Cinco De Waldo

Workout date: 5/5/15

"Dave is good at rope climbs."

That was a text I received yesterday.  For those of you that know me well, you know that I tend to shy away from anything complimentary that is said to me (sorry, it's a reflex), but I was okay with this one.  For a long time, I struggled to get up the rope at the gym, but these days, I look forward to the workouts that include rope climbs.  Of course, I would have looked forward to yesterday's WOD more if I hadn't scraped up my right shin (the one that gets abused during rope climbs) while doing Monday's workout, but these things happen.

The workout for Tuesday night was the following: a descending rep scheme of rope climbs (6-5-4-3-2-1) with a 400 meter run after each round.  There was a soft time cap of 20 minutes, which meant that if you got back in the door to start your final round prior to the clock hitting 20 minutes, you could continue on and finish the workout.  And let me tell you, I really wanted to finish this one.  I have gradually been able to do more and more rope climbs during workouts.  I remember the first time I did a workout with 6 rope climbs in it.  It was all I could do to reach the 15 ft mark on that 6th climb, but I held on for dear life and made it, even though I was spent.  Now I'd be doing 6 climbs in round one!  Craziness.

Having done the Ronald McDonald House Plane Pull on Saturday morning, I was decked out with a new t-shirt and, more importantly, new striped socks to provide some degree of protection to my beaten up shins.  Unfortunately, the feedback from everyone I ran into was that I looked like the hidden protagonist of "Where's Waldo?"  Perhaps I should re-think my wardrobe choices.

While doing my usual pre-workout planning, I figured that the running portion of the workout would take approximately two and a half minutes per round.  That isn't very fast, but the rope climbs were certainly going to take some of the starch out of me.  That meant 15 minutes of running in total, 12:30 of which would fall under the soft cap.  As a result, I would have 7:30 to complete 20 rope climbs to make it under the cap.  All of that translated to this workout being a sprint.

As much as I would like to claim that I remembered all of the splits and what happened in each round, I have to admit that my brain switched to survival mode at a certain point during the workout.  And with the weather getting hotter and my brain overheating, this is probably going to happen more and more over the summer.  But I vividly remember the beginning and the end, so I can at least fill you in on those details.

Our class had 7 people in it: me, Alona, Jen, Michal, Rachel, Christine, and Brian from CT.  Jen and Christine were not going to climb the rope, but the remaining five were.  That was a bit of a problem since there were only 4 ropes and this was a sprint.  Waiting around for someone to give up their rope was going to be an issue with a time cap involved.  I decided that I would wait and stagger my start.  A two minute wait sounded about right to me, with the thought really being that I needed to wait until someone headed out on their first run before going.  As Alona, Michal, Rachel, and Brian got going, I hung out.  Brian was incredibly fast and finished all 6 of his rope climbs in about 1:15.  With a rope now open, I decided to join in on the fun with a 1:30 stagger.

Getting up and down the rope the first 2-3 times was not so bad.  After that though, it became work.  I kept moving at a pretty good pace during that first round and finished my 6th rope climb in about 1:40.  Even in the moment that blew my mind.  I got going on the run, trying to maintain a solid pace while attempting to let my arms recover.  I think I finished that first run in around 2:30.  I was okay with that pace, as long as I wasn't sucking wind when I got back.  I started on the round of 5 rope climbs and things deteriorated quickly.  I knew I was ahead of Michal and Rachel's pace after the round of 6, but when they headed back out the door during my round of 5, I was no longer so sure.  My first two climbs went as expected, but climbs 3 and 4 destroyed me.  I jumped up for climb #5, made it a few feet, then had to come back down.  My grip was gone.  My arms were tired.  I began to doubt whether I could get this climb, never mind the 10 more on the horizon.  I shook my arms out, slowly climbed, hit the mark, and came back down.  Off for another run.

From that point forward, it was impossible for me to do consecutive climbs.  It was one climb, take a break, regroup, do another slow climb.  At one point, I stopped on the middle of the climb.  I had a strong hold of the rope with my hands and feet and really had no concerns about falling.  But I was drained.  It was the first time I had ever stopped to regroup mid-climb without feeling the need to come back down.  I would eventually finish that climb.  After the run at the end of the round of 4, I looked at the clock and knew I wasn't going to make the soft cap.  Such a bummer.

I got through the round of 3 climbs and saw the clock say 19:47 (18:17 for me), which meant I had 1:43 to get back in the door to break 20 minutes.  Knowing I would not have any rope climbs left, I pushed with what I had left on the final run.  And there wasn't much left.  But I did that last run in a respectable 1:53, meaning I came in the door at 20:10, capped with 3 rope climbs and 2 400M runs to go.  It would have been great to finish this one, but at that moment, all I really wanted to do was sit in front of the fan and guzzle down my 1.5 liter bottle of water.

The day ended with a bit of Cinco de Mayo celebration (some people started while we were doing the workout) and a celebration of Miranda's birthday as well.

Next blog post: Team DT.  Will I actually be able to use my arms after the last two days?