Never Have I Ever

Workout date: 8/11/15

With a scheduled trip to Saratoga on the horizon, Tuesday was going to be the last day that I could work out before Saturday's Brawl in the Burbs team competition.  At first glance, the scheduled metcon seemed like something I might be really good at:

Tuesday WOD:
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1
Push Press (95/65)
Hang Squat Clean (95/65)
Followed by an 800 meter run

Why was I under the misguided notion that I might complete this workout quickly?  Ya know, other than the fact that I tend to frequently overestimate my abilities when thinking about upcoming workouts?  Well, 95 pounds was light for me as far as doing push presses goes.  And 95 pounds was the weight we used for Badger, the hero WOD we've done a few times earlier this year that includes 3 rounds of 30 squat cleans.  This workout required 55 squat cleans rather than 90 squat cleans, so it seemed manageable in my mind.  I knew in advance that the run would be difficult, but that was the last part of the workout and I thought I could push through to the end.  (I wonder if I'll be any wiser regarding my abilities by the time we reach the end of the year.  Doubtful, I'm guessing.)

As I walked into the gym, I knew I was in trouble.  I got to class about 10 minutes early and watched the end of the 5:30 class.  Everyone was sweating much more than they normally do.  Some people had even reached Dave levels of sweatiness.  How in the world was I going to survive this workout?  Just watching other people sweat this much was making me sweat.  I suddenly was regretting not having a third shirt in my gym bag.

Before we got started, we needed to warmup.  Coach Steph decided to use the warmup as an opportunity to find out more about the personal lives of her all-male class (Alison joined us later on). We would run around the gym in a circle while she played "Never Have I Ever" with us.  She would say "Never Have I Ever <fill in the blank>" and if we had ever done the thing she yelled out, we would be required to do some exercise before beginning to run again.  If we hadn't done the deed, we would just keep running.  Spoiler: I did a lot of running during the warm-up.  Here is an example of how this went:

Coach Steph: Never have I ever had sex on the beach!
<Everyone else in the class drops to do burpees>
Me: As in the drink?
<Disapproving head shakes>
<I keep running>

Yeah, I'm as cool as you imagined I was.  Only much less so.

Now that I had confirmed how pathetic I was to the entire gym, we were ready to do the workout.  We grabbed our barbells and began to push press.  I knocked out the first 10 and started on my hang squat cleans.  And it did not take long at all to realize how painful these would be.  I thought that I could make it through the first round of 10 at least.  Instead, I had to split the first round into two sets of 5.  However, throughout the workout, whenever I finished the round of hang power cleans, I strung together the next round of push presses before dropping the bar.  Rather than writing out paragraphs on when I dropped the bar, here's the quick version:

10 push presses, 5 hang squat cleans <drop>,
5 hang squat cleans, 9 push presses <drop>,
3 hang squat cleans <drop>,
3 hang squat cleans <drop>,
3 hang squat cleans, 8 push presses <drop>,
5 hang squat cleans <drop>,
3 hang squat cleans, 7 push presses <drop>,
5 hang squat cleans <drop>,
2 hang squat cleans, 6 push presses <drop>,
4 hang squat cleans <drop>,
2 hang squat cleans, 5 push presses <drop>,
5 hang squat cleans, 4 push presses <drop>,
4 hang squat cleans, 3 push presses <drop>,
3 hang squat cleans, 2 push presses, 2 hang squat cleans, 1 push press, 1 hang squat clean <DONE!>

Writing it out like that lets me know I took a whopping 13 breaks during this workout!  So not good.  Josh M was working out next to me and telling me to keep going to stay with him, but he pulled away near the end of this.  Aside from Josh though (and Alison, who was way ahead of all of us), I made it out the door for my run before anyone else.  Perhaps I should put run in quotes.  "Run".  Yeah, that seems more accurate.

Usually when I run after destroying my legs in a workout, it is a super gimpy run that may actually be slower than walking.  But I do go through the motion of running because it feels like I am giving up to walk.  As I headed out the door for my final 800 meter run, my legs were fried.  I didn't make it 50 meters before I had to walk.  I was in deep doo-doo.  I expected one of the other guys to go running by me, but luckily that didn't happen.  After about 50 meters of walking, I felt like I had stretched out my legs a little bit and got back into a semi-gimpy run.  As the run progressed, my legs began to slowly feel better.  In fact, I was legitimately able to run hard the last 100 meters.  Final time: 17:07.

That was not really what I was looking for in terms of time, but my original analysis of this workout was probably way off-base, so I'll take 17:07.  I definitely need to work on bearing down in the early rounds of workouts like this one.  There is no excuse for breaking up the round of 9 into three sets of 3.  Completely wimpy.  Should have been 5 and 4 at the very least.

It was a tough, sweaty workout, but I would have plenty of time to recover.  The next two days I would be participating in the Battle of Saratoga.  The next blog post will cover that in detail.  If you're not interested in that story, definitely skip "Watching $100,000 Disappear In 10 Minutes".  It will be a very long blog post.