very simple and, because it's mine, inherently flawed plan on how to do this workout.  The wall balls would be the worst part, but I've been working on being mentally tougher while doing them.  Even if I was hurting, I was only throwing the ball to the 9 ft mark instead of the 10 ft mark.  I could handle them.  Just don't drop the ball.

The workout started and I tossed the ball over and over again to the 9 foot mark.  I made sure to keep my breathing under control during that first set.  It was strange shooting to the lower mark and I knew it would be strange later when I had to try to do fast single unders after training to do double unders for so long.  I probably didn't use the right amount of intensity on these throws because I was throwing to a lower mark and I figured I needed to throw it softer.  It likely would have been smarter to have a bit more of a flatter trajectory.  No matter, I was plugging along when I heard Michal's ball hit the floor.  She was intentionally taking a break at 25, but I was going to keep going.  When I reached 30 reps, it was decision time.  I felt that if I went past this point, I might as well try to hold on for all 50.  I knew I wasn't going to hear Rachel's ball hit the floor during that first round and I was still trying to beat her for our bet.  So I continued on.  All the way to 50.

When I came over to the jump ropes, I was shocked to see that I was the first one there.  I grabbed my rope and got going, but it wasn't long before I had company.  My thoughts on the single unders was similar to the wall balls.  I felt like I had to go slower to get the rhythm right, since going fast might lead to hitting myself with the rope, and that would be lost time.  I did my first 70 or so in a row this way before stopping as I quickly realized how boring this was and how taxing on my calves this segment of the workout was going to be.  200 reps was a lot to string together.  I got going again and knocked out another large set before stopping.  Same thing for my 3rd large set.  I hadn't taken long breaks or anything when I stopped, but while I was in my 3rd set, I saw out of the corner of my eye that both Michal and Rachel had headed back to the wall.  Wait, what?  How could they have gotten through the single unders so fast?  I had definitely messed up.  With less than 20 reps left, I sped through the remainder of my single unders and got back to the wall.  Round 1 was complete in about three and a half minutes, meaning that I'd have to stay at that pace to finish 4 rounds.  Hmmm...should be enough time to finish at least 3 rounds, right?

The second round of wall balls was nothing like the first.  I don't even remember how I broke them up, but they were not the large sets I had imagined.  The mental fortitude that I thought would carry me through the workout was over visiting Kettlebell Kitchen or something, because as soon as my body wanted a breather, that ball hit the floor.  I was falling even further behind in the workout.  Eventually I finished up the 50 reps, but I was huffing and puffing on my way back to the rope.  Like the wall balls, I had to break up the single unders into smaller sets.  And I began hitting myself with the rope.  This was turning into a mess.  The girls were well into their third set of wall balls when I finished round 2.  Not only that, it was clear I wasn't finishing three rounds.  Not good at all.

In that third round of wall balls, I was just trying to finish as much as I could.  I was pretty sure that I wasn't getting back to the rope, but if by some miracle I did, there were lots of quick reps I could add to my total.  Even with that in mind, there was not enough in the tank to get through all 50.  Michal was still doing her third round of wall balls while I was doing mine, so I figured I was about 25-30 reps behind her.  She finished the wall balls and went to her rope, where Rachel was already working.  I kept chipping through very small sets.  Then Rachel came back to the wall.  And then Michal was back.  Crap, now I was 200 reps behind her.  With time ticking down, I tried to keep the ball off the floor.  I managed to get 42 reps for a final score of 542, 221 reps behind Michal and 244 reps behind Rachel.

I was very disheartened at the end of the workout.  It wasn't as bad as the re-do of 15.2, but it was definitely a "why am I doing this?" moment.  I hadn't come remotely close to the type of score that I expected to get on this workout.  And the two people I regularly train with had beaten me by over 200 reps.  I'm not getting better.  I'm getting worse!

Thankfully, these thoughts only remained in my head for 10 minutes or so.  If I re-do this workout on Monday and get a similar score, those thoughts may creep back into my head.  But the more I thought about it, the more I came away with the feeling that I just overthought this one, as I am prone to do.  I didn't get a prize for stringing the first 50 wall balls.  I just needlessly tired myself out very early on in a somewhat long workout.  Doing a set of 30 and a set of 20 would only have taken a few seconds longer, but probably would have paid off in the long run.  For the single unders, I needed to bring more intensity.  If the rope hits me, so be it, but that controlled jumping I was doing became a drag quickly and contributed greatly to my fatigue.

Will these changes lead to a better score?  We'll find out on Monday.  My first two re-do attempts have not resulted in improvements, so I would not be shocked if 542 ends up being the best I can do.  But I honestly feel that this may be the workout where if I let it fly, I could end up having a big improvement.