38 Special

Workout date: 2/16/16

I had my concerns about going to the gym on Tuesday night as it was my 38th birthday.  I wasn't concerned about the workout at all.  No, I was concerned that there may be some sort of surprise awaiting me there.  I was concerned that people would be forced to do a ton of burpees because I had showed up on February 16th.  And were those concerns justified?  Of course they were!

I should confess that I let my guard down once I was at the gym.  Despite only showing up a few minutes early, I still got to see the second half of the cash out from the 6:30 class.  Then I was chatting with various people.  I was enjoying myself.  But at a certain point, it dawned on me that it must be well past 7:30.  Where the heck was Coach Rachel?  And as I turned to look out at the lobby, I saw Giulz and Rachel each carrying in a container filled with 12 mini-cupcakes, all two dozen of the desserts aglow with a lit candle.  It certainly looked like a lot of candles, even though they were 14 short if they were meant to represent my age.  Thankfully, they don't sell mini-cupcakes in containers of 38.  I made a wish and then blew out the candles.  Well, most of the candles.  As is normally the case with anything I do in the gym, I needed to break up blowing out the candles into two sets with a small pause to catch my breath in between.

Okay, they got me with the surprise, but at least this special co-ed edition of Dudes After Dark wasn't going to be forced to do 38 burpees with me.  Nope, they were going to do 40 burpees.  Sorry guys.  There were 4 of us in class (me, Cline, Michal, and Julie) plus Coach Rachel.  She had everyone either say something they liked about me, a memory they had of me, or a burning question they wanted to ask me (luckily I'm pretty boring, so I avoided a barrage of questions).  After each person spoke, we did 8 burpees.  What was said during this segment?  I don't recall everything precisely, but Rachel spoke about me giving her "the Dave look", Cline mentioned anal, Michal explained that you never get a second chance to make a sweaty first impression, and Julie pointed out that she hadn't grown to dislike me yet.  Beat that, Hallmark!

Once the Dave lovefest had died down, it was on to back squats.  We were supposed to be doing working sets (translation: challenging sets) with a rep scheme of 5-5-3-3-1-1-1.  Having struggled with my front squat the night before, I wasn't expecting great things in this workout, but I still wanted to give myself the possibility of hitting a PR.  After all, it was my birthday.  Things are supposed to fall into line for you on your birthday.  But if I'm being honest, a new PR was a longshot.  I haven't been putting in the time to squat like I had been late last summer and fall.  Technically, my PR was 330, but I figured 320-325 would be difficult for me to get.

The plan was to start off with a warm-up set at 135, then attempt to go 225-255-275-295-315-325-335.  I could adjust the numbers along the way if I wasn't feeling it.  Had no problems at 135.  Made the big jump to 225 and got through that without much of an issue.  But the first dark cloud emerged when I took on 5 reps at 255.  I did 2 reps, then had to stop for a breath.  I repeated that pattern again, before taking care of the 5th rep.  I expected that set to be smoother than it was.  I began mentally adjusting numbers in my head.

If I wasn't sold on adjusting my weights lower after that set, I certainly was after my first set of three reps at 275.  The first two reps actually didn't go poorly.  But then I went for the third rep and felt my balance shift forward.  I tried to stand up quickly as I began to stumble forward towards the rack.  I made it up in time, but I didn't have to move very far to re-rack the barbell once I had completed the third rep.  Jumping up to 295 after that performance was silly.  Time to show some good judgment and only move up to 285 for the second set of three.  That decision was rewarded when I completed the three reps at 285 with better form than I had shown with my previous set.

With a little bit of confidence restored, I decided that my three single attempts would be 305, 315, and 325.  That would mean giving up on trying to get a PR, but if I was able to squat 325 tonight without having done a regular squat program in a while, it would feel like I got a PR.  I had gotten 315 when I did CF Total in December, so that seemed like a reasonable middle single in the set.  The 20 pound jump to 305 may have been ambitious, but getting through 3 solid reps at 285 gave me faith that I could handle such a jump.

I went to do the first squat at 305 and it was not wonderful.  Perhaps that set at 285 was the aberration, not the set at 275.  Not wanting to crash down to the bottom of the squat, I lowered myself somewhat slowly, but the necessary explosiveness to get out of the squat was missing.  I had enough strength in my legs to still stand up the weight, but it was a poor lift.  As I added 10 pounds to the bar, I reminded myself that I needed to be controlled on the way down, but explode out of the bottom.  I walked up to my attempt at 315 knowing exactly what I needed to do, but my body didn't cooperate.  The controlled descent was there, but the explosive ascent was not.  I bailed the barbell and knew there was no point in making another attempt.  The truth is that I was lucky to get 305.  315 wasn't happening again until I put some real time into a squatting routine like I had last year.  Once I do start up another routine, I will use 315 (since I got that somewhat recently) as my 1RM rather than 330.

It was cash out time and we would all be doing handstand walks!  Except none of us is able to do a handstand walk.  Time to do something else!  I had seen on the blog that people were doing 3 wall walks (yes, we're using the proper name for that movement again) as a substitute for the 20 ft handstand walk that was programmed.  Rachel told us we could do a 20 second handstand hold instead.  That seemed reasonable enough.  The substitution made the cash out look like this:

8 minute AMRAP
3 handstand holds of 20 seconds
10 GHD sit-ups

At least that was what I was thinking when we got started.  All of us flipped on to the wall at the same time and watched the clock upside down, waiting for 20 seconds to tick by.  When I came off the wall, I got ready to go upside down again, but everyone else headed to their GHDs.  Confused, I started walking towards mine, but I asked Rachel whether we were supposed to do 1 hold or 3 holds. She said it was just one.  Even better!  Handstand holds were definitely going to get old quickly.  Only needing to do one was a blessing.  The set of 10 GHD sit-ups wasn't a problem as I can usually handle about 12 reps before my form starts falling apart.  My apologies to anyone who was behind me as I have a bit of a mooning problem while doing GHD sit-ups.

I was working alongside of Julie, but I had fallen behind her in that first round and she was not shy about getting right back into a handstand hold.  This was already feeling like that rowing/GHD workout I had done a while back where I was a few seconds behind the guy next to me, but could never catch up no matter how hard I pushed.  Twenty seconds was twenty seconds, so there was no gaining time on the handstand hold.  And my ability to do GHD sit-ups quickly was somewhat cancelled out by the fact that I struggle to get my feet into the GHD to begin with.  I followed Julie as we went through the second round, about 5 seconds behind her the whole time.

As we got ready to do round 3, Rachel announced that we needed to do 3 handstand holds per round, not 1.  That was a painful upgrade.  But it also made me think I might be able to catch up to Julie if I kept flipping back up to the wall immediately.  That strategy sounded great in my head, but it was much less pleasant in reality.  I began trying to zone out while I was upside down, hoping to look back at the clock and see I only had 1 or 2 seconds left in my hold.  Except each time I looked, there was about 12 or 13 seconds left in the hold.  I might need to work on my resolve a little more.  The holds were getting worse and worse, but I held on for 20 seconds every time I flipped on to the wall.  And I made it on to the wall every time I attempted to flip on to it.  At least I was being efficient in this workout.  At the end of round three (our first full-sized round), Julie and I were side by side.

Round four was all about being persistent and not pausing between handstand holds.  I began shaking during some of the holds, like I do when I'm trying to hold a plank.  But I was determined to last the full 20 seconds each time.  I think Julie had 1-2 attempts where she didn't quite make it on to the wall, so for the first time I was ahead of her.  I completed my third handstand hold and made my way to the GHD.  There was plenty of room for me to hop on my GHD with no one else over there yet, which allowed me to have a very quick end to my fourth round.

There was less than a minute and 20 seconds left as I headed back over to the wall, just enough time to get 3 more handstand holds in if I was quick about getting back on to the wall after each hold.  When I got upside down for my second hold, there was 51 seconds left to go, meaning I'd come down with 31 seconds left.  That gave me 11 seconds to get back on the wall if I was going to finish the last hold in time.  When I came down from the second hold, I shook out my arms, got ready to flip on to the wall again, and then kicked up.  The upside down clock across from me said 7:36, so I'd just need to hold on for 20 seconds and then I'd get to finish 4 seconds early.  That's exactly what I did.  Final score: 11 handstand holds and 40 GHD sit-ups.

I am extremely grateful that the crew at KOP made my birthday special.  Got lots of cupcakes and hugs.  Giulz, Rachel, and Michal "chipped" in to get me one of the creepiest (in a good way) presents I've ever received.  Cline changed his schedule to make it to Dudes After Dark because it was my birthday.  I cannot adequately express how much it has meant to me to be embraced by my sweat family over the last three years.  Thank you all!

Wednesday preview: Most likely a rest day on some level as I have been sore a lot recently.  Probably will do some rowing at home and perhaps some more double under practice.  Back for another WOD on Thursday.