Assless Chap

Workout date: 5/15/15

Most of the plans/strategies that I come up with for workouts end up failing at the gym.  That never stops me from coming up with new ones though.  I think the reason behind that is because I love trying to figure things out.  I can be wrong over and over again.  I can fail more times than I'll ever remember.  But there's an excitement that comes with trying something new.  The hope that maybe this time, you figured out the solution, even for something minor.

Friday's workout was 4 rounds for time of rowing 30 calories followed by a 50 ft front rack walking lunge (155/105).  The workout had a 20 minute time cap.  I've always thought I was decent at rowing, but more and more recently I've seen people left and right getting off the rower before me.  I've felt the need to pace on certain workouts while others haven't needed to.  And as I racked my brain trying to figure out how I could improve, it occurred to me that I haven't had my damper very high when I've rowed.  Let's change that up!  It seemed to work when I rowed 2,000 meters recently and saw an almost 20 second improvement to my PR.  This would be my first time trying it for calories.

Maybe I was too caught up in becoming a better rower, because the pain in this WOD would come from the lunges.  I had done a workout during the Barbulls program where we had to do heavy lunges at the end and I remember it being miserable, even though I only managed 4-6 reps per round.  As we practiced prior to this workout, I determined that approximately 12 lunges would carry me through the 50 feet.  I could manage that using 155 pounds, right?  Well, for a little while at least.

During the warmup, we had to row 30 calories and I got to test out rowing for calories with the damper on 9.  Honestly, it went pretty smoothly.  I used big pulls, didn't have to row incredibly fast, and managed to complete 30 calories in about 1:40.  The best times of the day at RX weight averaged about 3:30 per round.  I could do 12 lunges in a minute and a half, right?  (I'm really laying on the failure foreshadowing pretty thick tonight.)

There were four of us in class: myself, Michal, Brent, and Ashley.  Michal and I would be rowing alongside one another and lunging in the same direction, while the same would be true for Brent and Ashley.  We got going and I would be the first one off the rower.  I ran down to my end, cleaned my bar up into the front rack, and began lunging.  It was heavy and unpleasant.  I made it 8 steps and then dropped.  At about this time, Brent and Ashley both got to their bars.  We had to do a little maneuvering to get around one another, but I made a sharp right after Brent passed by and did my final 4 lunges.  As I walked back to my rower, the clock was ticking towards 3 minutes.  Not too bad.

Unfortunately, that first round took a toll on my rowing.  I'm not sure of my exact splits on the rower, but I could see that my pulls were registering at about 70-80% of the power I had in round 1.  Again, I would be the first one off the rower, but Brent would cut into my lead on the lunges.  This time, I did 6 lunges in my first set and 6 lunges in my second set.  The experience was very similar to round one in terms of how unpleasant it was.  Round three would be like round two with the pulls on the rower about the same.  I was once again the first one to the lunges and I split the lunges 6 and 6.  But those last 6 lunges were excruciating.  I was not looking forward to the final round.

I got back on the rower one last time.  I wanted to keep the same pace as the last two rounds, but I needed to recover as well.  The beginning of that last row was kinda slow, but when I had less than 10 calories to go, I did my best to pull harder and end the ordeal.  The rowing finally ended and I psyched myself up to get through only a dozen more steps.  My glutes were on fire, but if I could fight through 12 lunges, I'd be all done.  I slowly made my way down the gym, somehow managing 6 steps before dropping the bar.  We were officially dealing with pain.  My glutes had decided that they were calling it a day.  I cleaned the bar, got 2 more lunges, than dropped.  Another clean, another lunge, another drop.  The finish line was 3 steps away and I was feeling really stupid about not being able to get there.  I cleaned the bar, determined to get those last 3 lunges.  I did 1 lunge, then another, and...then I dropped.  So demoralizing.  I couldn't make it 1 more step?  This was a new low for me.  After composing myself, I cleaned the bar one more time and did one last shaky lunge to finish.  Final time: 16:37.  I hadn't even noticed that Brent had passed me while I was trying to get that last lunge.  Ashley was done a little bit after me.  And Michal, who claimed she couldn't complete the workout under the 20 minute time cap, finished with 82 seconds to spare.

Generally I'll be tired after a workout and have the occasional soreness, but I tend not to really feel the effects of a workout until two days later.  That was not the case with this workout.  My lack of strong glutes was coming back to haunt me now and I knew I'd be in trouble for a couple of days.  Did I mention Competitors Class would be the next morning?  Ugh.

As for the rowing experiment, it went well enough that I'll be continuing with it going forward.  Who knows, maybe one day I can get strong enough where I can be a big boy and throw the damper all of the way to 10!