Double Trouble

The Brawl in the Burbs is a team competition held at KOP.  Each team consists of 2 men and 2 women.  Last year was the first edition of the competition and I competed alongside Alison, Diane, and Mr. Intensity in the scaled division.  Diane really wanted to make the podium.  I didn't think that would be too problematic since both Alison and Diane are strong as hell, while Mr. Intensity and I could probably hold our own against the scaled division.  Turned out it was a lot tougher than we thought.  (To be fair, I was hungover and Mr. Intensity started eating burritos mid-competition, so we probably were more deadweight than Alison and Diane were expecting.  Oops.)  With a good performance in the last two WODs, we snuck into the final event, where we managed to finish 2nd amongst the five teams.  That was enough to make the leap to 3rd in the standings and a spot on the podium.

The happiest 3rd place team ever!

Our team name?  The Sweaty Soukas.  It was an easy way to include profanity in our name without being barred from the competition.  At King and Queen of Prussia (KOP's annual competition for members of the gym), one of our Russian athletes got a little tipsy and started teaching us swear words from his homeland.  He seemed to be a big fan of "souka", the Russian word for bitch.  We took a liking to it as well and used it for the Brawl competition.  It has now also become emblazoned on my footwear and is the inspiration for the name of this blog.  The lesson: always learn how to swear in languages other than English.

When the announcement came out for this year's Brawl, Diane insisted that we get the band back together.  The only problem was that Mr. Intensity had a shoulder injury, so we were going to need a replacement.  Mark C. volunteered and the Soukas were among the first teams to sign up for the second edition of the Brawl.  The injury bug has spread though, with Alison and Diane each working through their own injuries.  (Note: it's very possible that one of them had an injury and it simply ended up psychologically affecting the other.  They are that close.)  While they have been rehabbing their injuries on road trips and Caribbean cruises, I have not gotten to work out with them.  The Open may have been the last time I worked out with both of them and that was back in March.  So when Diane asked me if I wanted to get together to practice one of the WODs for this year's Brawl, I happily said yes.

The WOD we would be doing is called Team DT.  Alternating between partners, each athlete does 5 rounds of:

12 deadlifts
9 hang power cleans
6 push jerks

Rachel and I did this one at RX weight (155/105) back on May 6th with a time of 17:14.  Being in the scaled division, we would get a break with the weights being 115/75.  That also meant we would need to move much faster.  For the Brawl, the men and the women work simultaneously using their own bar.  Your final time is based on the completion of work by all four team members.

Since Mark was out of town, we were going to need to adjust this workout to suit 3 people instead of 4.  Alison and I would go first, with Diane going once Alison completed her round.  I would get to rest alongside Alison until Diane was done, then we would start again.  I knew I was going to need to go fast, but I didn't realize how fast I would need to go, nor did I realize how much this workout would take out of me even with the lighter weight.  Those hang power cleans wear down your forearms no matter what weight you are using.

Diane started the clock and me and Alison got going on round one.  I thought the deadlifts would be fast, but Alison was smoking through them, forcing me to pick up my pace.  We finished 11 at the same time, dropped our reverse grip, took a normal grip, then got into the hang power cleans.  I went a little faster than Alison on these (spoiler: not in a good way) and knocked out my final jerk 1 rep ahead of her.  In essence, I was racing her.  In essence, that was a bad idea.

Diane zipped through her rounds as well, making the push jerks look especially easy.  With maybe a 30 second break, it was time for round two.  In that round and the next, Alison and I were synchronized from the first rep to the last, although I was pretty sure she was not aching like I was.  And even though she was sweating like I was, I don't think she was sucking as much wind as yours truly.  We got a little extra break on the third round as Diane paused during the hang power cleans, but that extra break was really only a few seconds.  In round four, I started to fall behind Alison a little as the hang power cleans were destroying me.  My forearms were burning.  Alison finished her push jerks while I had two left to go.  Round five was going to be brutal.

After Diane completed her fourth round, I tried to gear up whatever energy I had left to get through this final round.  Evidently I didn't have that much energy left.  After completing the deadlifts, I had to drop after two hang power cleans.  I shook out my arms before starting again, but could only manage five more.  At this point, Diane had begun her deadlifts as Alison was done.  I shook my arms one more time, got through the last two hang power cleans, then did the six push jerks.  I was very happy to be done.  Diane fought through her last round and stopped the clock at 7:37.  That seemed like a pretty fast time, but unless Mark can go faster than Diane, that time is a bit misleading.  I was slower than Alison, meaning Mark would have to wait on me to finish, likely pushing us closer to 8 minutes.  Alison noticed that I wasn't partial squatting to catch the hang power cleans which forced me to use a lot of arm strength early on.  I will need to work on that.  It may make me a little slower in the early rounds, but if it allows me to string all of my reps in the final round, the adjustment will be worth it.

So once again, you get a blog post telling you how the ladies at the gym kicked my butt.  The one saving grace of King and Queen being on the horizon is that I can at least go back to having guys kick my butt at the gym.  I'm not terribly excited about competing in that event.  The event itself will be great as it always is, but I'd probably enjoy it more as the scorekeeper or as a mildly intoxicated cheerleader for everyone.  At the very least, the blog will get some quality "exhausted Dave" photos next weekend.

Tuesday is Jenn's birthday, so the next blog post will not be until after the Wednesday workout.  Until then...