Angie Harmin'

Workout dates: 6/15/15 and 6/16/15

There really wasn't enough to write about from Monday to devote an entire blog post to it, so I decided to wait a day and combine two recaps so that you could have a ridiculously long blog post like you have become accustomed to.  Always looking out for both of my readers.

Monday's WOD was purely running.  I've done workouts like this at Endurance class, but due to my work schedule this year, I have missed all Endurance classes this spring, a trend which will likely continue throughout the summer.  The workout is simple, but there is an important concept behind it.  You run 400 meters six times, with 90 seconds of rest in between.  Does 90 seconds sound like enough rest?  Not really.  For most of us, that means heading back to the starting line for the next round as we're trying to get our breathing back under control.  The concept of working again when you're not quite completely recovered is an important one in Crossfit (especially for me), as the tendency (in long workouts in particular) is to stop working until you're completely ready to go again.  Those breaks end up being much longer than you realize while you are taking them, causing your final time to be much higher than you would have hoped.  If you can get to that place where you can start the next set when you are only partially recovered, then you're ahead of the game.

Here were my times for the 6 rounds:

1. 93 seconds
2. 95 seconds
3. 100 seconds
4. 99 seconds
5. 103 seconds
6. 99 seconds

Add it all up along with the five 90 second breaks and you get a final time of 17:19.  Not great, but I was happy that I managed to be fairly consistent the whole way.  Wish I had a bit more left in the tank for that final round as I was hoping that one would be closer to 90 seconds, but like I said, I haven't been to Endurance and my cardio leaves a lot to be desired these days.

For strength, I did the bench press routine I had tried out not too long ago.  Warmed up with 10 reps of the bar (45 pounds), then 10 reps at 95 pounds.  After that it was sets of 10 at 135 with two minutes between rounds for as long as I could go.  Like last time, I wasn't able to complete the fourth set, but I did manage 6 reps in the final round this time whereas last time I believe I only got 4.  From there, I went and worked on strict pull-ups, doing a set of 4, then several sets of 3.  Wrapped things up with those banded sit-ups I had done last week.  Once again, I did 3 sets of 30.  Made it through the first two sets unbroken.  The third set was a train wreck as I only got to 11 before breaking.  I did very small sets after that, finishing off with some single reps to get to 30.

Tuesday's WOD was one of my least favorite workouts in the gym: Angie.  Angie goes like this:

100 pull-ups
100 push-ups
100 sit-ups
100 air squats
(Must complete one movement entirely before moving on to the next one)

You can see the problem already.  100 pull-ups?  That's funny.  How am I supposed to manage that?  The answer: I wouldn't.  Part of me thought about scaling to 50 reps for the workout, but that seemed like too much scaling.  My plan would be to set a time cap on myself for the pull-ups (10 minutes) with the hope of getting 75 reps in.  If I was closer to another number (60, 85, something else), then I'd use that for the workout.

I got the thick green band ready because I knew this was going to fall apart quickly with anything less.  We got started and I managed a set of 10 and two sets of 5 in the first minute.  20 down already, good start!  Except that was all I had for pull-ups.  After that first minute, I was averaging about 6 pull-ups per minute, usually doing two sets of 3 pull-ups.  At that pace, I might be able to sneak in 75 within 10 minutes.  Next to me, Ben was working at about the same pace as me, although he was doing actual pull-ups.  And he seemed determined to knock out all 100 reps.  It was impressive stuff.  As the minutes ticked by, I became a little worried about fatiguing even more and not getting to 75 reps before 10 minutes had elapsed.  Finally it dawned on me that I could be more efficient if I did singles.  I had thought that singles might leave me discouraged should I fail on one of them, but I ended up not failing.  With a little push at the end, I got to 75 reps at about the 9:15 mark.

As much as I hate pull-ups, that is not what gets you in this workout.  I've done a scaled version of Angie once or twice before, so I knew that after smoking your arms on the pull-up bar, the seemingly reasonable push-up segment becomes very painful.  I had hoped to do a couple sets of 10 to knock out a chunk of my 75 reps, but I could only manage one.  Then it was a set of 6.  Then I moved to sets of 4 for a long time.  Then it was down to sets of 3.  It really does mess with your mind knowing that you are doing this simple movement and your body is just slowly failing as you go along.  I was on the push-ups for more than 10 minutes before I managed to unsteadily press out that 75th rep.  It sucked, but at least I was done using my arms for the day.

Sit-ups!  At last, something I wouldn't hate.  If only I had not done 90 banded sit-ups the night before!  (Continuing my streak of doing whatever will be in the next day's WOD at the previous night's open strength class)  But I do enjoy those banded sit-ups because I can certainly feel the burn when I'm done with them.  Another problem I have with sit-ups in the gym is...hmmm, how can I put this delicately?  It tends to leave me with a bit of posterior road rash.  (It was either that or "marks on me bum", but my British accent is terrible even when I write)  So I was dealing with two types of pain as I sat on the mat to do my 75 reps.  I blocked out the butt pain and tried to keep moving through the reps, similar to how I make my way through burpees when I'm tired.  It was very deliberate, but I got better as I went along.  I did sets of 12, 13, 11, 19, 11, and 9 before moving on to the air squats.

I was in the neighborhood of 25 minutes at this point and Giulz had asked us to finish within 30 minutes.  It wasn't going to take me 5 minutes to do 75 air squats (at least I hope not) so I felt good about scaling the workout appropriately.  Once again, I zoned out the pain and tried to keep my sets going as long as I could.  The first set was 40 reps.  Didn't feel that I could manage a set of 35 to end things, so I broke the last 35 reps into a set of 15 and a set of 20.  Final time: 27:19.

There's your double dose for the day.  Wednesday's workout is finding a 3RM for front squat.  Going to search my history and see if I can find out what this number should be and do my best to surpass it later this evening.