March Madness is in full swing, but one of the greatest upsets ever came at the gym Friday night. No, I did not beat Rachel. No, I did not beat Faby. Wait! I did beat Faby! But that isn't what I was referring to. Friday marked the return of Ryan Brennan, the strongest dude in our gym. Did I beat Ryan in 15.4? Not even close. However, he told me after the workout that he reads this blog!
Why is that such a huge upset? Well last year, the gym honored me as Athlete of the Month due to some sort of clerical error. And as anyone who has been reading this blog knows, brevity is not my strong suit when it comes to writing. I wanted to have fun with this very unexpected honor, so I wrote a paragraph (or two) in response to every question on the questionnaire. Ryan was hoping for something shorter to read. I believe his response was something along the lines of: "Dude, why did you have to write so much? I started reading it and then I said 'forget this'." So now whenever I make a post on the KOP blog or write something on Facebook that tends to ramble on forever, I jokingly tell people Ryan Brennan is never reading it. But now I know he will! (He probably will never read this blog again after this post.)
On to the workout...and maybe 15.3 had a silver lining. Gone were the concerns about doing all of the workouts RX. I stopped caring what the workout was even going to be. Scaling 15.3 had sapped away my enthusiasm for the Open. I was still going to complete the final two weeks, but it was now no different than any normal WOD during the week. Just tell me what it will be and I'll be there.
I did finally get something right though: one of my pre-Open predictions. The RX version of 15.4 included handstand push-ups. I really felt that would be the case before the Open started and after last week's fiasco, there was little doubt in my mind they would show up in the final two weeks. So it was time to go Scaled again, and oddly enough the Scaled version was made up of 10 push presses (95/65) and 10 cleans (115/75), AMRAP in 8 minutes. This was something I might be good at. My enthusiasm for the Open returned slightly.
As usual, there was no getting out of work early on Friday, so by the time I showed up to the gym, half the heats were over. I decided to sign up for the final heat so I would have some time to warm up a bit. Mark R., who is a member of Team Orange, went earlier in the day and scored 100 reps. He's stronger than I am, so I started to scale back my expectations on what my score would be. Looking at the results from the afternoon, scores tended to be in the 80-110 range. Until I saw Rachel's score. She put up 154, giving her the highest Scaled score in the gym. Her score was 20% higher than the second-highest Scaled score. Damn, I was going to be 0 for 5 quickly, unless I could manage 1 full round per minute.
Matt E asked me to judge him during his heat and he's another guy in the gym who is on the strong side, so I was interested to see how he would do. Matt uses a lot of raw strength in workouts like this one, almost shoulder pressing it (no knee bend) instead of push pressing the weight. That can tire you out quickly. I feel pretty confident that if he used his legs more, he would have crushed this workout. Despite not using his legs a lot, he still put up a very good score of 106. I liked the way he paced during the 8 minutes. Originally I thought I would just try to blitz my way through the first 2 rounds and then go from there, but 8 minutes was going to be an awfully long sprint. And having watched all these big guys run out of juice, setting a solid pace seemed like a better plan.
Wait Dave, don't all your plans go wrong? Well, this didn't feel like a plan to me so much as learning from others. My initial strategy seemed doomed too fail and I just watched someone do it successfully with a different technique, so it seemed foolish to do anything but pace. Would I have changed anything if I did the workout a second time? Sure, but we'll get there soon enough.
As was the case Monday, I would be working out next to Dave S. in my heat. I didn't have a good idea of how he would perform in this workout, so I kept telling myself to stay focused on what I was doing. Things got started and I made my way through the 10 push presses and turned around to go to the barbell I would be using to clean. Dave S. had already made it there and finished a clean. Don't let it get in your head. He finished the cleans about a rep in front of me as well, but I finished round 1 in about a minute. Round 2 was more of the same. When I turned around to clean, Dave S. was performing his first rep. Stay with your pace, ignore that he is ahead of you. We each got 10 cleans and I was still 1 rep behind heading to round 3. Time check: around 2 minutes, so still doing well. Breathing check: not dying yet.
Having done 95 pound push presses in the Nutrition Challenge WOD, I felt fairly confident that I could knock out sets of 10 for a while. But these workouts have a way of lulling you into thinking that they will be easy, when they definitely are not. I strung 10 more push presses in round 3 and turned to clean. And for the first time, I was ahead. I methodically went through my 10 cleans and had 60 reps done with a little under 3 and a half minutes elapsed. I was clearly not going to catch Rachel, but I wasn't spent yet and there was still more than half the workout in front of me.
Round 4 was where it started to suck. I had been in the zone until this point, but apparently my knees were getting a bit wobbly. In the push press, you cannot re-bend your knees after the initial bend and Giulia (who was judging me) let me know they were getting shaky. Sure enough, as I started round 4 of my push presses, I heard "NO REP!". I tried to block that out, but then I heard "NO REP!" again. Ok, that can't happen. Wasting energy on these no reps would surely haunt me if I kept doing it, so I needed to re-group. I dropped the bar after 4 reps. I picked up the bar again and tried to exaggerate that my knees were locked during each rep, but I had lost focus and dropped again after another 4 reps. I finally knocked out the last 2 reps and moved back to cleans.
The cleans had started to become pretty heavy, but I still had a relatively decent pace on them. I finished round 4 probably around the 5 minute mark. When I came back to the push presses, I maintained that exaggerated lock out to ensure my reps were good. I split the 10 reps into 2 sets of 5 and it was back to the cleans. As I got through a couple of cleans, I heard "2 minutes left!", which was the first time in the workout that I became concerned. With my early pace, I thought I could make it to round 7. Now I was trying to finish up round 5 with less than 2 minutes left and my pace was slowing. I pushed on the cleans and got to the 100 rep mark. Time for more push presses.
For round 6, I decided to hold on as best I could and get 6 reps in my first set. As I was doing them, I heard "1 minute". I was tired, but I wanted to get through as much of this round as I could. It would have been nice to hold on for all 10 push presses, but was terrified of what a "no rep" would do to my mind at this point. After doing the last 4 push presses, I was back over to the cleans, knowing I would not finish them. I did 3 cleans and heard "15 seconds, come on!" I wrapped my hands around the bar, took a deep breath, blew it out, and went for broke. One clean strung into another...strung into another...and how could that not be 15 seconds already? I dropped the bar and heard the beginning of the final countdown: "3...". I got my hands on the bar one more time, cleaned it with a second remaining and finished with 117 reps. For the Team Competition, it was the highest male Scaled score in the gym. (Do I know how many conditions I put on that to try and make it sound impressive? Yes I do. Let me have my tiny victories!)
What I would change if I did it again: Matt had suggested before the workout that I do quick singles on the cleans, but I think I would like to try 4-3-3 in the early rounds and 3-3-2-2 in the later rounds. Not sure how well that would have worked, but doing singles the entire time might have been pacing things a little too much. That being said, I can't imagine scoring higher than somewhere in the 125-130 range (probably ambitious). This was the first Open workout where it seemed a little pointless to do it a second time. Of course, that doesn't mean I won't.
After the workout, I went over and gave Rachel a "you kicked my ass again, but that was the best I've got" hug. She's reached another level. I can't even fathom what workout could come next week that I would beat her in. Finishing within shouting distance would be an upset. So that competition is over.
The Team Competition, though, is still in play. Sadly I won't be in town for 15.5 to finish off the Open with my teammates, so I tried to bring all my Team Orange love out on Friday night. Here's a pic of me judging Matt:
The inspiration for Taylor Swift's song 'Style'
Team Orange is hanging in there in second place with a bunch of scores outstanding for 15.4. And then there is next week, which should be some ridiculous workout we will all loathe. But Team Orange is going to get through it and put some pressure on Team Black!
Being in Colorado Springs at the moment and in Vegas a few days from now, you may see less blog posts than normal. My apologies! I will try to keep active and provide updates when possible. But in case things go quiet on the blog front for the next week, I'd like to wish everyone luck on 15.5.
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