Groundhog Dave

Workout dates: 2/28/16 and 2/29/16

For most of February, I patiently waited for Grace and Annie.  They were going to show up at some point in the month and each of them had made my top 10 list for goals I had in 2016.  It wasn't until the 19th that I got a shot at Grace.  When would Annie show up?  With the Open taking place at the end of the month, I was concerned about it showing up too close to 16.1.  I worried that it would be programmed the day before our first Friday Night Lights event.  Turns out I had it backwards.  While out having a few post-16.1 drinks on Friday night, I looked at the KOP blog and saw that Annie had been scheduled for Saturday.  That was worse than seeing it scheduled on Thursday.

I wasn't going to do it on Saturday, partly because it was a rest day for me and partly because I was already volunteering in the morning at the MaxLift event at our gym.  But doing it at home on Sunday seemed like a decent plan.  This would mark the second straight time that I was doing Annie at home instead of at the gym.  I'd get much nicer weather to work with this time around.  After a little rowing to get warmed up, I did a set of double unders and a set of sit-ups to prepare myself for the workout.  (Note: As a reminder, Annie alternates between double unders and sit-ups with a rep scheme of 50-40-30-20-10.)  I've never broken 11 minutes on this workout, but my 2016 goal was to go even lower than that.  I needed to be under 10 minutes to cross it off my list.

In the past, my biggest problems with Annie have been fatigue and frustration.  Through a lot of double under practice, I've gotten somewhat better on the fatigue front.  My double unders are much more efficient than they used to be.  As for frustration...well that all depends on the day.  Sometimes I'm on and sometimes I'm not.  On those days when I'm not, it is nearly impossible not to get a little frustrated.  I do my best to keep it in check.  After all, double unders are a skill movement and getting angry will not help you finish the task at hand.

The quick recap of Sunday's Annie attempt: My consistency with double unders still needs work.  My first three attempts at sets during the round of 50 went like this: 2, 0, 36.  There's a lot of wasted time getting started and way too often I only get a couple reps or none at all.  That adds up in the end.  In both the rounds of 40 and 30, I had one set of more than 15 reps.  Quite a few sets in the 5-7 rep range as well.  I strung all 20 double unders when I got to the second-to-last round.  Thought I would get the last 10 as well, but I hit myself with the rope after 7 reps.  Quickly got the last 3 right after that.  As for the sit-ups, they went fine.  I was likely a little slower on these this time around, but that was due to going faster on the double unders.  I never stopped during any round, making sure to focus on my breathing the whole time.  When sit-up #150 was completed, I looked at the clock.  Final time: 9:31.

As was the case with 16.1, there were areas that I could immediately point to as places where I could improve.  A little more consistency and that time would be in the 8:00-8:30 range.  But then I remembered my takeaway from 16.1.  Can't always look at the what if's.  Gotta be happy with what you just accomplished.  This was a PR of 1:48.  And my top 10 goals list for 2016 was now a top 8 list with 10 months left in the year.  Hard to be upset about that.

On Monday, I came in to do the WOD at 5:30 in part so that I could judge 16.1 attempts at 6:30.  There were about a dozen folks who had not done the workout yet and they needed people to count for them.  I had told Ryan A that I would count for him at 6:30, so I needed to take class earlier than I normally do.  There was a part of me that wanted to do 16.1 a second time, but I have resolved this year to do the Open workouts only once.  If I had some spectacularly bad performance or if I went scaled and wanted to try to get 1 handstand push-up or 1 muscle-up for an RX score, I might consider a do over, but my first attempt at 16.1 was fine.  I think there is a natural inclination to think you could have done better when you've had time to recover from the workout, but as I learned last year, the second attempt doesn't always go better than the first.

So I came to the 5:30 class and took on this workout instead:

5 rounds:
20 KB swings (53/35)
15 Med ball cleans (20/14)
10 KB snatches - right arm (53/35)
10 KB snatches - left arm (53/35)

I've mentioned that KB swings are not a strength of mine, but KB snatches are probably even less so. I have only done one workout that involved KB snatches and I ended up awkwardly beating the hell out of my forearms while performing the movement.  The KB snatch is like the DB snatch, except for the fact that the KB rotates at the top of the movement.  You are supposed to have a looser grip on the KB so that it rotates naturally when you are punching out the weight to complete the snatch.  If you maintain a tight grip and then let the KB fall over at the top, that weight will crash into your forearm.  Not what you want.  However, holding on to the KB with a looser grip is problematic if, say, you sweat profusely.  Know anyone like that?

Surely sweating wouldn't be much of an issue for a workout in February, right?  Only if it wasn't nearly 60 degrees on this fine Leap Day.  It was balmy.  Forget Punxsutawney Phil, if you want to know whether spring is coming early, just have me work out for 15 minutes in February.  If I need to wring out my shirt at the end of the workout, there probably won't be six more weeks of winter.  I was drenched by the end of the warm-up, although to be fair, it was a Coach Aimee warm-up and those tend to be a little more intense than your average warm-up.  Silver Fox was alongside of me and he was considerably moist as well.  Knowing that this workout would run at least 20 minutes long, I decided to grab a handful of paper towels to wipe off both my hands and the KB during the WOD.  I did not grab nearly enough.

With a shortage of KBs present (there were 16 people in class!), I decided that I would use my 53 pound KB for all aspects of the workout.  That wasn't such a big deal for the swings, but it was ambitious for the snatches.  But my thought process was that this was a slow and steady, work your way through it WOD rather than a sprint, so I'd still be alright even if I needed to do smaller sets of snatches.  If a 44 pound KB was available, I would have grabbed it, although I'm not sure it would have helped me a lot based on how things perspired.  I mean, transpired.  Silver Fox had gotten a hold of a 35 pound KB for his snatches.  The rest of the class seemed split on whether they were using 1 KB for everything or getting a second lighter KB for the snatches.

We got going and things started positively enough.  I strung all 20 KB swings, as well as the 15 med ball cleans.  I wasn't going to be able to string all of the snatches, but that was part of the plan.  Even with smaller sets, I realized early on how big of a problem I had on my hands.  Like literally on my hands.  They were already wet and using a lighter grip on the KB was causing the KB to slide around in my hand.  We were only in round one and I was having trouble maintaining control of it.  I took a break to dry my hands and the KB with a paper towel, then tried to complete the round.  When I finally did, the clock showed approximately 4:00.

That was very, very bad.  The hope was to finish this workout in about 20 minutes, but I had barely kept that pace while fresh.  What was going to happen when I grew more fatigued and sweatier?  I got started on round 2, only a little bit behind Silver Fox.  But that gap would grow quickly.  The swings were tough to hold on to.  I needed to break them up and dry off the KB handle during the break.  Even the med ball cleans were tougher for no particular reason.  I may have just become mentally unglued early in the workout and let it affect everything.  By the time I finished round two, I was at about 10 minutes and I had become increasingly concerned that Silver Fox was going to lap me.  This workout was unraveling.

Rather than walk you through rounds three and four, I'll just let you know that my pace became slower as the need to dry off my hands and the KB became more frequent.  When I tried to hold on for longer sets, the KB slipped and I had to awkwardly guide it to the floor.  As I got angrier, I got better at the KB snatches.  Must have been something about that punching motion.  At the end of round three, the clock read 17 minutes and change.  I decided that I should only do 1 more round.  Could I have done 2 more rounds?  Sure.  But I would have been holding up the next class by doing so and that wasn't something I was interested in doing.  I did smarten up a little bit in round four as it dawned on me that chalk might help me with my sweaty grip issues.  I didn't want the chalk to turn into a goopy paste on the KB, but luckily that didn't happen.  The fourth round was still very slow and most people had finished all 5 rounds by the time I got done with my 4th.  Final time: 25:16 (4 rounds completed).

I hate the fact that my body temperature affects my workout performance so much, but there isn't a whole lot I can do about that.  Next time I run into this problem, I'll head over to the chalk bucket at the start.  Positive takeaways?  Well, I had concerns about doing the KB snatches with 53 pounds, but those actually turned out better than expected.  My technique could still use some work, but the weight itself wasn't a problem.

As I finished up, Samson and Christine were finishing up 16.1 at the other end of the gym.  Both the 5:30 class and the 6:30 class huddled around to get them through the last two minutes of the workout.  After they were done, 16.1 took over the main part of the gym as two more heats of five needed to take place.  The highlight of the first heat was the Giant Ginger vs. Viking showdown as two-time King of Prussia Faby was competing alongside of Open workout dominator Rachel.  Rachel had proclaimed on Facebook that she was going to get her ass kicked, but I didn't believe that for a second.  Faby was about to learn the lesson I learned six times last year.  He went out blazing in round one, but as this 20-minute workout wore on, he needed to repeatedly stop and catch his breath.  The Viking was a model of consistency, knocking out round after round at seemingly the same pace for 20 minutes straight.  While Faby was unable to finish round 6, Rachel made it about halfway through round 8.  Glad I'm not competing against her this year!

In the second heat, I counted for Ryan.  I was really worried about him.  He's one of the strongest guys in the gym, but he's also dealing with some injuries.  He chose to do the scaled version of the workout, which involved an empty barbell, a weight he could probably curl with his pinky.  But at one point during a lunge, he collapsed forward in pain.  I tried to encourage him to stop, but after a break, he kept on going.  It was tough to watch, but he was a trooper for 20 minutes.  Speaking of troopers, "Megs" was taking a second run at 16.1.  She had done very well on the scaled version on Friday and wanted to try the RX version.  She had concerns about the weight for the overhead walking lunge, but with the workout being 20 minutes long, she had no reason to rush.  "Megs" made it successfully down her lane the first time before doing 8 barbell-facing burpees.  However, she couldn't make it back down the lane.  Over and over again, she dropped a knee to the ground with her barbell overhead, trying to stand back up.  There were multiple instances where she completed one lunge.  But she couldn't quite make it to the next 5 foot mark for an additional rep.  Did she give up?  Nope.  With a bunch of folks cheering her on, she resolutely kept trying to complete the overhead walking lunge until the clock hit 20 minutes.  It may not have been the result she wanted, but she showed a ton of heart and earned the respect of everyone at the gym Monday night.

That wrapped up 16.1.  Within our gym, I finished 24th out of 113 for the workout.  That was an improvement on my 40th place (out of 76) for last year's chest-to-bar Open workout.  Worldwide, the expected 60,000+ guys beat me.  Some things never change.  But all in all, it was a good performance for me on a workout that I've struggled with in the past.  Let's hope I can keep improving on the four remaining Open workouts!

Tuesday preview: A benchmark workout causes me way more problems than expected.  At least there is a second part to the WOD to give me a little redemption.