Drunk Texting

Workout dates: 7/30/15 and 7/31/15

I tend not to get drunk very often.  It's not that I don't drink my fair share, it's more that I often take on the role of being the responsible one when I'm out with people.  I also tend to be a laid-back social drinker.  I can drink for hours and hours, but I don't drink particularly fast.  If it is some special occasion, then I may get drunk, but other than that, it rarely happens.  (Ummm...thanks Dave for the random information.)

Why am I telling you this?  Because I must have been drunk last week when I wrote to Giulz, Michal, and Rachel telling them that I would be willing to do the 6am class this Friday.  What else would have driven me to making such a foolish declaration?  In fact, I didn't even remember writing this until Rachel sent me a screenshot of the text I wrote.  There's a part of me that believes my phone may have been stolen for a short period of time by some sadistic human being that doesn't want me enjoying my sleep, but I have no evidence to prove my theory.

Before getting to the recap of an amazingly lousy workout this morning, I wanted to write a little bit about the running clinic last night.  The beginning of the clinic involved Tim talking about interval training, why it is so effective, and the different ways one can interval train.  He also went into detail about fartleks, which is pretty much the most unfortunate Swedish word ever (it translates into "speed play").  The idea behind fartleks is that you vary your run between sprints and recovery, with both the sprints and the recovery being of different lengths depending on how you feel and what you are trying to accomplish.  We did one of these on the track and one around the nearby baseball field.  On the track, we would jog until we heard Tim blow the whistle, which was our cue to start sprinting.  When the whistle blew a second time, we could slow down to a jog again.  Over at the baseball field, we did the same thing without a whistle.  We were encouraged to feel the run out and incorporate our sprints in as we saw fit.  Both of the fartleks were six minutes in length.

Since we didn't do a lot of running at the clinic, I thought of Thursday as a bit of an active recovery day.  That was good, because Friday was meant to be a rest day until I received the damning text I wrote a week earlier.  I told the girls that I expected muscle-ups to be in the workout because I couldn't remember the last time we did them.  Here's Friday's WOD:

Skill: 15 minutes of working on developing a muscle-up

Followed by:
5 muscle-ups
5 bear complex (95/65)
4 muscle-ups
4 bear complex
3 muscle-ups
3 bear complex
2 muscle-ups
2 bear complex
1 muscle-ups
1 bear complex

*Bear complex is a power clean, front squat, push press, back squat, push press combo without letting the bar touch the floor

Apparently I'm psychic when I'm sober.  Who knew?  Anyway, none of this sounded wonderful to me and it was even less appealing when my alarm went off at 5:15 this morning.  I managed to keep my shower to less than 90 minutes and made it over to the gym for the 6am class.  After a warmup, we practiced muscle-ups and I was not remotely close.  My hands are still beaten up from recent pull-up work and trying to yank my entire body up over the rings with my frail hands was not going to happen.

I was planning on doing jumping muscle-ups instead, but Steph mentioned that she didn't think they were a good scale for actual muscle-ups.  As a result, I'd be doing ring rows and ring dips at double the reps.  Not super excited about doing that, but whatever.  The bear complex was something I've done before as a WOD in and of itself.  When you are doing it as the WOD, you get 5 attempts to do 7 rounds of the complex at a weight of your choosing.  I believe I've gotten to 135 before, so 95 pounds doing less than 7 rounds at a time didn't sound too harrowing.

With everything set up, we finally got going.  Ring rows are a movement I don't love because I think it's way too easy to cheat on them and even when you're keeping proper form, they feel goofy.  But I got through 10 reps and then went to do dips.  I managed 6 in a row, then did 2 sets of 2.  I had hoped to get all 10, so having to break up the last 4 into two sets was a red flag.  When I got to my barbell, I did the bear complex slowly for unknown reasons.  I imagine it was because I still wasn't fully awake yet.

Things went south when round 2 began.  The 8 ring rows I split up into 4 and 4.  Then on the dips, my arms gave out.  I could only manage 3 before needing a band.  And then one band wasn't enough.  With two bands, I could complete the set, although I suspected my troubles with one band were due to the height of the rings.  The gathering of the bands set me way behind everyone else.  Plus it wasn't even 7am yet, so you can imagine how pleased I was.  I stomped over to my barbell and took out my anger on the bear complex.  I did all 4 sets very quickly.

When I came back to the rings, I did my ring rows, then adjusted the rings lower before doing my dips.  Once the rings were a bit closer to the bands, things went much better.  From there on out, I moved at a good clip, especially through the bear complex rounds.  Even though I was the last one done, I did make up some time near the end, stopping the clock at 14 minutes flat.

Given that this was supposed to be a rest day, it was hard for me to be too disappointed by how things turned out.  Plus it included a movement that I struggle with.  So I'm not going to be too down about how today went as I enjoy my rest day tomorrow.  I will probably drop by to do back squats, but that's all.  Might even take a second rest day on Sunday depending on how I feel.

Enjoy the weekend!