Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Back when I used to have a high metabolism, I would set up shop at the dinner table early on Thanksgiving and remain in that seat long after the rest of my family had gone off to take a nap or watch football. More turkey? Sure. More pie? Don't mind if I do. I didn't worry about gaining weight back then. And the best part was that I felt like I earned that day of gluttony. There were always various Turkey Trots in the area on Thanksgiving morning and I would get up and run a 5K in the cold somewhere before strapping on the feedbag (on two occasions, I kicked off the holiday by running a 10K). Completing a run before the feast became a holiday tradition.
On Saturday, I had my first ever Halloween workout. I'm not so sure this one is going to stick as a holiday tradition, but it is one that I've been aiming towards nearly all year long. I looked back at my blog and I believe April was the first time that I mentioned Wolverine. Why had I set my sights on a workout that was 6 months away?
- No time cap
- Over the years, only a few dozen people had completed this workout
- No time cap
- Getting to write my name on a board at the gym (since that white board dream ain't happening)
- No time cap
- The possibility of getting a t-shirt (they were brought back this year!)
- No time cap
Hmmm...that no time cap bit seems to be important. And why had only a few dozen people completed this workout? Oh here's why:
Wolverine
6 rounds:
10 clean and jerks (135/95)
20 pull-ups
100 sit-ups
1 Lyons Loop run (600M)
That is certainly a lot of volume! When a workout takes about an hour for the best athletes in the gym, it tends not to drum up a lot of interest in the rest of the members. Hence, only 38 people had written their names on the Wolverine board as of Saturday morning.
In order to get through such an ordeal, I was going to need to channel the abilities of an athlete in much better shape than myself. In fact, I would need more than that. I would need the superhero version of one of our best athletes. I would need to become...Aimee the Chalk Fairy!
Before the carnage began
With my newfound curls and my multi-colored midriff, I would summon the strength to do 120 pull-ups. My rock-hard fairy abs would blow through 600 sit-ups. I wouldn't need a ladder to write my name on the Wolverine board afterwards. I would simply fly up to it and etch my name on there. (Ok, I may have gotten carried away here. Aimee the Chalk Fairy does not have wings, so flying would be impossible. The rest is totally feasible.)
Since an announcement was made that Wolverine was being run in heats, I wasn't in a tremendous hurry to get to the gym by 9am. I ended up getting there at 9:10. As I pulled into a parking spot, I saw a merry band of costumed athletes running the Lyons Loop to warm up. When I got inside, I ditched my props and tried to find some space to work. The gym was packed! Not everyone was doing the full-on Wolverine, but they were doing some version of it. You could scale the weight or do banded pull-ups while doing Wolverine or you could do Cub, which was similar to Wolverine but had less reps and less rounds (four). Mostly, I think everyone just wanted to dress up.
The gym was so full that it was necessary to share barbells for the clean and jerk. I shared my barbell with Jonathan, a young guy in the gym who destroys workouts. Because of the need to share, we would stagger the start. I let Jonathan know he should go first because he was going to go much faster than me. He insisted that would not be the case. (Oddly enough, we would both be right, just at different points in the workout) As for the pull-up rig, most folks were on the low bar, while I was determined to get through the pull-ups on the high bar. There was some concern about swinging into other people during the pull-ups, but with the stagger, it seemed like that would probably only be an issue for part of the first round. I also made the decision to go without grips. When I watched Rachel do this workout the other day, she had all sorts of problems with her grips during the workout. I had practiced pull-ups without grips last week in case I wanted to make a change. While I experienced a little discomfort in my hands, I was able to rattle off 7 kipping pull-ups in a row without coming to a dead hang, beating my previous best of 5. 120 pull-ups without grips was ambitious, but I didn't want to lose focus during the workout because I was fussing with my grips.
Nearly everyone that I spoke to who had done this workout before had told me how terrible the 600 sit-ups would be. Did I heed this warning? Of course not! I had confidence in my ability to do a lot of sit-ups, plus with no time cap, this was something I could just grind my way through. Shouldn't be a problem. Except I quickly ran into one of course. With so many people in attendance, all of the space on the mats was taken up. I was actually very lucky to even get an abmat for my lower back. I got a spot next to Coach Doctor Sommelier VP Giulz and Michal (dressed up as Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne, respectively) on the gym floor, hoping that it would not scrape my posterior too badly. I also got into a debate with Lloyd as to whether it was best to anchor your feet during the sit-ups. I've found it more comfortable to do sit-ups in a butterfly position while Lloyd was a big advocate for anchoring. We each decided to do these the way we preferred. Am I telling you this detail because I made a terrible choice here? Yes. Yes I am. (Perhaps they should have cast me in Dumb and Dumber)
Most of the gym got underway, while I joined a few others in waiting for our partners to finish with the barbell. #keithie was running the show and instructed us to go on the first whole minute that our barbell was free. I was secretly hoping that Jonathan finished in 1:01 so that I could wait until 2:00 to go. I wouldn't have felt rushed to get to the barbell and start working. Instead, he finished at around 0:50, meaning I had 10 seconds to take my place at the barbell, get focused, and then get to work. One thing that I wanted to do differently than Rachel was resist the temptation to string reps of the clean and jerk. For the most part, Rachel had held on to the bar to do sets of 5 clean and jerks at a time. I knew that I needed to save my arms for the agony that awaited me on the pull-up bar, so I was sticking with singles no matter what. And if I was slow...well, there's no time cap! For the first round, I did sets of 3, 3, and 4 quick singles with slight pauses in between the sets. Wasn't too bad. On to the dreaded pull-up bar!
I did not get off to an auspicious start with my pull-ups. I had hoped to get sets of 5 completed early on, although five sets of four reps would have been good too. My first set ended up being three reps. It felt reasonably comfortable, but it also felt like my arms weren't ready to do a ton of pull-ups right after doing clean and jerks. I continued to knock out sets of three before doing singles with brief pauses in between. Towards the end of the round, I went back to stringing reps. I wasn't moving super fast, but I wasn't way behind everyone either. I finished off my 20th rep and jogged over to my abmat.
As I ta-churned my way through my first 100 sit-ups, several things became apparent:
- Doing tons of sit-ups on the gym floor was definitely going to leave scrape marks on my cheeks.
- Holding that butterfly position for 100 reps took a toll on your hip flexors.
- Doing 100 sit-ups in a row is a lot different than, say, 4 rounds of 25 sit-ups with other stuff mixed in between. (Remember this if you ever attempt Angie, Dave!)
- While I had figured out that the clean and jerks would affect my pull-ups, I had not figured out that the pull-ups would have an effect on my sit-ups.
What do I mean by #4? In order to kip properly, it is important to keep a very tight core. If you manage to stay tight, the more you will float upwards when you swing back to get to the top of the pull-up. I hadn't worked my core a lot during the first round of pull-ups, but I definitely noticed the effect it had on my body as I tried to complete 100 sit-ups. We were only in round one and I knew this was going to be a problem. With the sit-ups done, I headed out for my first run with Spiderman, aka Samson, aka November's Athlete of the Month. After all of the workouts this year where the run would kill me, it was nice to have a workout where the run felt good. Wolverine isn't leg-intensive, so I was able to glide along at the same pace as Spiderman, getting to crack jokes with him along the way.
When I got back in the gym, Jonathan was using our barbell. For a minute, I thought he was already on round 3. Was I really that far behind already? Then I looked at the clock and saw I had finished the first round in 11 minutes and change, about the same pace Rachel had done her first round the other night. Alright! Maybe I was going to put up a decent time here! I had caught up to Jonathan despite starting a minute after him. Things were looking up. (Cue the storm clouds on the horizon) At first I was going to wait for Jonathan to finish up, but I wasn't sure how many reps he had done. There was another barbell next to him with 135 pounds on it, so I decided to start doing reps with it until Jonathan was done. After doing a few reps, I noticed that I was going faster than him on the clean and jerks. In fact, I was going faster than most of the people around me. I kept plugging away at the clean and jerks, finishing 9 of my 10 reps before Jonathan got to his pull-up bar. Go me! I did the last rep and got to the pull-up bar. Feeling energized, I got 4 reps in my first set. Took a break, then did 4 more. I had finished 8 reps pretty quickly, but my arms were starting to weaken again. From there, I tried to knock out sets of 2 when I could, although I had to resort to singles eventually.
The second round was still going well when I got to my abmat, but that is where it began to fall apart. I was definitely experiencing some butt pain from the floor as I tried to do my second set of 100 sit-ups. The hip flexors weren't too happy either. Despite going faster on my second round of clean and jerks and pull-ups, Harry and Lloyd were out the door much earlier than me during this round of sit-ups. I eventually got through the sit-ups, but 400 more of them seemed like torture. I ran another loop with Spiderman. We came across a cop car along the run and I joked that he was reporting that he had caught Spiderman with a transvestite again. The runs were very enjoyable and therefore seemed to go by too quickly. It was back into the gym for round three.
I had passed Jonathan during the second round, so our barbell was free when I came in to start round three. Let's call this the blackout round. I remember very little about round three other than it was really, really slow. I didn't go through the clean and jerks particularly fast. I tried to do 10 sets of two on the pull-up bar, but it took a lot of work. I had my first failed pull-up during this round. When I finally finished up at the pull-up bar, I came over to my abmat and did 1 sit-up. I couldn't take doing another 100 of these on the gym floor. I looked at the mats laid out down towards the other end of the gym. There was a bit of space at the end of one of the mats. If I was taking someone's spot, I'd move for them, but for now I needed some padding. There were no dumbbells set up in the spot I moved to (almost everyone in the gym was anchoring because they are not morons like me), which made me less worried that I had stolen someone's turf. Immediately, I noticed that the sit-ups were less painful. At least for my butt. My stomach region was not real pleased that I had almost 400 more reps to go. When I completed the 100 sit-ups, I headed out the door, this time by myself. Spiderman had moved on. I saw Jen S out in front of me and resolved to go catch her. My legs still had some life to them and I wasn't gasping for air, so there was no reason I couldn't push. At about the halfway point of the loop, I caught up to her. I wasn't able to pull away from her (Jen is competitive as well), but I tried to redeem this terrible round with a solid run.
Halfway done! My arms and my core were taking a beating, but I had finished the first half of the workout in under 45 minutes, still giving me a chance to finish in 90 minutes, the time I was shooting for on this workout. Spiderman was working on his clean and jerks along with Jonathan. Once again, I made up time in this segment, getting to the pull-up bar just before them despite starting after them. They would make up for that and then some when it came time to do the pull-ups. I was trying to maintain sets of 2, but I was resorting to singles more and more. When I got to the sit-ups, my goal was sets of 20, but I couldn't always manage that. The beginning of those sit-up rounds were daunting, as I could feel the pain in my core, yet I still had 80+ sit-ups to go. I did my best not to focus on how many more reps I needed to do. Just keep moving and keep counting. A lot of the folks who had done Cub were now finished. When I completed sit-up #400, I joked with them that 400 sit-ups was nothing. I was trying my best to stay positive, but I was struggling. On the run, I did my best to catch up to Jonathan. In the meantime, Shane went flying by to finish his workout. Ugh...I still had two rounds to go!
When I returned for round five, I had my best moment of the workout. Maybe I sensed that the pull-ups and sit-ups were taking forever and I needed to make up time on the clean and jerks. Perhaps I had a brief lapse where I forgot how tired I was. Or it's possible that I was still under the delusion that I could finish in 90 minutes if I "hurried". Whatever it was, I decided to go to town on the clean and jerks. I did the first rep, dropped the barbell, and put my hands right back on the bar for the second rep. I think my plan was to try and get five in a row, since I don't think I had finished more than four up to this point without taking a brief break. Except when I got to five, something inside said to keep the momentum going. I did the sixth, then the seventh. The adrenaline was pumping when I went and did the 8th rep. Now I couldn't stop. Had to get these last two. Up went #9 with #10 following immediately after. Easily my fastest round of clean and jerks on the day.
My form may have sucked, but I moved quickly through the clean and jerks
Despite the length of this workout, cardio didn't play a huge part in it. The exception was after that round of clean and jerks, as it left me a bit winded. Perhaps it wasn't the wisest move to whip through 10 in a row like that with almost two full rounds to go, but it was a nice little psychological boost. It made me think that my next Grace time will definitely be under 3 minutes. The downside was now I needed a longer break before I got into my pull-ups. And this round of pull-ups was destined to be a bad one.
I'm not sure I was able to do any sets of two during this round. If I did, it was only at the very beginning. My arms wanted no part of hanging off of that pull-up bar. My hands were sore, but had survived to this point in the workout. Then I did my 88th pull-up. My previous high for pull-ups in a workout was 90, recently accomplished while doing Badger. I was about to eclipse that mark when I felt it. I came down off the pull-up bar, looked at my right hand and saw it was all torn up. No bueno. I was already weakening and now I had to do 32 more pull-ups with bloody hands. I did a few more reps, then looked at my hands again. There was a piece of skin coming off of my left hand, but my right hand had three rips in it. I tried to wipe the blood on my shorts before jumping back on to the bar (I wiped down the bars afterwards). As I closed in on the end of the fifth round, I kipped up for a rep and saw a piece of skin pop off of my left hand. Somehow, my left hand did not start bleeding. I did my best to grip the bar with just my fingers to protect my torn hands, but I ended up having another failed rep. After shedding blood, sweat, and tears (on the inside), I managed to finish my 100th pull-up. My reward? 100 more sit-ups. Awesome.
I did everything in my power to zone out during the fifth round of sit-ups. Earlier in the workout, I had closed my eyes while doing sit-ups and discovered that was a really bad idea. So for round five, I began singing to myself while I slowly counted to 100. Pretty sure it wasn't audible as I think I was really just mouthing the words to whatever song was playing more than singing, but I needed something to get my mind off of these sit-ups. Alona was next to me working on her final round and soon we were synchronized as we did our reps. Only I couldn't make it all the way to 100 with her. Eventually she got up and took off, as did Harry Dunne, and I tried to get through my last 20 or so reps on my own. They were slow, but it was time to run again. Justin R was nice enough to run with me for my 5th lap. It wasn't particularly fast, but any break from pull-ups and sit-ups was well received by my body. We got back to the gym and it was time for the final round.
A glance at the clock let me know I had no chance of finishing in 90 minutes. 95 minutes would be nice, but I'd need a strong final round. And I needed to do 20 pull-ups with busted up hands. I did not try to burn through the clean and jerks this time around like I had in round five. I went back to 3-3-4 with pauses in between those sets. Then it was on to the pull-ups. Nearly everyone was done at this point, except for some people who had began the workout about an hour after the massive first wave started. Lloyd came over and told me I should use the low bar, but there was no chance I was giving up on the high bar at this point. I did a few reps with just my fingers on the bar, but those reps were dicey and I didn't want to anguish over any more bad reps. So it was "grip the bar and deal with the pain" time.
Dave, we'd like to start the party. If you could finish, that would be great.
I'm sure those last 20 reps were insanely slow, but that is the beauty of not having to worry about a time cap. One by one, I finished those pull-ups, wiping the blood off of my hands between each rep. Then it was on to the sit-ups. Again I tried to get through them 20 at a time, but when I got to around 65 reps, my core decided it had enough. To get the last 35 reps, I would need to swing my arms and generate some momentum to get back to the top of each rep. This was the only time during the entire workout that my wig almost came off. Diane came over in her bull-riding costume and did the last 20 reps with me. Finally, I was done with the sit-ups. All that was left was a 600M run. Sir Bootylicious Cline, Spiderman, and Justin joined me for the last part of the workout. I tried to push at the end of the run, although I know I didn't have much acceleration left in me at the end. I ran through the side door of the gym and Wolverine was complete. Final time: 98:15.
Was that a ridiculously slow time? Yes it was. But I managed to finish a workout with 120 pull-ups in it. I was getting a Wolverine shirt! And my name was going up on the board as someone that had completed the dreaded Wolverine.
Dav* with his very own column. For about 5 minutes anyway.
I actually got a free KOP sweatshirt as well when I won the costume contest. (Note: dressing up as the head judge and having one of your props be a bottle of wine that she'll get to enjoy goes a long way in winning such contests.)
I haven't done justice to everyone who came out and did this workout, nor have I done a wonderful job describing all the great costumes people showed up in, so here's a shot of the gang to give you an appreciation for the huge group of crazies that came out for this event on Saturday morning:
The KOP gang. Killin it like always.
I can check one more thing off of my Crossfit bucket list. My hands are messed up and my body paid a price over the weekend, but I got through Wolverine. I'm hoping to check Fran off of my list as well, assuming my hands heal sometime soon.
Monday preview: Can I do anything at the gym after this train wreck? We'll see. Hoping to at least get my 6x2 back squat session in.
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