Puddle Jumper

Workout date: 3/2/15

I should just admit up front that I did not get a lot done at Open Strength this evening.  When you're a nerd like myself, pursuits of the mind often take precedence over getting buff.  (You are free to smack me for saying 'buff', but a couple of people at the gym this week did say "looking buff Dave", so I have it stuck in my head like a popular, yet terrible song.)  After the Nutrition Challenge, I was asked if I would help out with the scoring for the Team Competition within the gym during the Open.  That sure sounded like an invitation to create an overly complicated spreadsheet to me!

And so it has come to pass.  Due to the amazing turnout from the KOP community, there are 76 athletes representing our gym divided into 4 teams.  I am on the Orange team, under the direction of Captain Giulia.  I have definitely lucked out and fallen on to the right team.  We want to win, we're going to bust our butts trying to win, but if we lose, we're still going to take pictures of our orange underwear and drink orange margaritas afterwards.  At least that's what happened after Week 1.

So with tonight being the last night that you could attempt 15.1 and 15.1a, there was another wave of attempts that needed to be captured for my spreadsheet.  There were also some late entries that needed to be put on teams.  My scoring scales had to be re-calibrated.  It was all very exciting to me and probably to no one else.  Open Strength began at 7:30, but due to the attention my spreadsheet needed, I didn't leave the lobby and go into the gym until about 8:00.

Inside the gym, I saw that Michal was finishing up double under practice.  I told her I would practice with her, but I had taken too long.  A little bit of peer pressure never hurts though, and she agreed to do double unders until I failed.  Yes, that's right.  She's so good at double unders that she could just churn them out one after another until I clumsily hit myself with the rope.  I did make her work during my first set though.  Trying to prove that yesterday's super fluky set of 44 was only mildly fluky, I set my rope in motion.  Once again I settled into a nice cadence and it wasn't until I had finished 34 reps that I messed up.  Michal probably could have done 80, but she stopped when I did.

Naturally, this is the moment where I think "yes, I've figured it out!"  And that means I got smacked by reality soon after.  My next set?  3.  Followed by a very impressive set of 2.  How could that magic disappear so quickly?  Come on, you can't go from 34 down to 2 just like that!  But I did.  I started to overthink everything and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't put together a double-digit set of double unders.

Maybe the most amazing thing about watching Michal do double unders is her hair.  She has this big pony tail that is bouncing around as she jumps rope and not once did it get snagged by the rope.  I can't even tell you how many times the rope has hit the back of my head!  Probably an indication that there is something drastically wrong with my form.

While I attempted to overthink every aspect of simply jumping rope, Michal spoke with Faby.  He suggested that I do the Flight Simulator.  The Flight Simulator is used as a form of torture in certain countries.  Crossfit athletes do it as a way to work on getting large sets of double unders.  The Flight Simulator works as follows: you do a total of 19 sets of unbroken double unders escalating 5-10-15-20-25-30-35-40-45-50 and then once you've peaked at 50, you come back down doing 45-40-35-30-25-20-15-10-5.  All sets must be unbroken and you must pause between sets.

With the knowledge that this could take me several days to complete, I decided to take a smaller flight.  Having gotten 44 unbroken yesterday and 34 today, I thought going 5-10-15-20-25-20-15-10-5 would be a solid challenge for me.  And indeed it was.  I've learned how dangerous it is in Crossfit to have a number in your mind (you can imagine how badly this works out for someone like me).  If you think lifting 150 pounds is hard, then when you get to 150, that weight will feel like 400 pounds. And if you tell yourself you're doing 10 reps and then taking a break, you either cheat yourself because you probably could have done 15 in a row.  Or you start to freak out as each rep draws you closer to 10.  So much of Crossfit is overcoming the mental.

It is no surprise that as I would get a set going and I closed in on a number, I would botch things.  5 and 10 were fine the first time, but 15, 20, and 25 took some doing.  When I got back to 20 on the other side, I strung 17 reps than failed.  Dammit.  The next set was going great until I tripped on the 20th rep.  Why didn't I just jump as high as I possibly could?  Back to the drawing board.  Finally, I got 20 again, with 15 following soon after that.  Having done several hundred double unders at this point, getting 10 and 5 were not tremendously difficult, but they weren't done on the first try either.

With that completed, I used half of a roll of paper towels to dry off.  Then I headed to the pull up bar. I wanted to get some strict pull-ups in before I called it a night.  The first round I got 3.  The second round I got 4.  And the third round ended with 4 reps again.  I am oh so close to getting 5 strict pull-ups, but I'm not quite there yet.

Before wrapping up, I have to say that the highlight of the night was Michal and Giulia's mean spirited ribbing of one another.  The highlights?  "Why exactly can't you string 15 wall balls?" and "If she gets a muscle up, I'm quitting Crossfit."  Good times!