Regional Steph Curry

Workout date: 6/29/16

My first membership at KOP was of the three-visits-per-week variety.  And that was perfect for me.  Of the seven WODs scheduled each week, there were probably only three that didn't scare the hell out of me.  More often than not, I'd see what the next day's workout was and talk myself into not going to class because I didn't want to waste a visit on a WOD that I was going to suck at.  I stuck with that membership for a couple of months before eventually switching to a membership that allowed me unlimited visits to the gym each week.  Why the change?  Because I realized skipping workouts where I was inevitably going to struggle meant that I would always struggle with workouts of that nature.  I wasn't going to magically get better by avoiding those WODs.  I had to stop using the 3x per week membership as an excuse to get out of those workouts.

I tend to have a good idea of how well a workout suits me when I see it posted on the KOP blog.  The workout on Wednesday did not suit me well at all.  Whenever that happens, I can't help but have an immediate reaction of "screw that, I'm taking the day off".  It's not written in stone that I need to work out every Wednesday.  I could rest up and make up a workout on the weekend if I wanted to maintain balance in the universe.  But if I'm not hurting or exhausted, there really is no reason for me to skip that workout.  Even if it goes poorly, I've put the work in.  I've practiced something I'm not good at.  Hopefully the fruits of that labor will pay off down the road.

What was this menacing workout that I considered avoiding?  It was actually event #3 from this year's Crossfit Regionals.  For those elite competitors, a 6 minute time cap was in play.  For someone like me, it was going to take much longer than 6 minutes.

Regional Event #3
104 wall balls (20#/14# to 10'/9')
52 pull-ups

A ton of wall balls and a ton of pull-ups.  I can handle a moderate amount of wall balls, but when we approach Karen territory (150 wall balls for time), then I have my struggles.  I had done 50 pull-ups during that partner WOD at Competitors Class on Saturday and it took me forever, so I had a good sense of how long it was going to take me to do 52 in this workout.  This was the type of WOD where you could expect to see a wide range of times and I knew mine would be on the slow end of that spectrum.  So I ignored the times put up earlier in the day for the most part.  I was hoping to finish in around 15 minutes, although that might have been generous based on my pull-up abilities.

The Wednesday 7:30 class felt like Dudes After Dark, only a day late.  There were four of us in class, as Chris D, Nate, and Julie Foucher made sure I wasn't alone for the second straight day.  Coach Jenna started us off with a strange warmup that I'm not sure any of us totally understood.  It was basketball-themed, so I was excited about that.  You had to squat with a light medicine ball and then shoot it like a free throw into an upside-down box serving as the basket.  In front of the basket was another box that was right side-up.  And in front of that box were two slam balls.  If you missed your shot, you had to do a rep with each of the slam balls.  Then, depending on how you missed your shot, you followed that with either a box jump or a burpee box jump.  (Point of confusion: I thought Jenna had said you needed to do the burpee box jump if your shot hit the rim of the basket.  Then it seemed that hitting the box in front of the basket earned you a burpee box jump.)

None of us seemed to care about the rules.  We were going to have fun with this game.  I missed my first shot and did a box jump.  Jenna no-repped me on it for not extending at the top, so I did a step-up to show full extension.  Another no-rep.  Fine, fine, I'll do it correctly.  After that, I got the feel for the light medicine ball and made my next 4 shots in a row.  (Man I miss playing basketball sometimes!)  At that point, Chris and I decided to get goofy.  Rather than take a normal shot, I tried to get as much height as possible on the shot while still trying to make it.  Clanked it off the side of the box.  Did my slam balls, did a burpee box jump, and kept the line moving.  I'm not sure whether I was supposed to do a burpee box jump, but we all started doing them whenever we missed.  Chris came up next and went for the sky-shot.  Nothing but net!  (You know, if we had been using a net.)

On our next round, I tried to shoot higher using an underhand shot.  Jenna had told Julie such shots were against the rules, but the inmates were running the asylum at this point.  I missed again.  Another burpee box jump.  No burpee box jumps for Chris as he drained another difficult shot.  Jenna let us know we were each getting one more shot, so I moved us back to the lifting platform for our longest shot yet.  Chris was definitely feeling it as he started talking about how this was like Steph Curry's warmup session.  If that was true, we were wrapping things up with the tunnel shot.  I went first with a shot that was the right distance, but once again I hit the side of the box.  The ball went ricocheting into one of the lifters there for the Bridgeport Barbell Club class (oops!).  Then it was Chris's turn.  Could he hit one more crazy shot?  He launched it from long range and sure enough it landed in the basket.  Chris went sprinting outside into the parking lot as I chased him to give him a high five.  I can't think of another moment during three and a half years of warmups that was as fun as that one.  Rachel and Ms. January were out by the barriers and had no idea why we were freaking out, which made it even more entertaining.

Alas, that would be the end of the fun because we had that dreaded workout to do.  None of us were eager to do it, but it was the real reason we were there.  I started planning out how I was going to do it.  I could try and do 4 sets of 26 reps, but I remembered from doing Karen in April that it wasn't so easy to string sets of 20+ wall balls together.  How about 8 sets of 13 reps?  That seemed very reasonable.  I'd try that out and see if I could keep up with the rest of the class.  As for the pull-ups, those were almost certainly going to be all singles.  There was a slight chance that I could string a few reps early on, but I wasn't counting on it.

The four of us got started and I tried not to pay attention to when my classmates dropped their ball.  I was determined to do 8 sets of 13, so it didn't matter if they were doing big sets or little sets.  I did my first 13, let the ball drop, took about 5 seconds or so, then went into my second set.  At the end of each set, my break became a little longer, but I thought I did a good job during the first four breaks of not taking an excessive amount of time resting.  I had six sets finished and was resting before my second-to-last set when I saw that Chris had moved on to his pull-ups.  That didn't seem too bad to me because I think Chris beat me by a lot on Karen.  (Note: Chris later told me he used a 14 pound ball for the wall balls, so my pace wasn't that bad.)

As I finished set #7, I could see that Julie and Nate were still on the wall balls.  I picked up my ball for my last set just as Julie completed her wall balls.  That helped push me into getting my last set started.  I took care of the remaining 13 reps and turned around to get started on my pull-ups.  The clock showed approximately 7:45 had passed already which surprised me because I thought I had done pretty well on the first section of the workout.  I had no faith that I was finishing in 15 minutes now.  It got worse when I tried to raise my arms for my first jump up to the high bar.  My body buckled over almost like a reflex.  You would have thought I sneezed.  My plan was to get 1-2 reps in to get things moving on the pull-ups, but my body wanted more rest.  I took a good 30 seconds before hopping up to the bar for the first time.

When I did get up there, it was all about doing singles.  Initially, I did sets of 3 fast singles before stopping.  That was the routine until I got to 9 reps.  I was not moving quickly at all and knowing I had more than 40 reps to go was not helping my mindset.  But I think the first 3 sets loosened up my arms.  I got 5 quick singles in my next set and continued getting that number for most of my remaining sets.  The clock kept ticking and 15 minutes went by before I reached 40 pull-ups.  Chris had been done for more than 4 minutes because he's a bodyweight ninja.  Stringing together pull-ups was like knocking down long range medball shots in warmup for him.  Nate and Julie were still going though and I began to think I was going to finish before them as my sets became larger.  That would not be the case.  Just beyond 16 minutes, Nate did his last pull-up and laid down on the floor.  I was closing in on 50 pull-ups when Julie completed her workout.  I finished my last few reps on my own.  Final time: 17:41.

It wasn't fast.  It wasn't pretty.  But I went in and got the work done.  Let's hope I don't have to do that workout again any time soon.

Thursday preview: The 400 meter time trial is back at Endurance.  Lots of running on the grass when the track is taken over by the AAU.  And I assuage my double under guilt with a lot of practice at Open Strength.