My Wile E Coyote Moment

Workout date: 6/27/16

Last week was a tough one for me at KOP.  There was that horrendous deadlift workout to begin the week.  That was followed by Elizabeth.  Later in the week, I was rejected by the bar whenever I tried to do a muscle-up.  And I wrapped up the week by participating in that crazy partner WOD at Competitors Class.  At least I beat Flounder on that first sprint during Endless Relays!

The Crossfit gods were a bit kinder to me at the start of this week.  The Monday WOD was a 20 minute AMRAP where you began each round with a 500 meter row, then followed it up with three rope climbs to the 15' mark.  Seemed simple enough.  Go hard on the three rope climbs each round and then use the row to settle back down again.  I could handle that.  A glimpse at the scores from earlier in the day indicated that most people were finishing with a score of 4-5 rounds.  Completing 5 rounds was a very good score and since this felt like a workout that played to my strengths, finishing five full rounds became my goal for the WOD.

Keithie!  It's been months since I've been in a class where Keithie was the coach.  I had seen him on Saturday and told him as much.  I wasn't expecting him to be coaching the Monday 6:30, but Aimee wasn't back from her trip to Napa yet.  I used to have Keithie as a coach 3-4 times a week, so it has definitely been a bummer not seeing him leading the classes I attend.  Maybe running into him twice in three days is a sign that he'll be back to coaching more soon.

The 6:30 class had 10 people in it, which was actually less than I was expecting.  I wasn't sure how the situation with the ropes was going to work out as there are only 5 ropes and one of those ropes is almost never used because it tends to be slippery.  Keithie let us know that we'd be dividing into two heats with heat one getting a two-minute head start, so that was a relief.  Throw in the fact that not everyone was going to do rope climbs and there seemed to be little reason to worry about congestion at the ropes.

I arrived at KOP right at 6:30, so as everyone began to grab one of the rowers that had been left out from the 5:30 class, I ended up with the one at the far end of the gym.  This wasn't the worst thing in the world because it left me down near 4 of the 5 ropes we have.  More importantly, it left me right next to one of the fans.  It had been raining for most of the day, but not enough to get rid of all of the humidity in the air.  The gym was muggier than it usually is and that meant I'd be sweating plenty.  Getting a little relief from a nearby fan would be a tremendous help.  Except my monopoly on that fan turned out to be short-lived.  JP was in the bathroom as we began our warmup on the rower.  When he came out, he set up his rower in the only location remaining: the space between me and the fan.

After doing some warmup on the rower, Keithie showed us the various ways one could climb the rope, as well as some scaling options that we could do should we get tired during this 20 minute WOD.  Then he split us up into two heats.  We had 5 volunteers for heat one, so I ran off to use the bathroom real quick.  When I returned from the lobby, my 9 classmates were sitting on their rowers waiting for me.  Oops.  I thought I had time to pee since my heat was kicking off two minutes after heat one, but apparently Keithie didn't want to start the clock until everyone was present.  My bad.

JP was among those in heat one and I planned on using him to push me in this workout.  JP tends to beat me in most WODs, but this was one where I thought I should be able to stay with him.  I was going to see where I was in relation to him at the end of my first round and try to stay that same distance behind him for the remainder of the 20 minutes.  Two minutes tends to be a decent benchmark for the 500 meter row, so he would likely be starting his rope climbs as I began my first row.  What I wasn't sure of was how far along I would be on my row before he finished his rope climbs.

As expected, JP was on his first rope climb when I began rowing.  The first row was all about staying calm, but making sure I kept the pace around 2 minutes.  That wasn't much of an issue as I kept my pace close to 1:45 per 500 meters early on.  JP returned to his rower when I was nearing 350 meters, so that would be my benchmark for where I needed to be in later rounds.  About 35 seconds later, I was off my rower and hopped immediately on to the rope.  I did a fast climb, came down, and then got right into my second climb.  When I came back down from the second climb, I took a few seconds to recover, then did my third climb.  As I made my way back to the rower, I took a peek at the clock and saw it was just reaching three minutes.  I wasn't going to be able to keep up that pace the rest of the way, but 5 rounds meant a pace of one round every four minutes.  Earning an extra 60 seconds of cushion was a nice start to the workout.

JP finished his second round and got back to the rower as I hit 320 meters on my second row.  He was a little slower than me on the rope climbs, but he definitely rowed faster than I did.  Once he got strapped in, he always started with a very strong pull whereas I treated the beginning of my row as a way to recover from going fast on the rope climbs.  The way I viewed the workout was that you were never going to fail on the row, but it was certainly possible to fail on the rope climb, a mistake that could cost you a lot of time.  So I was okay with going a bit slower on the row.  But as JP would slowly extend his lead on me each round, I began to re-consider whether that was the right strategy.

On my second round of rope climbs, I took a breather at the bottom of each climb, although the breathers weren't very long.  The difficulty of the climbs had amped up from round one and I definitely needed an extra pull or two on my last climb.  Push on the climbs, recover on the rower.  I kept repeating that to myself whenever I came down from a climb.  I got back to my rower and slowly began round three.  The two minute pace was no longer under consideration as I was now in the 2:15-2:20 range.  JP came back to his rower when I was at about 300 meters this time.  Oh, and I almost forgot about the worst part of JP returning to his rower.  He's a pretty big guy, so he was always blocking the fan whenever he was rowing at the same time as me.  And as the WOD wore on, I needed that fan more and more.

For my third trip to the rope, I finally grabbed some chalk.  I had seen JP chalking his hands prior to beginning his rope climbs.  Then I saw him start using chalk in between climbs as well.  Part of the reason I needed extra pulls on my last climb of round two was because my hands were starting to get sweaty and my grip was loosening.  Even though I wanted to be quick with the rope climbs, I needed to ensure I had a solid grip.  (Foreshadowing alert: Remember this for later!)  I put a bunch of chalk on my hands before starting the round, but didn't go for the chalk in between climbs.  Rather, I used the time to get some oxygen as the heat was beginning to get the best of me.  I made it through three climbs and walked over to my rower again.  The clock was under 12 minutes, so I was still on pace for 5 rounds, but my cushion was evaporating.

My speed on the rower didn't change for round 4 and JP's pace must have remained the same as well because I was near 300 meters again when he came back for his 5th row.  I took care of the final 200 meters and just tried to breathe normally as I chalked up my hands again.  The climbs were getting tougher, but my first climb of each round was generally pretty fast.  The second climb would be worse.  And the third climb would be me inchworming my way up the rope as best as I could.  I chalked my hands before every climb, adding time to each of my breaks.  As I got back to my rower, I was now beyond 16 minutes.  I was no longer on pace for 5 rounds.

There was no point in looking at JP anymore.  He was going to finish 5 rounds.  If I wanted to do the same, I needed to either pick up the pace on the row or shorten my breaks between rope climbs.  I hadn't let go of the idea that the rope climbs were more important, so my pace on the 5th row did not change for the most part.  Towards the end of the row, I sped up a bit knowing that this was either the end of my rowing or that I'd only have a little sprint after completing the rope climbs.  I had about 90 seconds remaining when I headed over to the rope to complete round five.

As I chalked up my hands, I told myself that I couldn't afford long breaks between climbs this time.  I went for my first climb and got up the rope quickly.  As I came back down the rope, I made what I thought would be a good decision.  If I was going to finish this round, I needed to go right back up the rope.  No break this time.  It was another inchworm special as I wasn't getting much distance on each pull up the rope.  But I got to the point where I needed just one more big pull and I could tap the 15' mark.  That's when my hands began to slip.

They were only slipping a little at first and I tried not to panic.  I had my feet clamped on the rope, so I could keep myself relatively stable.  The problem was at some point I needed to unclamp my feet and pull myself towards the 15' mark.  That is when I needed my grip strength to come through for me.  After remaining stationary for a few moments, I tried again to reach higher.  As I reached up with my top hand, it began to slip.  I lunged up with my other hand, but that started sliding as well.  It was a helpless feeling knowing that I was so close to hitting that mark, yet there was no way I could hold myself up.  I made the poor decision of reaching one more time before having my Wile E Coyote moment...

Meep, meep

With one unsteady hand holding the rope and the other off of it temporarily, I began to fall.  I didn't fall away from the rope, but I dropped so quickly that there wasn't time to really grab it and stop my plummet.  All I could think about in that moment was that I might be about to mess up my foot or ankle pretty badly.  My left foot hit the pad below first and then I stumbled back a little as I grabbed at the rope to keep my balance.  Ashley M was at the bottom of the rope next to me and I think she braced my fall, although it might not have been intentional (sorry Ashley!).  I squatted next to the rope for a few seconds, partially in shock and partially pissed off that I wasn't going to complete the fifth round.

My first thought was to be done with the workout right then and there.  There was less than a minute left and I still had a good score all things considered.  But I knew what my mistake was and it was easily fixable.  I needed to chalk my hands between climbs.  I stood up, chalked my hands, and began talking myself into one more climb.  Keithie yelled out that there was 30 seconds left and I walked over to my rope.  I was still shaken from what had just happened, so I didn't immediately jump on the rope.  When Keithie yelled 15 seconds though, I knew I had to go or I wouldn't make it up in time.  I began climbing and my hands felt much more secure.  I wasn't moving as fast as I did on the first climb, but I was steadily advancing up the rope.  Just as I smacked the 15' mark, Keithie yelled time.  Final score: 4 full rounds, plus a 500 meter row and 2 rope climbs.

I was one rope climb short of my goal, but I learned that if I'm ever uncertain about how dry my hands are, I should take the extra time to chalk up.  Later that night, my left Achilles was bothering me and I became very concerned about whether I could keep working out the rest of the week.  If Tuesday's WOD included box jumps, I was definitely not doing it.  Otherwise, I would just see how it felt while I warmed up.

Tuesday preview: No box jumps (hooray!).  3RM hang power cleans all by myself.  One dude.  Before it gets dark.

Second Shirt, Second Breakfast

Workout date: 6/25/16

I wasn't expecting a full parking lot when I arrived for Competitors Class at 7am on Saturday, but I certainly thought I'd see more than 1 car in the parking lot.  Was this a joke?  Had Rachel pulled a prank on me, getting me to abandon my weekend slumber even though Competitors Class had been cancelled?  I walked inside and saw three people: Rachel, Giulz, and Josh M.  Giulz always parks next to the side door on Saturdays and Josh had caught a ride with her, which explained why Rachel's car was the only one in the main parking lot.  I spent the first 10 minutes or so wondering when the rest of the class was going to show up, but it soon became apparent it would only be the four of us.  That better be a damn good breakfast I was getting when this was over!

The setup for Competitors Class was what it typically is: an Olympic lifting segment followed by a long metcon.  Occasionally, there is a cash out at the end, but there wasn't one written on the board today.  (I wouldn't have been able to do it even if there had been one, as you will soon see.)  The Olympic lifting was being done in my least favorite format: the EMOM.  To be specific, it was my least favorite version of my least favorite format, because this EMOM involved increasing weights.  The EMOM was 10 minutes long and required 2 clean and jerks per minute.  I asked Giulz whether we needed to squat clean every time and she said that while it wasn't necessary, it would be better to do so.  Having gone through the futility of trying to do squat cleans in an EMOM with increasing weights three weeks earlier, I decided to exercise my option of power cleaning my way through it this time.

Why do I dislike this format so much?  Because I firmly believe that it is not testing fitness or strength.  I also think it puts you in a situation where you quickly have to neglect your form.  All it really tests are your "pit crew" skills.  By that, I mean it tests how quickly you can run to each side of your barbell and change the weight on it so that you are ready for your next lift.  If you are simply removing clips, sliding on a plate, and then putting clips back on, maybe this transition only takes 20 seconds.  But if you're removing plates and putting new ones on, then this requires a solid 30 seconds at least.  So now you only have 30 seconds to execute your 2 clean and jerks.  It's simply way too rushed and I'm not just saying that because I admittedly suck at EMOMs.

I set up extra plates around my barbell and organized them so that I would be able to change my weights as quickly as possible.  I planned out which 10 weights I would use (starting at 115 pounds, increasing 10 pounds each time, ending at 205).  Josh called me out for not facing him as I set up my area, so I rearranged my extra plates so that I could face him during the EMOM.  Josh and I were in the middle of the gym, while Rachel and Giulz were on the platform.  Rachel wasn't facing Giulz.  In fact, she was still working off of blocks.  What was up with that?  Turns out Rachel was not doing this half of the class with us.  Competitors Class had turned into Dudes After Dark with even less of a turnout.

We got ready to go and my mindset was to treat this like I would treat Grace, at least early on in the EMOM.  I wasn't going to reset after cleaning the barbell.  I was going to go directly into my jerk, then tap the floor and go right into rep #2.  That would give me enough time to change my weights and have 10 seconds or so to recover before the next minute began.  115 and 125 were not a problem. I needed to throw on the 45 pound plates for 135, so I quickly did that, then went over to help Josh as he had already fallen behind on his weight changes.

At 135, 145, and 155, I was able to do two quick clean and jerks each time, but I could tell that I was going to have to drop the barbell in between reps in the later rounds.  It was also at about this halfway point of the EMOM where I was just barely finishing up my weight change when the buzzer sounded to begin the next round.  Aggravation began to set in as I had gone as fast as I possibly could, yet I was inevitably falling behind.  The other problem I was having involved my hands.  Taking care of my hands has become a daily routine, but there had been some recent workouts that had left them very sore.  As I hit the second half of this EMOM, it became too painful to use a hook grip.  I needed to go with a regular grip and take my chances on cleaning the heavier weights.

With my hook grip gone, the clean and jerks at 165, 175, and 185 were definitely more difficult, but I got through them.  My pace had slowed, which meant that I was behind on the EMOM.  I would add 10 pounds to one side of the barbell, make my way to the other side, hear the buzzer, finish adding the weight to the other side of the barbell and begin the next round with time already having elapsed in that minute.  I was nearing the end of the EMOM, so that didn't bother me too much.  If I had 20-25 seconds for my final round, I thought I'd be able to finish on time.

At 195, things got messy.  No hook grip, no time to dilly dally, and a lack of proper form resulted in two very ugly clean and jerks.  I got through them, but I used a lot of back in order to do both the clean and the jerk.  The buzzer went off to begin minute 10 as I wrapped up adjusting the weight on one side of the barbell.  When I finished changing the weight on both sides, the clock showed 9:40.  I felt like I needed 20 seconds to get two lifts in, but I also needed a few seconds to compose myself.  If I ended up running a few seconds over so be it.  Turns out I needed more than a few seconds.  I went to clean 205, badly hyperextended my back trying to catch it, then dumped it.  I had reached the point where I was risking injury to get this stupid EMOM complete.  No thanks.  I didn't even bother finishing the final round.  I was fine with completing 9 rounds.  I'm not sure how many rounds Giulz and Josh completed, but they weren't done at the end of 10 minutes either.

I was relieved that the EMOM was over, but that might have been a case of me underestimating what remained.  The metcon was a partner workout and looked like this:

40-30-20-10

Hang power cleans (115/75)

Wall balls (20#/14# to 10'/9')

Pull-ups

5 minutes rest

4 rounds:

20 barbell-facing burpees

20 push jerks (115/75)

5 minutes rest

4 rounds:

500 meter row

20 GHD sit-ups

10 deadlifts (225/155)

*All work must be evenly distributed among partners

Looking at all of that now, it seems crazy that I wasn't more worried about participating in this metcon.  It was a lot of work, but since it was a partner WOD, I got the notion that I would get plenty of rest along the way.  Let's just say I needed a lot more rest than I ended up getting.  First, Rachel asked who wanted to be her partner.  There was awkward silence among Giulz, Josh, and myself.  I think we all knew that Rachel's partner was not going to get very much rest as she was the most likely of the four of us to blow through her portions of the workout quickly.  I signed my death warrant by making a comment about how 50 pull-ups was going to take me forever.  Rachel then said that we should be partners because she struggled with pull-ups too.  

(Note: When Rachel says she "struggles" with pull-ups, that means she does 3 butterfly pull-ups, drops down, then does 2 butterfly pull-ups.  When I say I struggle with pull-ups, that means I do a single kipping rep, drop down, pray to a higher being that they will get me through this, then proceed to do my next single kipping rep.)

Having Rachel as my partner cut down my rest considerably.  Then Giulz made the suggestion that the breaks between the various segments of the metcon should be 2 minutes long rather than 5 minutes long.  Bye-bye six minutes of rest!  So to summarize, I was going to need to try and keep pace with Rachel during a long-ass WOD in the sauna that we call a gym with minimal rest between the three sections of the workout.  How could that go wrong?

Problem #1: Asking a guy with hand pain to do 50 pull-ups when he struggles to do them with pain-free hands.  Rachel and I started this workout by alternating back and forth after doing 10 reps of hang power cleans, then after every 10 wall balls.  We actually had a lead on Giulz and Josh when we got to the pull-ups.  We agreed to go 5 at a time at the pull-up bar.  Rachel did 3 and 2, I did not.  I did 2 reps, but pushing away at the top did not feel good at all.  So I tried for quick singles.  Three singles later, it was Rachel's turn again.  She kept up her routine, while I went all singles for my second and third sets of five.  Giulz and Josh had moved back to the hang power cleans at this point.  Rachel finished her last 5 pull-ups, then I went back up trying to string multiple reps again.  I got 2, but it wasn't worth it as my hands were seriously in pain now.  I went back to singles to finish the round of 40.

For the round of 30, we each went 8 and 7 on the hang power cleans and the wall balls.  At the pull-up bar, my singles became slower.  I began gripping the bar with only my fingers when I did my pull-ups.  It didn't feel all that secure, but my kip was strong enough to get my chin up above the bar on each rep.  Giulz and Josh kept extending their lead, finishing their round of 20 before I did the 30th pull-up for our team.  For the round of 20, we went back to sets of 10 on the hang power cleans and wall balls.  It was nice only needing to do two sets of 5 pull-ups, but I was still very slow.  By the time we finished that round, Giulz and Josh were finishing up their 2 minute rest period.  For the round of 10, Rachel and I blazed through our 5 hang power cleans and wall balls.  I think Rachel managed to hang on for all 5 of her pull-ups.  I gingerly got through mine.  We finished that segment in 14 minutes and change, more than 4 minutes behind Giulz and Josh.

At least there were no more pull-ups to do.  The rest of the metcon didn't look appealing, but I wasn't worried about my hands going forward.  The focus from here on out was breathing.  Rachel and I were going to go 10 reps at a time again and since 10 barbell-facing burpees take some time, I was getting a bit more than two minutes to recover.  It went by fast though.  As I watched Rachel do burpees, I didn't count her reps, but simply waited in dread for her to inform me that it was my turn to go.  When it was my turn, I kept moving the whole time, but I can't claim that I was moving very fast.  Although to be fair, I'm not sure any of us were speeding through those burpees.  Rachel had no problem with her 10 push jerks.  I tried to do my 10 way too quickly and lost my balance during that first round, something I reminded myself not to do in the next three rounds.

As I watched Rachel do her second round of burpees, I became conscious of how much I was sweating.  I looked down at my barbell and saw a large amount of my sweat on either side of it.  I looked over at Rachel's barbell, then Josh's and Giulz's.  If they were sweating, it was being absorbed by their shirts, because there were no puddles on either side of their barbells.  The sad part was that my shirt was dark from saturation as well.

Rachel and I moved through rounds two, three, and four of our burpees and our push jerks.  My pace on the burpees likely slowed as I went along, but I never stopped mid-round.  I got much smarter on the push jerks.  I didn't move as rapidly as I did in the first round.  115 pounds wasn't a weight that was going to crush me, so I slowed down, used good form, and steadied my breathing.  At the end of the second segment, we were about 5 minutes behind Giulz and Josh, having fallen another minute behind during this section.  I needed oxygen and water badly.

The game plan for the final section was to alternate through the movements rather than alternate sets of reps.  So for round one, Rachel would row, I would do the GHD sit-ups, and she would do the deadlifts.  For round two, I would row, she would do the GHD sit-ups, and I would do the deadlifts.  Same idea for rounds three and four.  Our rower and deadlift barbells were on the other end of the gym from the GHD, so it made sense to give our partner a head start to move from one area to the next.  It also gave me two extra minutes of rest while Rachel began the segment with a 500 meter row.  When she was done, I pushed through 20 GHD sit-ups at a moderately fast pace.  I knew Rachel was going to take care of the deadlifts quickly, so I had to jog to the rower.  My pace for 500 meters was in the 2:15-2:20 range.  Rachel did her 20 GHD sit-ups, leaving me with 10 deadlifts to finish round two.

You may remember that I used 225 pounds as my 20 rep weight in that long deadlift workout I did last week, so having to do 10 reps at that weight shouldn't have been a problem.  Except this movement was going to take a toll on my hands again.  I could feel it as soon as I picked up the barbell.  I tried to move quickly, but it seemed better to drop the barbell after 5 reps and give my hands a brief respite.  After a few moments, I picked it back up again and did the remaining 5 reps.

For rounds three and four, there wasn't too much that differed from rounds one and two.  I began to tire towards the end of my 20 GHD sit-ups, but I didn't stop before I got through all twenty.  Might have slowed down a little though.  Josh and Giulz were done by the time I had to row again, so Josh came over and pushed me to go faster since it was my last row of the day.  I managed to get my 500 meter pace down to 2:00 towards the end, meaning it likely took me about 2:10 for my second row.  I walked over to the barbell and got ready for Rachel to tell me to finish things off.  She got done and I picked up the barbell, determined to hang on for all 10 no matter what this time.  I got to 7 reps before really wanting to drop the barbell, but I knew I could get through the last 3 even if my hands were killing me.  After the 10th rep, I dropped the barbell, then dropped to the floor myself.  Final time: 43:36.

To say I was a mess at the end of this would be putting it lightly.  I was struggling to breathe.  I was very dehydrated due to my massive sweating problem.  I felt nauseous.  And the most worrisome part was that I felt this extreme pressure from the inside of my head making me wonder whether my skull was getting ready to explode.  I spent some time in front of a nearby fan.  I made my way over to my bag to get the two extra bottles of water I had brought with me.  I thought the lobby would be cooler than the gym, but for some reason it wasn't much better.  Keithie was there to teach the 9am class and when he saw me stagger into the lobby, he had to check on me to make sure I was alright.  After sitting in the lobby for a bit, I finally found the promised land.  I needed to throw on my second shirt, so I made my way to one of the lobby bathrooms, where the temperature was at least 20 degrees cooler.  I gave serious consideration to skipping breakfast in order to sit in this cool oasis for the rest of the morning.  Eventually, hanging out in the lobby bathroom felt weird to me, so I went back to the gym to see if it was time for breakfast.  I was still a bit nauseous, so I didn't want to eat immediately.  I just wanted to leave the gym.

When Rachel was ready, we each drove over to meet Giulz at her place where we helped her move some furniture before heading off to breakfast.  Then we drove to McKenna's Kitchen where I got to enjoy lots of water, some coffee, a full stack of apple cinnamon French toast, and some Irish rashers (supposedly bacon, more like ham).  I might have been influenced by watching Rachel take down a full stack of maple bacon pancakes along with an omelette, but now that I was feeling semi-normal again, I felt like I needed more food.  I asked the waitress if she could bring me a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on an English muffin to finish off my meal.  The second serving of breakfast hit the spot.  It took a solid two hours, but I finally felt recovered from my Competitors Class ordeal.

Monday preview: If you think I didn't take Sunday off after all that, you're crazy.  Monday features a Dave-friendly workout of rowing and rope climbs.  Know what isn't Dave-friendly?  The heat.  And it's back in a big way Monday night.

Look At Your D...

Workout date: 6/24/16

Having gotten into the routine of working out Monday through Thursday and then taking 2 (sometimes 3) days off to finish off the week, I considered not heading into the gym on Friday.  And honestly, after seeing what the WOD would be, the urge to skip class became even stronger.  The WOD had two parts: finding a 1RM hang power snatch, followed by muscle-up practice of either the ring or bar variety.  The hang power snatch isn't a movement that gets used in metcons very much, which helps explain why it wasn't that alluring to me.  However, it is an important element of a regular snatch as it is essentially 80% of the regular lift (just eliminate that first part of the snatch where you go from the floor to above your knee).  That makes it very useful practice for those who struggle with that first part of the lift (people like me).  In some cases, people can snatch more from the hang because they don't have to worry about messing up that first piece.  At the moment, I would say that I snatch slightly less from the hang, but the two numbers are close.  As for muscle-up practice...well, that might be an exercise in futility, but it's never gonna happen unless I keep trying.  So I talked myself into going to the Friday 5:30 class.

There were 12 of us in class at 5:30, exactly 11 more people than had shown up for the preceding class.  The only attendee for the 4:30 was Ben, who was still working on getting a bar muscle-up as we began our warmups.  His attitude could be described as a mix of confidence and frustration.  He had come close several times to getting his first bar muscle-up, but each time he chicken-winged one arm over the bar, he would fail to get his other arm over.  Since his class was over, I knew he had been at it for a while.  You never want to leave when you feel like you're right on the verge of accomplishing something big, so here he was, continuing to make attempts at getting that second arm over the bar.  I had my back turned as he made one of his final attempts, but I did hear Giulz give him some advice that I had heard from Coach Jason previously.  "Look at your dick!", she yelled to Ben as he tried to make that quick transition from pulling your body up to launching it forward over the bar.  Alas, Ben did not look at his dick.  Or maybe he didn't look at it quickly enough.  It's all very confusing.  Unlocking the secrets behind the bar muscle-up remains a mystery to me.

The secret to the hang power snatch?  Just good form and some strength, I suppose.  I knew coming into this workout that my best snatch from the hang was 165, although I couldn't remember whether I needed to go into a squat in order to get it.  My guess would be yes.  In fact, I try to squat whenever I snatch these days, so I needed to remind myself not to do that in this workout.  Coach Jill put us through a fairly short warmup, then let us get to work on finding a 1RM.  The way the workout was written, we were supposed to do 7 lifts (at least).  I didn't plan things out like I normally do, but I ended up getting to a 7th lift before we moved on to the muscle-up practice.

I started out with 95 pounds on my barbell and didn't have any trouble with my first hang power snatch.  Same thing with my next lifts at 115 and 125.  I had brought over smaller weights to add on to my barbell, so I completed my first three lifts quickly.  There was still about 35 minutes left in class, so I asked Jill how much longer we were going to lift.  I figured I'd be topping out in the 155-165 range, which meant only 3-4 more lifts for me.  If there was 20-25 minutes of lifting left, then I was going to slow my pace considerably.  Jill said we had gotten started early, so there was a lot of time left.  Good to know.  I put 135 pounds on my barbell and took a few minutes of rest.

You will almost never hear me say that my form was great, but my form was better than usual as I continued on with my lifts.  I tend to think of 135 as the weight where I might want to squat snatch as my power snatches at this weight start to get shaky.  In lieu of a squat, I go into full starfish mode because I don't have total control of the weight.  By getting a wider base, I'm getting under the barbell without squatting.  That isn't how you are supposed to do it, that's just the reality of the situation.  There wasn't any starfishing at 135 this time around though.  Not really any at 145 either.  Things were going well enough that I briefly began to think that 170-175 could be a possibility.

Then two things happened.  The first was my lift at 155.  Very starfishy, not very pretty.  I managed to successfully execute the lift, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to go much higher.  If you had asked me prior to the workout what a strong number would be for me, I would have said 165 as it was a pseudo-PR for my hang power snatch.  All those solid lifts early on got my head in the clouds, but now I was back to thinking that 165 would be as much as I could hope for.  The second thing that happened was that Jill changed her mind with regards to how she wanted to allocate the remaining time in class.  She let the class know that she wanted to spend a little more time on the muscle-up practice, so we needed to start working on our last few attempts.

I already had 165 loaded on to my barbell when she made this announcement, but I knew that I couldn't hang out and take a long rest before trying that weight, nor could I spend a lot of time resting if I needed additional attempts.  Which was a little bit of a bummer because I was spending part of my break cheering on Alejandra, who was working behind me.  She had made several attempts at a weight that she could handle.  She was getting the barbell plenty high enough, but it looked like she was backing away from it as it got near her face.  If she didn't back away from it and could even partial squat under it a little, she'd get the weight no problem.  Before I took my shot at 165, she tried her lift again and just barely missed it.  I felt pretty certain it was gonna happen by the end of class.

As for me, all of that proper form I had displayed in the lifts leading up to 165 suddenly disappeared. Classic case of a number getting in my head and messing with me mentally.  I had made sure in my earlier lifts to keep the barbell close to my body, allowing my hips to make contact with it and give it that extra boost to soar over my head.  That didn't happen with 165.  I might have been trying to move the barbell as quick as I could because I knew it was heavy, but the end result was no contact with my body and not enough elevation for a power snatch.

It seemed like the class was starting to put away their weights, so I watched Alejandra one last time (and of course she got it on her last lift).  I was not so lucky as I didn't learn from my first attempt at 165.  I did the same exact thing and got the same exact result.  Then I watched Ashley M attempt her final lift.  She also forgot to make contact with her body, but she had enough strength to pull the barbell over her head anyway.  I need to learn how to do that!

It was time to move on to muscle-up practice and we started over by the rings.  Jill asked if any of us had ring muscle-ups, but only got an affirmative response from Giulz.  Jill recommended practicing transitions on the rings if we weren't close to a bar muscle-up and I thought that was what I'd be working on, only Jill has much more faith in how close I am to a bar muscle-up than I do.  I had plenty of company over at the rig as I suspect most of my classmates preferred attempting bar muscle-ups over transitions.  As Jill explained the technique behind the bar muscle-up, Tia took up the spot next to me.  We got into a conversation about how she disliked jumping bar muscle-ups, something I couldn't believe because I find them fun.  Tia is not into them because she worries about the box moving as she comes down from the jumping bar muscle-up.  Fair point.  I can see how that can be disconcerting.  She wouldn't have to worry about that today though as we were either attempting regular bar muscle-ups or using a band.

Over the next 10 minutes or so, I did my best Ben impression and talked myself into thinking that I was only an adjustment away from getting my first bar muscle-up.  I generated a lot of power from my kip.  I tried not to pull too early.  Tried to push my body away from the bar and get into an almost horizontal position.  Then at the last possible second, I tried to swing my body up and over the bar.  Without fail, I kept hitting my rib cage against the bar, my body not quite as high as it needed to be.  Giulz informed me that I, like Ben, was also not giving my dick the visual attention that it required in order to make a bar muscle-up happen.  I made one more silly attempt in which I tried to fix that problem (while ignoring all the other facets of a bar muscle-up) before calling it a day and moving on to something else.

That something else was double under practice.  Raj, Ashley, and Kris started doing an extra cash out involving double unders and abmat sit-ups.  As I watched them work on double unders, I felt the need to do the same.  There was a WOD on Thursday that I skipped in favor of Endurance that was heavy on double unders.  Maybe I was feeling a little guilty about neglecting my double unders, so I grabbed my rope and joined the group.  I wasn't interested in doing the sit-ups, but I worked on my double unders for almost 45 minutes.  Most of my sets ended up being about 8-10 reps early on.  I had one big set of 48 reps.  After that, I had some sets in the 10-15 rep range, but couldn't string 20 in a row.  That was a little disappointing, but I had very few sets of less than 5 reps, so it balanced out.

There were two more items of note before I left:

1. Danielle replicated what Alejandra did in the 5:30 class during her hang power snatches in the 6:30 class.  Kept failing, but definitely had the barbell high enough.  Never had a doubt she was going to eventually get it and on her last attempt she did.
2. Rachel came over and asked if I'd come to Competitors Class the next morning.  She promised we would go to a new breakfast place afterwards if I showed up.  Since food is the drug that I cannot kick, I reluctantly agreed to a weekend visit at 7am.

Saturday preview: Competitors Class breaks me, to the point where I almost skip the aforementioned breakfast outing.

Flounder: 56 And Counting

Workout date: 6/23/16

Thursday marked the first time that I would be re-testing at Endurance this year.  I had missed the initial time trial of the mile, but I was present for both the 800 meters and the 400 meters.  This week we would be attempting the 800 meters again, with the 400 meters on deck for us next week.  Both of those distances are tricky for me, basically for the same reason.  They both require a lot of speed, but there is a bit of pacing involved since you can't just go all out the whole way.  When I wrote about the mile last week, I could lay out lap by lap how I expected the race to go.  With these two races, it comes down more to when you want to flip the switch and go for it.  Last time around, I let someone else decide that for me.  This time I tried something a little different.

It was another packed house for this week's time trial as there were 17 of us who had showed up to run two laps as fast as we could.  Almost immediately, I got some grief from John McHugh over something I would have never expected him to care about: my fashion sense.  Let me be clear: I don't spend a whole lot of time deciding what I am going to wear for my workouts.  In the past, I cared so little that I often didn't even match.  Nowadays, I put in the extra effort to try and match.  For the most part though, I grab a shirt or a pair of shorts that is in my line of sight after I get out of the shower and then I pick something to match it.  There must be a lot of red shirts visible to me on Thursdays because John was busting on me about always wearing red to Endurance.  Rest assured I'll have a different color on for the 400 meter time trial.

We weren't going to spend a lot of time with the warmup as Coach Tim had to leave early and he wanted to get us through the 800 meters before he took off.  After a couple of laps jogging and some stretching, Tim got all of us lined up.  The line up for these races always ends up being the same.  I'm on the outside or in the second wave of runners.  The fastest runners line up toward the inside on the front line.  And Flounder is always in lane 1.  Here, see for yourself:

(Note: I may have to mention Flounder a bunch of times in this blog post just so that he can keep his total number of mentions on this blog on the rise.  He informed me at this workout that he had gotten 55 mentions so far.)

As you can see, I was behind and towards the outer part of the track, but that wasn't a big deal to me early on.  When we did this time trial in April, I went out with King and stuck with him for as long as I could.  I wanted to feel out my own pace this time.  In fact, my plan was to stay within shouting distance of the leaders after one lap, then really push the second lap in hopes that I could reel one of them in at the end.  I didn't need to be alongside of them or even right behind them on lap one.  As we headed out for the first 200 meters, I discovered that wasn't an option even if I wanted it to be.  I thought that Alex, Matt, and John would be the three runners on the lead, but I didn't expect John to be pushing the pace as much as he was.  Last week, there was a large pack together at the end of the first lap.  Not the case this week.  That triumvirate had opened up a gap after only half of a lap.  Joy was next, with a gap between her and the next pack.  Luke and Joe M led the pack that I was part of.  I didn't know where Ashley M, Alona, and Flounder were, but I suspected they were not far behind me.

As we headed down the back straightaway, I felt good with my stride and moved past Joe and Luke.  My eyes were focused on Joy yet again, although she was much further ahead of me than she had been during the mile.  For some reason, I wasn't concerned yet.  I had kept my breathing under control and didn't feel like I had to push tremendously hard to be in the position I was in at the end of one lap.  Tim yelled out our times as we crossed the finish line and I was surprised to hear that I completed the first lap in 1:28, one second faster than I had in April.

I began to push at that point, hoping to draw closer to Joy as we got to the turn again.  There was one problem: Joy had used a similar strategy.  She was picking up her pace more than I was, slowly closing in on the lead group and causing the gap between us to grow.  That was a little deflating.  I thought I was doing well with my pacing and could make a race out of it, but the race was over.  With 200 meters left, I was on my own.  The top four were too far away to chase after.  The stranger part was that I couldn't hear anyone behind me.  I half-expected to hear someone closing in on me as my kick wasn't as strong as I thought it was, but there were no footsteps within earshot, nor any rapid breathing indicating that someone was going to come charging by.  As I hit the final turn, I pumped my arms in an attempt to sprint home, but that surge at the end is tougher when you're by yourself.  Had there been someone near me, I might have broken 3 minutes.  As it was, I had to be happy with a 3 second improvement from April.  Final time: 3:01.

I finished 11 seconds behind Joy, who had finished only 5 seconds behind John.  Alex and Matt were 2 seconds ahead of him.  Luke had actually put in a very strong sprint at the end and was only 5 seconds behind me, but I didn't notice how close he had gotten until right after I crossed the finish line.  Flounder crossed the line in lane 1, 16 seconds after I had.

Tim took off, which meant Coach Miles (under the supervision of his mom, Laura) would be watching us for the second half of the workout.  We had done something called Endless Relays back in April after the 400 meter time trial.  It was rainy and we only had 8 people (you need 5 per team to make it work properly), so it didn't go so well that day.  Today we had sunny skies and 17 people, so this was going to go much more smoothly.  How does Endless Relays work?  One team member sprints 100 meters, then passes off a baton to their awaiting teammate.  You need 5 people per team because someone needs to be at the starting line at the end of the lap and the first runner will no longer be there.  With 17 people, we did three teams.  Since two teams had 6 people, there would be one station where twins would be running.  I ended up being a twin along with Joe.  The other set of twins was Luke and Joy.

There was symmetry in this workout as all of us would be running another 800 meters, only this time it would be in the format of eight 100 meter sprints.  Joe and I were in lane 1, Flounder was in lane 2, and Luke and Joy were in lane 3.  We made up the third leg of our respective teams.  The speedsters were in the leg behind us as Matt was on my team, Alex was on Flounder's team, and John was on Luke and Joy's team.  Alex came storming down the straightaway towards us and handed off to Flounder first as Matt hustled to get me the baton.  When I got the baton, I turned and saw Flounder up ahead of me by about 20-30 meters.  I didn't think I could catch him, but as I began my sprint, I realized that there was a slight chance I could.  And as I motored around the turn, I became determined to catch him.  About 10-20 meters before getting to our teammates, I went by him.  I probably emptied the tank way too early, but I felt really good about how fast I went on that initial sprint.  Even my twin mentioned that he wasn't expecting me to go that fast.  (Note: In retrospect, it was a good thing that I went all out on this sprint, because Flounder's head start kept getting larger and larger over the next 7 legs.  Of course, Flounder let me know that he saw the scoreboard as 7-1 in his favor when this workout ended.)

Of the 8 sprints, I kept up my speed for the first 6 legs.  Joe was really good about urging me along any time I started to slow down during the sprints.  At the end of the first lap, I wasn't sure how I was going to make it through 4 more sprints.  Then on the 5th sprint, Luke emptied the tank, closing on my outside as we sprinted around the turn.  He even had the "Dave breathing" going, where you could hear him from a mile away.  On the next sprint, Joy got the baton and I gave it everything I had to beat her for once.  Joy and Luke started sprint #7 ahead of us and I couldn't catch them.  Finally, we got our batons at about the same time on sprint #8, but I couldn't stay with Luke, Joy, or my twin Joe.  It was a fun workout, but I had nothing left for those last two legs.

We stretched out after completing the relays.  Luke and I then did a cool down lap before stopping by a bar and enjoying some cool down beers.  Gotta reward yourself after some of these workouts!

Friday preview: Hang power snatches, bar muscle-up practice, and some long overdue double under practice.

Take A Hint, Dummy

Workout date: 6/22/16

My buddy Chubbs was channeling his inner William Tecumseh Sherman starting on Wednesday, hopping on his motorcycle and laying waste to the eastern seaboard on his journey to Atlanta.  (Okay, maybe that's a little too dramatic.  He was in desperate need of a bike trip, had planned to go to North Carolina, then realized the Mets were playing in Atlanta this week and figured that was a nice way to cap off his trip.  He's probably only going to burn down a couple of cities along the way.)  We hadn't seen each other in a while, so I was excited to hear that he might stop by for a visit on the first day of his southern trek.  He thought he'd make it to my house around 4pm, so that meant I needed to hit the gym on the earlier side if I was getting a workout in on Wednesday.  Pencil me in for the nooner!

My biggest concern about the class was, yet again, the heat.  Not 18 hours earlier, I had gone through a workout where I could barely breathe from start to finish.  That was at 7:30 at night!  How was I going to do in a class taking place in the middle of the day?  The answer: a little bit better.  It wasn't nearly as humid for the Wednesday class as it had been on Tuesday night.  So even though this workout involved running outdoors, it wasn't quite as bad as it could have been.  That being said, it was still pretty brutal for a perpetual sweat fountain like myself.  Here was the Wednesday WOD:

3 rounds:
400 meter run
10 overhead squats (135/95)
10 push presses (135/95)
10 burpees facing the barbell

Running?  Not a ton of it, so that's not the worst thing in the world.  Overheads?  Yes please.  Push presses?  A challenge with 135 pounds, but we had done a workout 3 weeks ago that included 30 push presses at 135, so I'd already been through the dress rehearsal.  Burpees?  They always suck, but 10 at a time seemed like the right amount that I could churn through with some speed.  Add it all together and this felt like a workout where I could put up a solid time.  As long as I had a sane person's understanding of what constituted a "solid time".  (Spoiler: I did not.)

Clay was coaching the noon express and it was good to take class with him again.  Once the front squat program ended, my motivation to hit up the 6:30am Open Strength class began to wane and Clay only coaches during the first half of the day on Wednesdays.  To me, the best part of Clay's coaching style isn't his understanding of the technical aspects of the movements that we do in workouts (even though he has a strong grasp of those).  Instead it's his ability to keep things light as he explains the movements.

We're all trying to get better at the gym.  For some, the goal is to be faster.  Others want to be stronger.  Still others want to look better naked.  (God bless the people who make #3 happen.  I'll be content with minor improvements in #1 and #2.)  While we're all trying to improve, it's important to remember that this should be fun.  The times when I've thought about quitting Crossfit have been those times when I wasn't having any fun at the gym.  Thankfully those periods have been short and I've stuck with it.  As someone who regularly stresses about workouts in advance, I can tell you that your better performances tend to come about when you approach it with a loose attitude.  So if a coach can lighten up the mood right before you take part in an activity that's going to leave you in a heap on the floor, then I consider that a job well done.

Clay guided the 14 of us through some stretches to loosen up our shoulders before having us go through some progressions for the overhead squats and the push presses.  Selfishly, I like Clay's warmups because we don't do a lot of reps.  I'm already warm most of the time and if I do 20 practice reps of a movement, I'm going to need to walk over to the paper towel rolls when we're done and dry myself off.  4-5 reps?  I can make it through that.  He also gave us a few tips for the workout, including some advice on the burpees.  He recommended not jumping forward out of the burpee, but rather walking forward by bringing one foot up to the barbell.  Instead of two jumps for each burpee (one jump forward, one jump over the barbell), we'd only need to do the one necessary to bring us to the other side.

There was one last thing that Clay told us before we began and that was the expected time domain for this workout.  He said we should choose a weight for our barbell where we could expect to finish the workout in 14-20 minutes.  Not a problem.  I planned on wrapping up this WOD in about 15 minutes using the RX weight of 135 pounds.  My logic went as follows:

• Round 1: First run would take about 2 minutes.  Stringing 10 overheads would take maybe 30 seconds.  Stringing 10 push presses, about another 30 seconds.  10 moderately slow burpees in a minute.  Time for round 1 - about four minutes.
• Rounds 2 and 3: Slower run, maybe 30 seconds slower.  An extra 30-60 seconds for the overheads and push presses.  Maybe an extra 15 seconds for my already slow burpees.  Time for rounds 2 and 3 - about five and a half minutes.
• Total time: 15 minutes.  Might as well write it on the board now.

Theoretically that sounded nice.  The only problem was that I was ignoring some very obvious red flags:

• The lower end of Clay's range was 14 minutes and the upper end was 20 minutes.  Where do I normally finish workouts, especially when I do them RX?  On the upper end of the range.  Just because this workout included some overheads didn't mean today was going to be drastically different.
• Only two people had done the workout RX in the three earlier classes.  Those people?  Aimee in 14:38 (when have I ever finished a workout within 22 seconds of her?).  And JP in 19:38 (a guy who whips me regularly, especially in workouts that include running).
• It was less humid today, but still pushing 90 degrees.  Heat is not my friend.

So yeah, I drastically underestimated how tough this workout would be.  Pretty badly.

We took off on our first run and I felt like I was on a good pace.  Becky was out leading the pack with a couple other people behind her.  I was in the next pack with Erika L and one other person.  I spent the first run joking with Erika that she needed to carry me on all of the runs as I had fallen apart on a nooner workout where she had told me that I would need to carry her during the runs.  We came back into the gym and I walked up to my barbell thinking this is where I was going to make up time.  Having watched all of the Regionals, I saw that most of those athletes didn't snatch the barbell to begin their overhead squats.  A lot of them cleaned the weight, popped it on to their back, adjusted their hands, then did their overheads.  I was going to do the same thing.  (Note: During the warmup, I played around with not only doing this, but returning the barbell to my back, adjusting my hands again, and then doing the push presses.  It was very awkward, so I ditched that part of the plan.)

After getting the barbell on my back, I got my hands out wide and jerked the barbell overhead.  (One more note: I'm not entirely sure that my hands were in the same place on each side of the barbell.  It was a little tough to gauge on the fly.  My hope was that if my hands were not symmetrical on the barbell that it would balance out my natural lopsidedness.)  Clay told us during warmups that we should aim to string all of the overheads and all of the push presses in round one.  I began moving through my reps and could tell early on that doing all 10 was going to be difficult.  But I made it through all 10 before dropping the barbell.  I needed a breather before going into the push presses and during that break I noticed how sweaty I had become.  I was only halfway through the first round and the heat was already becoming a factor.

I picked up the barbell and started on my push presses.  Made sure not to do any push jerks by accident.  When I did these in the workout 3 weeks ago, I did them in sets of 7 or 8.  I thought I could hang on for just a couple more in this workout, but that was not the case.  After 7 reps, I had to drop the barbell.  I took another break, then took care of the final three.  I had my back to most of the class, so it wasn't until I turned around for my second burpee that I noticed that many of my classmates had already left for run #2.  I also noticed that the clock was beyond 4 minutes.  There was zero chance of me finishing in 15 minutes.  Even twenty minutes was looking suspect now.

The burpees were slow as expected, but I kept moving on them and headed out the door for my second run with more than five minutes having gone by on the clock.  My canter was not what it was during the first run, but it didn't appear like anyone else in class was moving all that quickly on the second run, save for Panos who was up ahead of the rest of us.  I wasn't concerned about my speed as I was using the run as recovery for the work that awaited me back in the gym.  When I got back, I went through my routine to get the barbell overhead with a wide grip.  Then I tried to get another 10 in a row.  I had 6 in a row, but when I hit the bottom of my 7th squat, I lost control of the barbell and had to dump it.  That was unfortunate.  Picking the barbell back up for the push presses was not nearly as difficult as getting it back overhead.  Even if I couldn't string 10 push presses, I thought I might be able to string 10 overheads together for all three rounds.  Nope.  After a break, I got the barbell overhead and finished off the last four reps.  There was no change on the push presses as I did a set of 7 and a set of 3 for the second round in a row.

Even though I was close to crawling through the burpees due to the walk-up-with-one-foot technique that Clay had suggested, I didn't think I was moving that slowly.  I was exhausted, but I felt like I was continuing to move and my breaks didn't seem as long to me as they had during last night's WOD.  Turning around and facing the rest of the gym told a different story though.  Everyone was gone except for Rob C and I thought he was back from his third run already.  (He was actually still on round two, having fallen behind when he needed to change the weight on his barbell.)  It seemed like I was bringing up the rear yet again.  I completed my 10th burpee and slowly jogged out the door as the clock edged towards 13 minutes.

With the second round taking nearly 8 minutes, my chances for staying under 20 minutes for the workout seemed remote.  I did have one thing going for me though: my middle round is always the slowest.  Once I can see that finish line, I can usually summon a little more energy to finish up.  I didn't run any faster during that final 400 meters, but I wanted to do what I could in terms of shortening my breaks during the lifts when I got back to the gym.  The overheads felt better in round 3 and part of me thought I might get all 10.  I got wobbly on rep #7 and decided it was better to drop the barbell and feel stable once again for the last three reps.  Clock was around 17:30.  I got into my push presses, but had to stop after 6 reps.  With most of the class having finished up, I could hear some folks begin urging me on to complete the push presses.  I picked up the barbell, did the remaining 4 reps, and began telling myself that I only had 10 fast burpees remaining and then I'd be done.

It was time to sprint (or do my best impression of one).  Each time I jumped over the barbell, Erika would yell "down!", not letting me do any sort of crawling on this last set.  I got through 5 reps before sneaking a peek at the clock.  It read 19:31.  There was still a chance to break twenty minutes, but I needed to move at the pace Erika was demanding.  Down, quick walk up, hop over.  DOWN!!!  You can breathe after these 5 burpees are done.  I hopped back and forth over the barbell until the last burpee was complete.  Final time: 19:55.

I made it!  It was oddly satisfying finishing just under 20 minutes when my original goal was 15 minutes.  Maybe fatigue had a way of letting me know immediately how dumb my initial prognostication was.  I laid on the floor for a bit, a mix of tired and nauseous.  That has become an issue for me as well.  The heat not only makes me sweat profusely, but it has gotten me woozy and nauseous at times.  In workouts like this one, the last thing your body wants to do is hold heavy weight overhead when you're in that state.  So that means I need longer rest periods.  If that causes me to fall behind everyone, so be it.  I've never thrown up due to a Crossfit workout and I don't have any desire to begin now.  As for the heat in general, I'm not sure how to handle that.  I thought working out in the heat more might help me acclimate a bit, but that hasn't been the case.  I thought hydrating more might help, but all that does is make me want to pee during the workout.  I guess all I can do is try my best and be content with that, even if means slower times during the summer.

Thursday preview: My second attempt at the 800 meter time trial during Endurance.

Drip Drop

Workout date: 6/21/16

There was no escaping it.  The deadlift extravaganza on Monday was sure to wreak some havoc on my back no matter how good my form was (it wasn't that good) and sure enough I was gimping around on Tuesday morning.  Having read what the WOD was the night before, I had a decision on Tuesday whether it was wise to come into the gym to take on a second painful workout in a row or whether I should take an unexpected day off.  It wasn't much of a dilemma.  My blood type is "stubborn idiot".  I was taking on Elizabeth for the second time this year.

Elizabeth is one of this year's benchmark workouts and she is much worse than she sounds.  As a reminder, here is what Elizabeth entails:

"Elizabeth"
21-15-9
Squat cleans (135/95)
Ring dips

As was the case back in March, Elizabeth would be followed by a two minute intermission and an additional 10 minutes to find a 2RM hang squat clean.  What was different from March?  The temperature in the gym.  It wasn't slightly warmer.  It was oppressively hot inside KOP.  As I sat watching the end of the 6:30 class, I told Chris D that we were definitely in trouble because some of the guys who don't tend to sweat a lot had soaked shirts.  That was bad news for someone like me who is sweatin bullets during the warm up.

You should prepare yourself for three months of blog posts that talk about how hot it was during the workout, how much I was sweating, and how much difficulty I was having breathing.  Monday was the official start of summer and I did plenty of sweating during that WOD, but it wasn't a metcon, so I got through it relatively well.  But it was much more humid on Tuesday and this was a metcon we were taking on, a tough one at that.  It had recipe for disaster written all over it.  When I did this in March, I titled my blog post "Half-a-WOD" because I blew it on Elizabeth, but then got some redemption on the hang squat cleans.  I could very well call this post "Half-a-WOD, part two", the only difference being that I fared better on the earlier portion of the workout this time around.

Dudes After Dark dude-to-dudette ratio?  Two-thirds this week.  Brian, Cline, and Chris joined me in making up the portion of class with Y chromosomes, while Miss January and Julie Foucher formed Team Dos Equis.  Coach Rachel started us off with a game of musical medicine balls.  I made it to the final three, but Chris and Julie were playing for keeps, sending me off to the side for the ultimate confrontation where I would join the other eliminated candidates in trying to distract the final duo with our best booty shake.  (Don't ask.)  Julie could not keep focus with all the sideline gyrating taking place, leaving Chris as the winner of the warmup.

From there, we went over the progressions for the squat cleans.  When we did this in March, I scaled down to 115 pounds.  Since my front squat has improved over the last three months, I toyed with the idea of going with the full 135 pounds.  But I tend to be the type that feels like I need to earn my way to the next level.  I had done a lousy job of getting through this workout with 115 pounds.  Until I proved I could move well with 115 pounds, I hadn't earned the right to go with 135.  So I was sticking with 115 again.

Over at the rings, Rachel talked about doing strict ring dips, kipping ring dips, and banded ring dips.  I am able to do strict ring dips, but I certainly can't do 45 of them.  And ring dips are one of those movements where failure tends not to be a temporary problem.  Once they're gone, they might be gone for the rest of the day.  Back in March, I started with strict ring dips, but ended up switching to banded ring dips at some point along the way.  (Note: As with all things kipping, I suck at kipping ring dips.  I have my own version of kipping ring dips that I do from time to time, but those reps are fleeting.)  So no matter what, banded ring dips were going to be part of the equation.  The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense to just do them for the entire workout.  Why wait until I was exhausted before switching?  I don't have a great track record with decision making when I'm completely rested.  How good was it going to be when I was gasping for air with sore triceps?

There was a new wrinkle for me with regard to the ring dips.  The 6:30 class had done their banded ring dips by tying the bands through one of the rings.  When you do banded ring dips, you generally hop on to the band on your knees and let the band help bounce you up and down through the dips.  Having one side of the band loose allowed you to adjust how much bounce you wanted.  Want a lot of bounce?  Pull the band tightly through the other ring, causing the portion of the band in between the rings to become rigid.  Don't need as much bounce?  Only pull the band slightly through the other ring.  When I had done banded ring dips previously, I tied the band on to the rig (there are small metal hooks for the bands) and went from there.  This new setup gave options, but probably required a little practice (as I would soon discover).

With the six of us having made our decisions regarding scaling the workout, it was time to begin.  For the squat cleans, I decided to use the Rich A approach of all singles.  I had attempted to hold on to the barbell for larger sets in March and it didn't go well.  My best sets ended up only being three reps and it took more energy than I expected just to get those.  I wasn't interested in wasting energy today.  I was going to do a squat clean, drop it, and (most importantly) try not to walk away from the barbell.  As long as I stayed on the barbell, there wasn't any reason I couldn't hang with the rest of the class.  This turned out to be accurate...as long as I didn't walk away from the barbell.  Of course, when I got tired, I began to mosey around in a small circle.  Chris jumped out to the lead and was the first to hit the rings.  I might have been last to the rings, but I wasn't way behind Brian, Julie, and Cline.

Sweat and exhaustion played a big role at the rings.  I tried to calm myself after the squat cleans, but I needed a breather while standing at the rings.  Then I attempted to adjust the band length through the opposite ring so that it provided the amount of support I thought I needed.  Except my hands and my legs were super sweaty already.  The band slipped through my hand a couple of times as I tried to hold it at a specific length.  When I finally held it still, I tried to hop on to the band, but my knees slipped off.  Meanwhile, everyone around me was getting dips done as I remained at a total of zero.  There was no point anymore in trying to be cute with the band.  I pulled it fairly tight to the other ring, which made it easier to hold in place.  It also made it easier to hop on to.  I got one knee on and then managed to swing the other one up.  I had wasted a bunch of time and energy, but I could finally begin my dips.  Despite swaying back and forth on my new setup, I was able to pump out dips pretty quickly.  I got to 13 before needing to take a break.  When I got back on the band, I made it through the remaining 8 reps.  That was an adventure, but it was done.

I was still a little bit behind the group of Brian, Julie, and Cline, but having figured out the dips, I thought I might be able to catch up to them if I kept it together on the squat cleans.  Of course, I did not.  The weight didn't feel heavy, but every time I did a squat clean, it felt like someone was punching me in the stomach.  I'd stand up with the barbell, drop it, then desperately try to suck in some air.  My mid-section was becoming a little more sore after each rep.  My body was clearly telling me "stop doing this", but I ignored it and kept trying to nibble away at the remainder of the workout.  I did three fast singles, then took what felt like a long break to me before doing the next set of three.  Even though I was in a world of hurt and assumed I was falling behind the group I was chasing, I was pleasantly surprised to see all four of us head towards our respective rings within a rep or two of one another.

Back at the rings, I needed another breather.  And because I'm a spaz, I messed up my first attempt to get on the band again.  When I got up on the second try, I made it through 11 reps before coming off of the band.  One more break before getting up on the band and taking care of the last four reps.  I was now slightly ahead of the group I had been chasing.  As I walked back to my barbell, I looked at the clock and saw that it had just passed 12 minutes.  My time in March was 15:02.  I needed to hustle if I was going to beat that time.

For the round of nine, I tried to take on bigger sets of the squat cleans.  I knew every rep was going to be painful, but it wasn't a matter of not having the strength to do the reps.  It was all about enduring the pain and dealing with the fact that I couldn't breathe.  I did 5 fast singles before coming to a stop.  My breathing was very rapid at this point, but I knew there wasn't much left.  I got through my last four singles and trudged over to my rings.  I could string together 9 reps.  Finding the self-control to get on the band was going to be the hard part.  I took some time to calm myself as much as I could then jumped my right knee on to the band.  Then I swung my left knee up without falling off the band.  Success!  I began my last 9 ring dips.  I might have swayed back and forth even more than I had during the first two rounds, but I wasn't coming off of that band until all 9 reps were complete.  Final time: 13:37.

With Elizabeth complete, I was rewarded with two minutes of rest.  We were supposed to begin our hang squat cleans when that time had elapsed, but I spent the entirety of those 120 seconds laying next to my barbell.  Then I slowly crawled over and began adding weight to my barbell.  By the time I was ready to lift again, I was a good 90 seconds or so into my 10 minute window.  Didn't matter.  If I couldn't breathe, I couldn't lift heavy.  Breathing was the priority.  I was more than happy to only do 3 sets.  In March, I had completed a final set at 215.  The plan here was to go 165-195-215.  I'd probably stop there unless I miraculously got my energy back.

I did not get my energy back.  The two reps at 165 were ugly, but it was a weight I knew I could get.  After slowly adding 30 pounds to the barbell, I went for 195 and missed badly on the first rep.  I walked over to one of the fans to cool off.  Then I sat next to the pull-up rig for a bit.  With less than four minutes remaining, I gave it another go.  Sometimes I overthink my lifts, but I would never be accused of that on this attempt.  I yanked the barbell from the hang position up towards my shoulders.  Only then did I remember this was a squat clean.  I kinda stood there for a second having power cleaned the barbell, then tried to awkwardly squat with it.  It was a mess.  I dropped the barbell, having failed on the first rep for a second straight time.

I laid on the floor next to the barbell and thought about whether I wanted to take 165 for my score and be done with it.  I was exhausted and my mind wasn't right.  It might not be a bad idea to call it a day as lifting heavy in this state could potentially lead to an injury.  But as I laid there, I thought about the fact that I could rest for three minutes and still make one more attempt at 195.  That seemed reasonable.  If I still felt like crap in three minutes, I could just let time run out.  If I felt somewhat recovered, I could go for it.  I laid there and just watched time tick away.

With 40 seconds to go, I got up and walked towards the barbell.  It wasn't going to take very long to do two reps, so I had some time to play with.  I took a nice deep breath and went for the first rep.  I remembered to squat this time and stood up with the clean, albeit slowly.  Transferring back down to the hang with a sweaty grip was going to be tricky, so I didn't waste any time.  As soon as I got the barbell back to my knee, I immediately went for the second rep.  It was very ugly.  It took much more strength than it should have.  But I stood up with it and redeemed myself a little bit with a final score of 195.

Not the greatest performance ever, but I'm fairly certain that I'll be struggling through a lot of workouts over the next three months.  The summer heat is not my friend and there's not much I can do about it.  Maybe when this comes up again in September, I'll luck out with some fall weather and actually be able to handle both halves of this workout.

Wednesday preview: A trip to the noon express and another battle with the heat.  I do not end up on the winning side of this battle.

Luke, Luke, I Am Your Partner

Workout date: 6/20/16

I was just kidding about that whole "coming in on the weekend" business I mentioned at the end of my last post.  I did some rock star sleeping on both Saturday and Sunday morning.  I'm not sure why I've been so tired recently, but there might not be anything better than going to bed and not setting an alarm.  Waking up and not knowing whether it's the afternoon already is awesome.  Missing breakfast?  Not so awesome, but my body probably needs rest more than it needs a three-egg omelette on the weekend.

The WOD on Monday was one that I hadn't done in over a year and not one that I had particularly fond memories of.  But I was itching to work out.  Plus it was a WOD that involved the chance to lift some heavy weight, something that has been missing from a lot of the workouts over the last few weeks.  How heavy?  Could it be 400 pounds for the first time?  Maybe...

Monday WOD:
Deadlifts
1-10-1-20-1-30
Score is total weight used in each deadlift set

This deadlift workout had a little mix of everything.  You have those three single reps in there to break up the much larger sets that you have to do.  Ideally, you should be increasing the weight for those single reps as you move along in the workout, but you're decreasing the weight for the big sets because the number of reps in those sets are increasing.  When I did this last year, I went 365-385-365 on my single reps (I tried 395 for the final single rep and failed).  For the larger sets, I went 275-205-165.  In total, my score was 1,760.  I remember hating the round of 20 in particular.  I also recalled that the round of 30 was about breathing more than anything else.  As always, I wanted to improve on my prior performance, but I knew this would be a workout where I would likely change weights on the fly based on how I was feeling during it.

There were 17 of us packed into the gym for the 6:30 class.  Coach Rachel was filling in for Aimee as she was part of KOP's contingent at the Masters Pam-Am weightlifting competition in Puerto Rico.  Our warmup involved teams of 3 (one team was stuck with only 2 members) switching between Russian KB swings, KB deadlifts, and whatever movement Rachel called out for the person traversing the gym to get from one KB to the other.  My teammates were Luke and recent birthday boy Borden.  When that portion of the proceedings came to a close, Rachel instructed us to whittle our groups down to two.  Luke informed Borden that he wasn't receiving a rose at tonight's ceremony, so Borden needed to find a new suitor to deadlift with.

It made sense for Luke and I to work together because we're pretty close in terms of how much we can deadlift.  Okay, that might be giving myself a little too much credit, because I've seen Luke deadlfit over 400 pounds and I've idled out at 385 pounds for the last 18 months.  But Luke hurt his back a couple of weeks ago, so I wasn't sure how heavy he might go for this workout.  I found out pretty quickly though.  As we began doing warmup reps at lighter weights, Luke and I agreed that we didn't want to waste too much energy before getting into the real sets.  We progressed through 135, 185, 225, and 275, but I could tell Luke was ready to get into his first 1 rep max.  I wanted to do one more practice rep at 315, but Luke passed on it, saying he was done warming up.  After my warmup rep at 315, he loaded 385 on to the barbell, making me think that his back issues were a thing of the past.

Luke clearly channeled his inner Dave because early on he had a problem with overthinking the lifts. On his first attempt at 385, he made several mini-attempts to get the barbell off the floor, switching his grip whenever it wouldn't move.  Finally he gave up on it and walked away for a minute.  When he was ready for another try, he got the barbell off the floor, but couldn't get it above his knees.  He was going to need to drop some weight for this first rep.  Luckily for him, his partner needed less weight anyways.  I took 20 pounds off and went for my first rep at 365.  Definitely very heavy, but I was able to stand it up.  Luke then came over and stood up with 365 like the barbell was empty.  If he could clear his head like he did before that rep, then 385 was not going to be a problem for him when he went after it again.

It was time to do the 10 rep set and I stuck with the 275 pounds I used a year ago.  I thought about trying to go a little heavier, but I knew that if I went too heavy, there was no chance of me getting 405 pounds on my last single rep of the workout.  I also wasn't entirely sure how smoothly I'd get through 10 reps at this weight as I couldn't remember how this part of the workout went last time.  So 275 was good enough for me.  I flew through the 10 reps in this set although I must admit that my grip was starting to fail toward the end.

(Possible no rep alert!  During this set, I also got a little worried about whether I was properly stringing the reps.  After each deadlift, you are supposed to tap the barbell back against the floor and go immediately into your next rep.  You are not allowed to bounce the barbell off the floor in an attempt to make the next rep easier.  I used to gently tap the barbell off the floor between reps, but you waste a lot of energy controlling the barbell on it's way down to the floor.  Now I simply let gravity do all the work, which causes the barbell to slam against the floor.  When doing this set, I noticed I was making a lot more noise than everyone around me because of how hard my barbell was crashing into the floor.  Am I bouncing the barbell?  Not intentionally, but if I am doing it, hopefully someone let's me know in the future.)

I felt somewhat obligated to write that last paragraph because Luke and I were a complete contrast in styles when it came to the bigger sets.  As Luke did his set of 10 at 275, he went very slowly and never slammed the barbell into the ground.  In fact, he would pause for a split-second and re-grip a lot between reps.  (Note: You are allowed to do this as long as you don't take more than a second or so in the bottom of the movement.)  Unfortunately Luke got in his head again and had to stop after 6-7 reps.  We took 50 pounds off the barbell and Luke made it through 10 reps at 225 easily enough.

It was time to load up our barbell again and I got my first crack at 385.  It was much more difficult than the lift at 365, but I did manage to get it off the floor better than expected.  The real struggle was handling it once it was above my knee.  That is typically the easy part for me, but I had to work hard before pinning my shoulders back and standing upright with the barbell.  405 was going to take everything I had.  As for Luke, his struggles with 385 were a thing of the past as he got it on the first try in round two.

My original plan was to go with 225 for the 20 rep set, but I wimped out again, opting to go with 215 in the hope that I'd be a little fresher for my attempt at 405.  The set at 215 went remarkably well.  I did 18 fast reps before needing to hold at the top and get my breath back.  I did two more reps and happily dropped the barbell.  Luke began with 185 on his barbell, but once again lost focus in the middle of his set and had to scale down.  He moved to 145 and had no problems taking care of 20 reps at that weight.

It was time to get excited!  I'm sure I've attempted 405 dozens of times, but I felt like there was a real chance I might get it today.  385 came off the ground faster than I thought it would.  I had three days off prior to this workout, so I was relatively fresh.  One lift and I would be halfway through my list of goals for 2016.  I got into a positive mindset, chalked my hands, dried off my head and arms, and got ready to go.  I walked up to the barbell, pulled as hard as I could, and it didn't move very much at all. I walked away for a minute and went through my routine all over again.  On my second attempt, it felt like the barbell moved more than it had the first time, but I couldn't get it above my knees.  405 was not happening today.  I let Luke know that I was moving down to 385.

While I got ready to do 385 again, Luke stepped up to take a crack at a second successful rep at 385.  Just like he had done in the prior round, he stood it up without looking nearly as strained as I do on most of my deadlift attempts.  It was a nice comeback from the start of the workout.  He had failed twice at 385, but then he regrouped and had two successful lifts at that weight.  Watching Luke manhandle 385 inspired me to go up and do it myself.  So I walked up to 385, lifted it off the ground, got it above my knees and...couldn't complete the lift.  That was annoying.  I may have run out of juice with both a 1 rep and a 30 rep set still to go.  After another break of a minute or so, I attempted 385 again, only to fail before the barbell got above my knees.  Not good.  I stripped 20 more pounds off the barbell and tried 365.  While it didn't go as smoothly as it had to start the workout, I did manage to stand up with it.  Just the 30 rep set to go and I could be done with this WOD.

All of my failed attempts on the third single rep had set us behind the class.  The other groups were either putting away their weights or they were giving their scores to Rachel at the front of the class.  Nick and Samson had left out their barbell for us so that me and Luke could do our 30 rep sets at the same time.  Luke used 95 pounds for his set, while I went with 165.  Remember to breathe, Dave!  This last set was going to be all about cardio.  I did my first rep and was surprised at how light it felt. I needed to move quickly and get this over with.  I did 20 fast reps before stopping at the top to get my breath.  From there, I thought I could get the last 10 in a row, but I had to stop again 5 reps later.  I was very tired, but I knew I could hold on for 5 more reps.  Just needed to keep moving.  I thought about stopping with 2 reps to go, but instead pushed through two slow reps to finish off my workout.  Final total: 1,770 pounds.

It was a 10 pound PR and I guess I should be happy about that, but it felt like I missed a bunch of opportunities in this workout.  Didn't get 405.  Plus I used less weight than I could have on the larger sets in order to give myself my best chance at finally eclipsing 400 pounds on the deadlift.  I think I'll ignore that goal if this workout comes up again and attempt to do 295-225-185 on the big sets instead.

Tuesday preview: Benchmark day as Elizabeth returns, bringing many squat cleans and dips with her.  She'll be followed by some heavy two-rep hang squat cleans.

Tia Needs A New Blog Post!

Workout date: 6/16/16

Over the last week, I've had a lot of new readers come up to me at the gym and tell me that they've enjoyed reading the blog (thanks again Cline!).  It's been a while since that's happened as I think there was a shift in who continues to read this blog.  There are a few folks at the gym who let me know they still read it, but most of the feedback that I've gotten has been from people who don't go to my gym at all.  (I haven't received any feedback from my loyal fan bases in France and Portugal, but I appreciate that you guys keep reading!)

Of my new readers, no one has been as vocal as Tia.  Tia is not a new Crossfitter, but she is new to the KOP family.  I think I have seen her every day this week and every time I've bumped into her, she's talked with me about the blog.  I didn't have an opportunity to update my blog on Wednesday evening or any time yesterday, so she wasn't too pleased with me when she saw me last night.  "I had nothing to read today", she told me.  Now the blog editor tells me this is post #315 and I'm sure that she hasn't read all of them in the past week or so, but Tia isn't interested in purchasing day-old donuts.  She's waiting for the "Hot Now" sign to light up and let her know that the fresh ones are ready.  Well Tia...

Thursday was the return of the timed mile at Endurance, although it was the first time in about two years that I'd be testing out this distance.  I missed the first timed mile of the year and since I only caught the tail end of Endurance classes last year, I wasn't there for any of the mile time trials in 2015.  I'm pretty sure that the last timed mile I did was at King and Queen in 2014, where I ran something in the neighborhood of 6:48.  I thought that would be a tough time to duplicate, but my goal was to try and keep it under 7 minutes.

There were 14 of us there to take part in the mile time trial.  We did a two lap warmup, some stretching, and a couple of striders before Coach Tim talked with us about how we should approach the mile.  He told us we shouldn't go out blazing on the first lap and then let things fall apart on the final three laps.  Conversely, we shouldn't be dogging it on the first three laps then finish with a flourish.  Tim wanted us to try and maintain a good, solid pace the entire four laps.  I would do my best, but in my experience, my mile time trials have typically gone like this:

• Lap 1: That was a fast lap.  Seems unlikely I can hold that pace for four laps.
• Lap 2: Strong half mile.  There is no chance I'll be able to hold this pace for the second half mile.
• Lap 3: It all falls apart.  Super slow lap.  At least there is only one lap left.
• Lap 4: A valiant effort at the end, but this lap is slower than it feels.

Whenever I run the mile, I try to keep it together a little better on the 3rd lap than I normally do, but that's always a function of how fast the first two laps go.

As we got ready to go, I heard Flounder mention that a bad time for him would be 7:15, which totally freaked me out.  If 7:00 was a good time for me and 7:15 was a bad time for him, then he'd be breathing down my neck on that last lap.  John McHugh thought I'd be breathing down his neck on the final lap of this time trial, but I told him there was very little chance of that happening.  The two wildcards for me: Joy and Borden.  I've only taken class with Joy once (that infamous "air squat mile" workout), but I got the impression she would be someone I could run with, at least for the first half-mile.  Borden has been ahead of me in a lot of the workouts at the gym recently, including Nicole on Monday where I saw a lot of his back during the 400 meter runs.  I wasn't sure what his mile pace would be like, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was right there with Joy.

Here's how things actually turned out:

• Lap 1: I never like to be up front and on the inside when we start these runs because I'm not a particularly fast starter.  I lined up on the outside behind the first row of runners and then made my way to the inside when space was available.  I almost fell when Alona darted to the inside right in front of me, but I hopped out of the way.  As the lap went on, I moved past a few people and got to the group of 5 (Alex R, Justin R, Joy, Matt C, and John) who were setting the pace.  Even though I knew Alex and Justin had fast mile times, it didn't feel like a fast pace, which Tim confirmed as I ran by the line the first time in 1:35.
• Lap 2: I immediately became concerned that the pace was going to pick up and it felt like that might be happening as we went around the first turn.  The pack of 5 started to become a little more single file with Alex and Justin leading the way.  Matt and John passed Joy and I wasn't sure whether that was them speeding up or her slowing down.  I felt like I needed to go with them, so I eventually passed Joy.  As we approached the line for the end of the second lap, Joy went back ahead of me.  Tim called out a time of 3:28 (second lap of 1:53), which was very slow for me.  By contrast, I ran 3:04 during our 800 meter time trial.
• Lap 3: Alex and Justin really began to separate from the group as we became more strung out.  Matt began to take up the chase after them.  As we hit 600 meters remaining, John looked over his shoulder back towards me and Joy, giving me the impression that he might be slowing down.  I was doing my best not to fall too far behind Joy, thinking that she was much better at keeping it together during lap #3 than I typically am.  As we hit the finish line again, there was one lap to go.  Tim yelled at me to keep staring at Joy's back to stick with her.  Time through 1,200 meters: 5:22 (third lap of 1:54).
• Lap 4: This was where I got confirmation that everyone had paced things out very slowly during the first three laps.  I began pushing hard to try and reel in Joy over the first 200 meters of the final lap, but despite my efforts, she was getting further away from me.  John was getting further away from her.  The top three were long gone.  5:22 through 1,200 meters meant a 7:09 mile pace, so I began to worry that Flounder and possibly Borden might come running by me at the end.  I never got up on my toes for a full sprint at the end, but I did make a nice charge down the last straightaway to the finish line.  Final time: 7:06.5.

Not too bad, but not quite the 7 minutes I was hoping for.  I think everyone's final time ended up being a little slower than they had hoped for due to the pace we went for the first two laps.  Flounder came in at 7:29 and was not pleased.  Alona, Borden, and Jen S came in behind him with Kris, Jill, and Katie further back (Emma did an 800 meter run instead of the mile).

As is always the case with Tim, he wanted us to get some speed work in.  He let us have a break and then told us we'd be doing four 200 meter sprints.  This is where I thought Flounder would get his revenge.  Flounder usually runs one of these sprints very fast, just so he can smoke the rest of the group (me, in particular).  You never know which one it will be though.  I let Joy know that she would get to turn the tables on Flounder.  He calls her "sandbagger", but she was probably going to see some sandbagging on three of the four upcoming sprints.  It actually didn't turn out that way though as nearly everyone managed to be consistent on the four sprints.  Personally, I ran about 37-38 seconds on all four (we didn't get a time for the first sprint, but I can't imagine it was slower than the next three).  I was behind Alex and John on all four sprints.  On two of the sprints, I was ahead of Matt and Joy.  On the other two, I was behind them.  The freakiest moment happened on the final sprint.  Alex, John, Matt, and Joy turned it on for the final 200 meters.  I couldn't keep up with them as well as I had on the first three sprints.  As I rounded the turn, I heard footsteps coming up on my outside.  I typically don't look over my shoulder when I run, but I had to see if it was Flounder.  Nope.  Instead, it was Tim and he couldn't have been closer to me if we were siamese twins.  His head was practically on my right shoulder.  He started yelling "come on, come on, come on" and I sprinted as hard as I could, partially to comply and partially out of fear.

There was a one lap cool down and then some stretching when we were done.  After that, it was time for the triplets to part ways for the day.

Red and gray is the height of Endurance fashion

I didn't head home though.  The wheels had been turning in my head since yesterday's cash out.  If I could get upside down on the wall with that wider grip placement and cut down on my range of motion, maybe I could finally do a strict handstand push-up with 1 abmat.  I've been pursuing that goal for quite a while and it's been driving me nuts.  Abmats weren't that big.  How was it that I could crank out a set of 10 handstand push-ups with 2 abmats, but had never been able to get a single rep with only 1 abmat?  I had tried getting stronger through the shoulder press and through push-ups, but it still felt like I wasn't that close to succeeding with 1 abmat.  I think part of my frustration had come from the feeling that I was running out of solutions.  For the first time ever, my sweaty hands had provided me with one.

I made my way over to the ring area as people sometimes practice handstand push-ups in there.  There was a 6:30 WOD going on along with Open Strength, so I wanted to stay out of everyone's way.  I started off by playing around with getting upside down with the wider hand position.  Two things came from this: 1) I should take some time recovering from Endurance before getting upside down as I became woozy during my first attempt and 2) that I should just attempt the handstand push-ups rather than break it down into smaller pieces.  I was initially putting my hands where I wanted them and then attempting to kick up, but it was a waste of time.  I needed to test out getting my hands there while in the process of kicking up.

So from there, I started doing handstand push-ups.  I set up my 2 abmats like I normally do and tried kicking up with my hands wider than I typically have them.  I was able to get upside down and then I started to do some reps.  That went well.  As was the case yesterday, it felt easier to reach those abmats than had been the case with my typical setup.  For my next set, I wanted to try and pretend I was getting low enough for 1 abmat even though I still had two below me.  On each rep, I didn't want to simply touch my head to the top abmat, I wanted to press my head down deep into it.  After doing that a few times, I felt ready to take on the 1 abmat challenge again.

As I got ready to attempt this for the millionth time, I tried to be positive.  Didn't matter that I hadn't really come close to getting this in all of my previous attempts.  This was something new.  I hadn't failed at it using this method yet.  I could do this.  I got upside down and slowly pressed downward, hoping that my head was going to touch the abmat.  Eventually my arms gave way and I came off the wall.  That wasn't a confident try.  I needed to move with some speed.

I shook out my arms and prepared to make a better attempt at it.  I got upside down with my hands set wide.  I pressed down and, for a split second, it felt like my head grazed the abmat.  I immediately pressed myself back up.  Was that legit?  I wasn't sure.  The fact that I pressed up so easily made me doubt whether I actually touched the abmat.  Still upside down, I decided to go for it again.  This time there was no doubt.  I pressed down quickly and felt a large section of my dome press against the abmat.  I began to press up and slowly I extended up from the bottom.  Whether I had done it once or done it twice, I had finally gotten a strict handstand push-up with 1 abmat!

I had set 10 goals for myself for 2016 and a strict handstand push-up with 1 abmat was the fourth one that I've gotten to cross off my list.  Here's that list with an update on which ones I have accomplished.  They are numbered 1-10 in the order that I thought I would accomplish them.  (Damn you, deadlift plateau!)

1. Finish Grace in under 3 minutes - Completed Grace in 2:38 on 2/19/16
2. Successful deadlift of 400 lbs - Not Completed
3. 1 Strict Handstand Push-Up with 1 Abmat - Completed 1 (or 2?) on 6/16/16
4. Finish Nancy in under 15 minutes - Not Completed
5. Successful clean and jerk at 245 lbs - Not Completed
6. Finish Annie in under 10 minutes - Completed Annie in 9:31 on 2/28/16
7. 5 consecutive kipping handstand push-ups - Not Completed
8. Successful front squat of 300 lbs - Completed on Test Day at end of front squat program (5/9/16)
9. 100 consecutive double unders - Not Completed
10. 1 bar muscle-up - Not Completed

To continue my tradition of dorky celebrations, I speed-walked over to Kris and high-fived her while she was waiting for the Barbell Club class.  Then I gave a big thumbs up and a grin to Erik who had been watching me doing handstand push-ups as he did the 6:30 WOD.  The celebration needs some work, but hopefully I'll have 6 more opportunities to practice this year.

With that done, I finished my day by doing 2 sets of 50 sit-ups.  Was going to use the GHD (less reps obviously), but I didn't want to push the woozy envelope any more than I already had for the day.

Weekend preview: Unknown!  The Friday WOD of running and rowing wasn't very compelling, so I'll probably drop in on Saturday or Sunday instead.