Tuesday was a struggle. The excitement of getting 300 pounds the night before probably masked all of the soreness in my body. When I woke up the next day, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I tried to remember the last time I felt that sore and drew a blank. (It's entirely possible that I drew a blank because my brain was sore as well.) Despite not going to the gym on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, there was a strong argument to be made that a rest day would have done me a lot more good than a return visit to the gym.
Only one problem: the WOD had rope climbs! Not just a couple of rope climbs, but 15 of them! And you know how much I love rope climbs. In fact, there was the possibility that my love of rope climbs could get me out of doing other things in the workout that I really did not enjoy doing. Burpees come to mind. Here was the format for Tuesday's WOD:
Partner WOD:
60 clean and jerks (155/105)
15 rope climbs (15')
100 burpees
(One athlete works at a time. Partners are allowed to split up the work any way they want. They can also perform the movements in any order they like.)
That last bit of information was key. In some partner WODs, the work needs to be split up evenly among the athletes. Not in this workout! If I was lucky, I would end up with a partner who hated rope climbs and would be overjoyed at the thought of doing extra burpees. A man can dream.
I arrived at Dudes After Dark and discovered that there would be no opportunity to seek out this mythical person who would gladly do burpees while I took care of all 15 rope climbs. That was because only 3 people had signed up for the 7:30 class: me, Matt E, and Chris D. The three of us would form one team, with two of us doing the workout as siamese twins (mirroring one another's reps) and acting as the partner of the third person. Rachel has us do the "hands up, feet up" warmup, where we would have to do some exercise while running around the gym in a circle. If she yelled "hands up", we had to grab something and hold it over our head. If she said "feet up", we had to jump on something so that our feet didn't touch the ground. Last one to comply has to do burpees. All three of us ended up having to do our fair share of burpees. I clung to the hope that there would not be a lot more in store for me. Rachel also asked us for a team name and I rudely said that I was naming the team without really consulting Matt and Chris (sorry guys!). It had to be done. I made a promise.
Stupid late sunset messing with the Dudes After Dark moniker!
We practiced on the rope and then went through our usual clean and jerk progressions. Then we were given 5 minutes to figure out our strategy for the workout. Matt and Chris decided to be the siamese twins, a lucky break for me as it's much more difficult to work at the same pace as someone else on three different movements. Next we had to decide on a clean and jerk weight. Matt and I were fine with 155 pounds, but Chris looked a little uncertain about it. He insisted that he was good with it though, so we loaded two barbells with that weight. I couldn't broker a rope climbs-for-burpees deal, so the plan was to split the work evenly. The rope climbs were the only part of the workout that couldn't be split evenly, so I volunteered to go first and do an extra rope climb. I love my rope climbs!
The last thing I wanted to do was make my teammates wait on me, so I wanted to be quick on the rope climbs without exhausting myself. I would get a break between each climb, so I thought I could manage all eight climbs at a solid clip. My bigger concern was how I would do on the burpees and the clean and jerks. That meant I needed to focus on my breathing during the rope climbs. I kicked things off for our team and got up the rope pretty quickly, tapped the 15 foot mark, and came back down so Matt and Chris could take their turn. My speed was good, but I don't think my pulls were as strong as they could be. Usually I can take three pulls and reach the 15 foot mark, but I needed a tiny 4th pull to get there on my initial trip. That didn't change as the WOD went on.
I traded rope climbs with the siamese twins until we got to our 8th rep (4th climb for the twins). Chris made it up the rope, but Matt was having a hard time with his climb. After a couple of failed attempts, he chalked up his hands and got up the rope. Time for some strategy. I told Matt that he should switch to burpees and that I would become Chris's new siamese twin. (Note: Rachel would tell us afterwards that siamese twins could not change in the middle of a workout. Say what? Show me the siamese twins rulebook!) For each climb that Chris and I did, Matt would follow it up with 5 burpees.
Since Chris and I were now siamese twins, that meant Chris had to go right back up the rope again with me. That may have been his undoing as he began to struggle like Matt had on his previous rope climb. Chris eventually got up to the 15 foot mark, but he called it a day on the rope after that, opting to become Matt's siamese twin once again. He totally didn't need to do the 5 burpees that Matt was doing since he had completed his rope climb, but he did them anyway. The final six rope climbs were all mine, with Chris and Matt taking a big chunk out of the burpees by completing 35 of them in total by the time I finished on the rope. My pace was consistent throughout the remainder of my rope climbs, possibly because I was giddy that I got to do 11 of them.
Alas, I would eventually have to take part in the burpees. The good news was that I only had to do 35 of them, rather than 50. Even more surprising was the fact that I didn't slow down during any of my 7 sets of five burpees. I must have really been concerned about disappointing my siamese teammates. After trading set upon set of five burpees at a time, we reached 100 reps. I think we were all happy about being done with the burpees. All that was left were the clean and jerks.
Since we were splitting those up evenly, it meant that we were each doing a heavier version of Grace. Before the WOD started, we agreed to do two reps at a time before switching. Seemed like a good plan and one that we could move through rapidly. But it was apparent early on that Chris was regretting putting 155 on the barbell. He did his first two sets of two reps with Matt, but then decided that he wanted to take weight off of his barbell. Time to switch siamese twins again! I was completing my second set of clean and jerks while Chris went to get a new barbell. Since we were at the far end of the gym, we had to yell down to him to just grab new plates. I became Matt's new siamese twin for reps 9 and 10 of the clean and jerk, then I stripped the barbell I had used so that Chris could load it with his new weight (95 pounds). Chris then did reps 11 and 12 by himself before going back to being Matt's siamese twin for reps 13 and 14. We had to do that because we only had one barbell with 155 pounds on it at this point, meaning me and Matt would need to alternate on that barbell.
From there on we maintained a steady pace with only one blip. After Matt and Chris finished up reps 29 and 30, Matt went over and laid on the floor off to the left of the barbell we were sharing. It seemed like he might need a bit more of a breather than he had required earlier in the workout. I completed reps 31 and 32 and told him that the twins were up again. He gave me a confused look and that's when I realized he wasn't exhausted. He thought we only had to do 30 clean and jerks. And he didn't seem excited about the prospect of having to do 14 more clean and jerks each. We all got back into rhythm again once the confusion had been cleared up and eventually we hit the magic total of 60. Final time: 21:45.
Despite feeling terrible at the beginning of the day, I have to say this was one of my better workouts of the year. I did a bunch of rope climbs without exhausting myself. My burpees were much better than I expected. And I still had enough left in the tank to quickly do two clean and jerks every time it was my turn. Even though they were 20 pounds heavier, the clean and jerks felt like they did whenever I start Grace. I was able to clean the barbell and then immediately drive into the jerk. After dropping the first rep in each set, I put my hands right back on the barbell and did rep #2 without a break. Yes, I got plenty of rest during the WOD because it was a partner workout, but I was very pleased that there was no point along the way where I felt like I was holding my partners up.
Wednesday (and Thursday?) preview: The split jerk clinic lends itself to the unexpected pursuit of another PR. Depending on how Endurance class goes, I may lump these two workouts into one blog post.
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