Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This

Workout date: 6/7/15

As many of you know, I am a bit of a horse racing aficionado.  Every now and then, when the mood strikes me, I have been known to place a wager on a race.  But it had been 37 years since the horse racing world had seen a Triple Crown champion.  How old am I?  37.  That means I have been waiting my entire life to see the greatest accomplishment that can happen in the sport I love.  Go ahead, think about that for a bit.  Throughout my adult life, I have seen horses come tantalizingly close to pulling off this feat, only to fall short.

But on Saturday, I finally got to witness it.  I wasn't there in person.  I'm sure it was a really cool atmosphere, but I probably would not have gotten to see it even if I had a ticket, as I'm sure I would have been arrested for assaulting one of the many patrons there who were holding up the betting lines with questions like "what does it mean to place?", "can I bet on all of the horses?", and "when do the Goo Goo Dolls start playing?".  If I didn't get arrested, I likely would have had an aneurysm.  Instead, I was home in my living room, expecting the worst, only by the time they hit the backstretch, it was clear that there was almost no chance American Pharoah was losing.  They let him on an easy lead and he repelled the one challenge he received from Frosted at the top of the stretch.  It was a magical experience.  Plus, I won a few shekels on some other races, which always brightens your day.

Why am I going on and on about horse racing in a Crossfit blog?  Well, one might wonder if I decided to celebrate like crazy Saturday night, leading to my workout performance on Sunday morning.  To be clear: I did not.  I think I had one beer after the race.  My performance on Sunday was just a case of me not having it.  Some days you have it, others you don't, and I clearly didn't have it for the Filthy Fifty.

Filthy Fifty:
50 box jumps (24"/20")
50 jumping pull-ups
50 KB swings (53/35)
50 steps of walking lunges
50 knees to elbows
50 push presses (45/35)
50 back extensions
50 wall balls (20 to 10'/14 to 9')
50 burpees
50 double unders

So to be fair, not the easiest workout in the world.  It was a massive chipper, which I always get excited about despite the fact that I have never shown any aptitude in these tests of endurance.  I did this in November and my time was 36:26.  There had been a time cap of 35 minutes, but since I was close to the end, they showed mercy on me and allowed me to finish.  There is no indication of scaling on the blog, but I can't imagine I did this RX, since I had nothing in the way of strung double unders at that point, so doing 50 of them at the end of the workout would have taken me forever.

As I got there a few minutes before 10am, I saw the 9am class wrapping up and Derreck was working hard to finish up his workout.  He was plugging away at the burpees and the clock was beyond 30 minutes already.  Yikes.  This was definitely some foreshadowing.  He finished in 39:45 and my anxiety level jumped up a notch.  I had hoped to be in the neighborhood of 30 minutes, but that seemed like wishful thinking all of a sudden.  Still, I'd try my best to maintain an average of 3 minutes at each exercise.  For some movements (knees to elbows!) I would need more than 3 minutes, but on others (walking lunges), I should need less.  Hopefully it would average out.

We got going and Cline was right next to me for the workout.  Since this chipper was a mix of a lot of different things, I thought I would do well to keep up with Cline.  Some of this stuff he was probably faster than me on and other areas I could probably catch up.  Except I fell behind quickly.  After doing 16 box jumps, I tripped and fell on the next attempt.  No problem, just compose yourself and...shit, I did it again.  Can I really not jump on this box?  I took a few seconds extra to compose myself before finally getting rep #17.  I got through the rest of the jumps without a problem, but I definitely slowed my cadence after those two hiccups.  I was the last one to the jumping pull-ups.

At the jumping pull-ups, I made up some ground.  I knew I could do sets of 10 quickly and that is exactly what I did.  Tried not to take too much of a break in between, but also wanted to be sane about how fast I was going as there were still 8 more parts to this workout.  Pretty sure I was not the last one done here and I had made up a lot of the ground I had lost on the box jumps.  I was on my last set of 10 when Cline made his way to the KB swings.

After using 70 lb and 80 lb KBs recently, the 53 lb KB did not seem so awful.  I probably should have done all 50 in 3 sets, but I thought my pacing was good doing 4 sets.  Perhaps I was pacing too much.  I was definitely sucking wind already and the clock was closing in on 9 minutes as I got to my last set of 12 swings.  And I hadn't made up any ground on Cline, who was considering using 44 pounds for his KB, but switched to 53 last minute.  Not a good sign.

Next, it was time to awkward lunge back and forth in a very small lane as we counted to 50.  I got about 7 lunges per direction, which would have resulted in 49 eventually, so I made sure to do 1 extra lunge early on to fix this problem.  I had 14 left when Cline headed to the knees to elbows, meaning I was about 20-30 seconds behind him at this point.  Still hanging with him for the most part.  Just got to do well on the knees to elbows.

My one recollection from doing this in November was that the knees to elbows section took forever.  And somehow, I may have managed to take even longer this time around.  I was doing fast singles on the low bar while Cline knocked them out like a champ on the high bar.  But I knew I was in trouble when I could only manage sets of 3 early on.  Shoot, that means 17 sets.  That's no good.  Plus my grip was weakening and I had to hit the chalk bucket several times.  I managed to knock out a set of 5 later on.  And I got it together mentally to finish the last six in a row.  But I was way behind most of the class now.  Plus the clock showed I was over 20 minutes.  Not good.

Not only was I behind, I was spent.  I grabbed the barbell to do push presses and got going.  This felt like it could be a rest area, but I had to make up some time as well.  I tried to focus on my breathing as I knocked out 2 sets of 25 reps.  Didn't feel great, but at least I was making up some of the time I had lost doing knees to elbows.

Have you ever seen a fish flopping around when it is out of water?  It is desperately trying to get back to its habitat, making it known by its violently uncomfortable flailing.  That was me doing back extensions (aka Supermans).  I had no idea how I was going to finish this workout.  Didn't seem like I even had the energy to do this simple movement.  So I would flop around from one rep to the next, hoping to get to 50 as soon as possible.  Not my finest moment.

Didn't get better from there.  The wall balls themselves didn't seem painful, but I had no energy left.  I began to feel a little woozy as I did them.  At one point, while resting, I got a bit unsteady.  The hardest part of the workout came after I hit 25 reps.  I was taking a break, thinking about having to do 25 more of these, along with 50 burpees and 50 double unders.  At that point in time, it seemed like I still had an entirely new WOD left in front of me.  Some people in the class had finished.  Others were close.  And I had slowed to a crawl.  I took a solid 30-45 seconds to internally debate the merits of stopping.  Pros: this catastrophe would be over.  Cons: you gave up, which is only something you do in the most dire of circumstances.  I decided that I would continue on, even if I had to go very slowly through the last 125 reps.

After completing the wall balls, it was time for 50 burpees and I imagine those were the slowest burpees the gym has seen in quite some time.  I had another stumble sideways at one point as the wooziness had not gone away.  Everyone was done, so I knew everyone was supporting me, even though I had zoned them all out.  One by one, I made my way to 50, leaving only the double unders.

It has been well chronicled on here that my double unders, when I'm tired, are borderline non-existent.  They are barely existent when I am fresh.  So when I picked up my rope to finish this workout, I expected about three more minutes of work.  Instead, I somehow got 25 in a row in my first set.  Then I did a set of 12.  And then I finished off the workout with a set of 13.  I have no idea how that little miracle occurred at the end.  Maybe the Crossfit gods decided to show me some mercy.  But I finally got to lay on the floor and recover after 42 minutes and 53 seconds of hell.

Normally after a workout like this I'll be mad or depressed.  Didn't happen yesterday.  For whatever reason, I didn't have it during the Filthy Fifty.  Maybe it's a workout that I will never be good at.  I'm not sure what the explanation is.  But my takeaway was that I maintained a reasonably good attitude even after a poor workout.  And I kept going even when I wanted to stop.  42:53 may be a god awful time for this workout, but I was pleased that I stuck with it.

Monday: Time for a pull-up clinic with Aimee.  And Grace at open strength!