Afraid To Go Low

Workout date: 4/25/16

I had a great time on my weekend away with Jenn in DC.  We got to see some friends we haven't had the opportunity to connect with in quite a while.  We went to a baby shower and may have accidentally induced labor (the mom-to-be gave birth the next morning!).  And then we hit up a food and wine festival where I did way too much day drinking.  After grabbing some lunch on Monday, we braced ourselves for a ton of traffic and headed back home.

Despite being trapped behind some of the worst drivers on the Eastern seaboard, I made it home with plenty of time to spare for the 6:30 class.  And I was kinda psyched for the workout.  It was Event #1 from the Masters Qualifier Events and looked like this:

Masters Qualifier Event #1:
21-15-9
Calorie row
Thrusters (95/65)

Gordy did this workout on Friday using 75 pounds on the barbell (60+ athletes used a lighter weight than those young 40-44 year old whippersnappers).  To say he crushed it would be an understatement.  The only break he took was on the set of 15 thrusters, which he broke into a set of 8 and a set of 7.  It was continuous motion for the rest of the workout as he completed it in a sizzling 5:02.

Perhaps this was a Sucker WOD, but when I looked at this workout, I thought I could put up a solid time.  Not Gordy fast, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 6:00-6:30.  I had completed 20 calories during the floater WOD at the Festivus Games in about 40 seconds each time I did it, so I figured the 45 calories needed in total for this workout might take me about two minutes.  That left more than four minutes to do the 45 thrusters.  That could be tricky as I'm always concerned about how tired I will be from the rower, but it still felt reasonable to me.

It is the last week of KOP's latest on-ramp program and Coach Aimee brought the members of that group into the main gym to warmup with the 13 people signed up for the 6:30 class.  That meant there were at least two dozen people being instructed on how to properly do a thruster.  And that was after we all completed a burpee-filled obstacle course.  Once fun with PVC pipes had ended, the two groups parted ways, with the on-ramp program enjoying the nice weather outside and the 6:30 class setting up rowers and barbells for the workout.  It was close to the perfect number of people for class as we took up nearly all of the space in the main gym, yet at no point did it really feel crowded.

The class was filled with competitive options for the workout.  My rower was in between Laura A's and Borden's.  Laura would be super fast on the row, but I wasn't sure how fast she'd be on the thrusters.  Borden had said he was using 95 pounds on his barbell meaning he was going RX too and I wasn't sure whether anyone else in class would be.  I suspected that Cline and Brian might be using the RX weight as well (spoiler: they ended up using 85 pounds instead).  Cline was like Laura in that he'd be blazing on the rower and I'd need to do some work on the thrusters to stay with him.  Brian and I had been close in terms of performances during the Open, so he'd likely be moving at a pace similar to mine for this workout.  Four people to push me on this WOD?  Let's do this!

The row began and I moved at a solid clip, although I wasn't trying to gun it like I had done in the floater WOD.  Not surprisingly, Cline was the first off of his rower.  I think I got off of my rower at about the same time as Laura with Borden a few seconds behind us.  (Note: I couldn't see Brian during this workout because he was near the front of the gym and I had my back to him during the thrusters.)  My lungs were working pretty hard as I got to my barbell, but my thought was to try my best to get all 21 reps.  I did have one concern though.  My right hand has been very sore recently (I think due to the front squat program) and I aggravated it during the warmup.  If stringing a huge set was going to cause an injury, then I was breaking the set and fighting on another day.

Perhaps I showed too much concern for my hand as I moved through the first set of thrusters a bit slowly.  Not glacier-slow, but not nearly as fast as I know I could do the reps using 95 pounds.  As a result, when I got to 12 reps, I decided to drop the barbell and take a quick break.  When I picked the barbell back up, I finished off the remaining 9 reps and headed back to my rower.  I was definitely behind Cline.  I was a few seconds behind Laura, and Borden got on his rower just as I started pulling to begin my round of 15 calories.  It was at this point that one of my weaknesses made an appearance.  I'm usually a decent rower when I'm fresh, but when I head back to the rower for round two or three (or more) of a workout, my performance seems to decline badly.  Even if I was fresh, I would have had a tough time keeping up with Cline and Laura on that second row, but now Borden had passed me as well.  As Borden went to join Cline and Laura at the barbell, I finished off my second row.

Should I go 9 and 6 in the second round of thrusters?  Maybe 8 and 7?  Or should I completely wimp out altogether?  If you went with option C, you get a prize.  As I began the second round of thrusters, I was still feeling reasonably good.  The first few reps were solid and a little faster than they had been in round one, as my concerns about injuring my right hand had been assuaged.  But for some reason my brain told me to break this set up into 3 sets of 5 reps.  Just keep the breaks small and you'll be fine!  Or you'll fall well behind everyone.  It wasn't until the workout was over that I realized that I'm simply afraid to go low.

What does that mean?  Tangent begin: Jenn hates when I watch golf on a Sunday afternoon ("it's so boring!"), but I tend to be captivated by it, especially if it's a major tournament.  Professional golf seems to boil down to two things: precision and pressure.  There are some great gambling stories where professional gamblers in Vegas (who, to be fair, play a lot of golf in their spare time) have taken on pro golfers for large sums of money.  At first, you might think this would be incredibly foolish on the part of the gamblers.  Why would you wager money against someone who is clearly more talented than you at this sport?  The answer: pressure.  In gambling, there is nothing worse than being "scared money".  Your decision making unravels and as you make decisions that venture further and further from optimal, you lose more and more.  In order to tilt the odds in the gambler's favor, they have to wager an amount large enough that the pro golfer feels so much pressure that they play scared.  And if they have gauged this accurately, they not only win a boatload of money, but have an awesome tale to tell about beating a pro golfer at their own game.

(Quick gambling side note: This can be used against gamblers as well.  Pick up a copy of "The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time" to read how an ultra-rich banker waged war on some of poker's elite.)

Sunday typically marks the final round of a golf tournament and occasionally you will see a golfer who appeared out of it at the beginning of the day make a dramatic charge up the leaderboard.  I used to hear the announcers say that said golfer was making up this ground because he was "not afraid to go low".  What the hell did that mean?  Why would a golfer be afraid to go low?  Wasn't that the whole point, to shoot as low a score as possible?

The more golf I watched, the better I understood what the announcers were saying.  Golf is an extremely lucrative sport and the pay scale in a tournament ranges from about $10,000 if you make the cut for the weekend to about $1 million if you win the tournament.  Each place you jump on Sunday can fatten your bank account considerably.  But the reverse is also true.  Each place you drop when you're near the top of the leaderboard is very costly.  If you jumped from 25th place up to 4th place and have 5 holes left, how aggressively do you play those last 5 holes knowing you've already increased your payday by $100,000?  That's a pretty nice day's work.  Are you willing to try and be super precise under pressure to win the whole thing?  Because if your precision is off, you may end up giving back all of that money.  How terrifying is it to try and turn your final round 67 into a 64 and can you overcome that fear?  Why not play it safe, go for pars the rest of the way, and collect a healthy paycheck?  That's what being afraid to go low is all about.

Tangent over.  Where were we?  Ah yes, dropping the barbell after 5 thrusters.  Could I have done more than 5 thrusters?  Absolutely.  But my mind was too scared to.  I knew if I did three sets of 5 and kept my breaks relatively small that I would still put up a good time for the workout.  However, if I want to put up a great time in a workout, I have to stop being afraid to go low.  Even if it feels like I am emptying the tank in the middle of a WOD, I need to at least try it occasionally to see if I can keep that pace until the end.  Maybe I will fail, end up too tired, and finish with a time worse than I could have gotten had I played it safe.  Or maybe I can hold on until the end and haven't realized it.  There's no one who has less self-belief than me.  Maybe it's time to work on fixing that.

The rest of the workout wasn't that exciting.  I did two more sets of five thrusters and got back to my rower.  Laura was already knocking out the last of her thrusters as I strapped in.  Cline and Borden were not on the rower very long as I started working on my final round.  When I completed my row, I came back to my barbell and told myself not to break up this set.  Not only that, I told myself to go fast.  I proceeded to knock out the quickest 9 thrusters of the workout.  I could have held on for 12 reps, possibly more.  The idea that I had to drop after 5 reps in the previous round seemed incredibly silly.  Final time: 7:36.

Laura had beaten me by a solid minute and a half, while Cline and Borden had beaten me by 45 seconds.  I did manage to finish before Brian, so at least I beat one of the people I was competing with in my head.  As I caught my breath, I watched Kris finish her workout.  She looked like she was hating every single thruster she was doing, but she held on to complete all 9 reps in her final set.  I need more mental resolve like that.

Afterwards, we did some handstand walk practice, but I don't feel like I've made much progress on that front since the last time we practiced them.  And when class was over, I did my 6x2 session of front squats, back to the familiar weight of 215 pounds.

Tuesday preview: Dudes After Dark is just me and Cline.  With a brief cameo by John McHugh.  And those paper things girls had in elementary school that told them who they were going to marry.  It's all very confusing, but at least I get to do some heavy overhead squats.