Most Mondays I'll take the 6:30 class and then, if I have any energy remaining, I'll use Open Strength at 7:30 to work on some Crossfit stuff that needs practicing (translation: anything and everything). But this Monday was a holiday, so there would only be one class for the day. One very big class. It was especially big because you didn't need to be a KOP member to take part in it. This was a special Friends and Family WOD. Come one, come all. I'm not entirely sure why the gym places no restrictions on anyone attempting to pick up a 1,300-pound tire when you have to go through 3 weeks of fundamentals before being allowed to pick up a barbell, but that's how it works. Make sure you have at least 3 friends to help you with that tire.
My three friends (John McHugh, Brian, and Tre)
For our Independence Day workout, we were splitting into teams of 4 (some teams had 5 people so no one was left out). I didn't have anybody in mind for my team when I got there. I was just going to wait until someone asked me to be on their team. Or I'd get assigned to one. John saw me over by the door and told me that he and Brian needed two more people if I wanted to join their team. Count me in! Tre was hanging out over by the three of us and he said he didn't have a team yet when we asked him if he wanted to join us. The Quad Squad (as Brian dubbed us) was complete.
If yesterday's workout had beaten me up, I wasn't going to get much of a reprieve by doing this one. Here's how we'd be spending our morning:
Team WOD (4 people)
30 minute AMRAP
400 meter run (all team members must run)
4 tire flips (all team members must flip)
40 burpees
60 air squats
80 KB swings
*For the burpees, air squats, and KB swings, two team members could work at a time
As part of our warmup, we ran 400 meters and I remarked to Danielle and Chris D how it seemed so much easier than the day before. I wonder why that was! (Note: Also during the warmup, Chris loudly said to me, "Dave, my inner thighs are really sore from yesterday". That didn't sound weird at all.) I guess gigantic tires were taking the place of sandbags today. Looking at my team, I saw three runners, so I let them know I was going to be slowing us down on the runs. I would do my best to make it up to them on the rest of the workout. There were two "small" tires and two large tires for us to choose from on the flips and we chose the large tire. We also went with 53 pound KBs for our swings. Since the burpees, air squats, and KB swings could be done by two team members at a time, we split up into two groups with John and I working together, followed by Brian and Tre. We were going to do 10 burpees and 15 air squats each. For the KB swings, doing 20 in a row seemed like a bad plan, so we split it into two rounds of 10 swings each.
With 12 teams participating and only 4 tires available, Coach Aimee (along with her partial cruise directors Giulz and Rachel) split us into two heats. The first heat would start two minutes before the second heat. My inner procrastinator was happy to hear we were in heat two. When it was our turn to go, we headed off on our initial 400 meter run. I kept up with the gang on that run and being the second team back, we didn't have to wait on another team at the tire flip. We weren't flipping it straight, but we got through our 4 flips quickly. We all jogged inside and began doing burpees (see below), then air squats, then KB swings. Round 1 was complete. It felt like there had been very little rest, but I was going to need to kick it into high gear to stay with the guys on the second run.
The Founding Fathers would be so proud
I stayed within shouting range of my teammates on the second run. I was a couple of seconds behind them as we got back to the tires, but there weren't any teams using the big tires when I rejoined my comrades. We did four more flips and headed inside. I wasn't excited about any of the movements that we were doing indoors. I hate burpees. My right knee wasn't thrilled about doing air squats. And KB swings become very tough for me as I fatigue. But I couldn't slow the team down both on the run and while we were indoors. I stayed with John as best I could through all of the movements. Because Brian and Tre were our anchor group, I got a little rest during their final KB round before I had to go run again. Didn't help as much as I would have liked. It still felt like we were going about as fast as I could imagine us going, yet there was at least one other team in our heat heading out the door right as we were. On to round 3!
It was during the third run that I started to lose contact with my team. They weren't incredibly far ahead of me, but they had to wait for me back at the tires. I lucked out a little bit because both big tires were being used while I was finishing my run, so we were going to have to wait even if I had been right alongside my team. A team from the first heat was wrapping up their tire flips as I completed my run. I got in with the guys and totally forgot that I was leading the count on each flip. They all looked at me for a second before I caught on and proceeded with the "1, 2, 3....LIFT!"
Back inside, I continued to push to keep up with John, especially on the burpees where I wasn't bouncing up from the floor as quickly as I had during the first round. I could stay with him on the air squats and I grunted my way through the end of my KB swings to make sure Tre didn't have to wait on me. I looked at the clock and saw we were past 18 minutes. Brian had asked me prior to the workout how many rounds I thought we could get. Having failed at this game badly the day before, I went for what I thought was a more conservative guess by saying 5 rounds. Too high, yet again! It was looking like 4 rounds and only part of a fifth.
On the 4th run, Tre ran alongside of me. I'm not sure if it was a case of him being tired or him showing me some pity. Maybe a little of both. They couldn't do the tire flips until I got back anyways, so there was no reason for him to push it and stay with John and Brian. It was definitely a slow fourth run, but when we got back to the tires, there was a big tire available to use. I knew there was a chance that this could be our last set of flips, so I tried to put everything I had into moving that tire. With that complete, we went back inside for burpees, air squats, and KB swings. I had to grunt through almost all 20 of my swings, but I was determined to do all 10 of my reps each round without putting the KB down, despite how much I was hating the KB at that point.
When Brian finished up the last of his KB swings, I took a look at the clock and saw that we were only going to have enough time to do the run in round five. We were actually going to need to run kinda fast if the entire team was going to finish before 30 minutes were up. For John and Brian, this was not going to be a problem. For me and Tre, it was definitely going to be a problem. We jogged along as John and Brian left us in the dust. As we got back to Frosty Falls, there was only 100 meters to go. Tre looked over at me with a smile on his face and said "wanna sprint it in?" For those of you who don't know, Tre is a young athlete (18 years old, I believe) who has been with the gym for several years. He used to go to Endurance every now and then. I remember getting an idea in my head that I could outsprint him during those classes, but he emphatically squashed that silly notion whenever we would go sprinting down the track. I'm not sure if he remembered that, but I clearly did not, because the next words out of my mouth were "let's do it". About 5 seconds later, I was screaming "it's not fair, he's so much younger than me!" Tre dusted me again, but it was a fun way to end the workout. Final score: 4 full rounds plus the 400 meter run.
There was no chance I was working out on Tuesday. The list of body parts that were not sore at this point was considerably shorter than the list that needed ice and rest. Back-to-back half-hour workouts were a little too much for this guy. Need proof? Samson claimed that the back of my shirt had dirty handprints all over it. But I think if you look closely, you'll see that those marks are from the truck that ran me over twice in the last 48 hours.
Samson wouldn't take the photo unless I did a goofy flex. So I present to you, the goofy flex.
Wednesday preview: Not too eager to do a lot this week, but a strength workout and a short cash out seem reasonable enough. Looking for a 3RM push press, then a 5 minute cash out of a muscle-up scale (dips?) and power cleans.
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