Together At Last

Workout date: 9/22/16

Things that happen every four years:

• Leap year
• Summer Olympics
• US Presidential elections (don't get me started)
• Rope climbs and pistols get programmed in the same workout

Hold the phone!  What was that last one?  In nearly four years of working out at KOP, I had never seen two of my favorite movements appear in the same workout.  But when I looked at the blog just after 10pm on Wednesday night, I saw them listed one right after another, together at last.  All of a sudden I had a dilemma on my hands.  I had planned to skip Thursday's WOD to rest my sore shoulder.  I could just go to Endurance and get some badly needed cardio done.  That was the smart thing to do.  Except I'd be skipping rope climbs and pistols.  Rope climbs and pistols!  In the same freakin' workout!

Wait, wasn't there an elegantly simple solution?  I could do the WOD and go to Endurance!  Why didn't I think of that in the first place?  (Full disclosure: That was one of the first thoughts that ran through my head once I saw the WOD.  Then I began talking myself out of it because I'm not exactly in peak physical condition and doing two workouts in the same day was probably not a good idea.  Then I ignored the part of my brain that makes good decisions like I almost always do.)

There was more to the WOD then just rope climbs and pistols.  And it certainly was no sprint.  I was going to have to display some endurance away from the track.  Here are the details on Thursday's WOD:

20 minute AMRAP:

2 rope climbs (15')

20 pistols

40 double unders

Once I had committed to attending the noon class, I began doing the math in my head.  How many rounds of this would be a "good score"?  I figured that a round every 3 minutes was solid, so somewhere between 6 and 7 rounds was what I'd be shooting for.  It was an aggressive goal, but two-thirds of the workout included strengths of mine.  It made sense to shoot high on this one.

Prior to the noon class, I went back on the KOP blog and looked at scores from earlier in the day.  I was confused to say the least.  Aimee and Gordy had scores of 6+1 (6 rounds, 1 rope climb).  I quickly revised my goal for this workout downward as I didn't think there was any chance that I could match their scores.  However, during the 6am and 7am classes, Jonathan and Laura A put up huge scores of 8+1 and 7 full rounds, respectively.  They're both among the best athletes in the gym, but beating Aimee and Gordy by 1-2 full rounds was surprising.  It got me thinking that Aimee and Gordy might have struggled on this WOD more than I expected.  Quickly revising my goal back upwards again.

The truth is that the scores for this workout would end up all over the place.  You sometimes see this when workouts contain tons of pull-ups.  It's a skill that some people excel at and others (hi!) struggle with terribly.  If you get stuck at one point along the way, you might end up several rounds behind those folks who breezed through the movement and continued on.  Pistols were going to be that movement in this workout.  Could rope climbs and double unders prove tricky, especially as you fatigued?  Absolutely.  But the pistol is a movement that looks simple enough and then proceeds to drive you crazy as you fail on one rep after another.  You could put a lot of ground between yourself and others if you were pistol-proficient.

When I got to the noon express, I became a little concerned about how the workout would play out as there were 10 of us in class and only 4 decent ropes to use.  (We have a 5th rope that is very slick and nearly impossible to clasp your feet on.)  Aimee got us warmed up and then told us we'd be starting in a couple minutes.  I selfishly asked if we could do a stagger at the start.  (Desperate for a good score on this WOD much?)  Aimee was okay with that, splitting the group into two sets of five, making sure each group had at least one person who was scaling the rope climbs and therefore wouldn't be waiting for a rope to open up.  Here were the groups:

Group 1: Nicole R, JP, Dana, Mike Sim, and myself

Group 2: Tim H, Seba, Jill A, Matt C, and Sarah

*Group 2 would start 1 minute after Group 1

Forget all the scores I mentioned earlier.  I was going to have my work cut out trying to keep up with most of this class.  JP, Dana, and Mike Sim regularly beat me in workouts.  As much as I like pistols, Jill A is the pistol queen.  She asked me during the warmup if we were going head to head on pistols.  I said I'd try, but deep down I didn't think I had much chance of keeping up with her. And Matt C is a young guy who never seems to get tired.  Even if I went faster than him early on in the workout, he was bound to catch me as I ran out of steam.  At least I wouldn't be lacking people to push me through this WOD.

Dana, JP, and I went down to the far end of the gym where the bulk of the ropes are located, while Mike Sim got set up at the lone rope in the middle of the gym.  Aimee sent us on our 20 minute journey.  I scurried up the rope quickly, tapped the 15' mark, and came down again.  I jumped right back up and made my second climb.  When I got to the floor, I was slightly ahead of JP with Dana not too far behind him.  (Note: With Mike closer to the other end of the gym, it was hard to track where he was in the workout.)  I began bouncing back and forth through my pistols, pausing only once on my first set of 20.  I moved on to my jump rope, which I knew would be the element of the workout where I would struggle.  I couldn't put together any big sets, but I made my way through the 40 reps with a series of medium-sized sets.  Round 1 was done in under three minutes and I was the first one back to the rope climb to begin round 2.  Good start!

I was making my way down from my second climb of round #2 when Dana and JP came over to start their climbs.  That was a decent lead that I had built through one round, but there was over 16 minutes left on the clock as I walked over to start pistols again.  A long way to go and it was unlikely that Dana and JP's pace would slow all that much as the workout progressed.  I needed to keep using them as motivation.  If they started gaining on me, then I needed to push even harder.  I'd be really disappointed if I crapped out and let them catch me after building a lead.

As I began doing my pistols, I saw Jill head towards the ropes to begin her second round.  She wasn't in my group, but I suddenly remembered what she had said during the warmup.  I wanted to keep pace with her as well.  It would be tough to gauge where we were in relation to one another since we started a minute apart, but I figured if she started hitting the same part of the workout as me, that would be an indication that she was well in the lead.

I needed a couple of breaks during that second set of pistols, but I still got through them fairly quickly.  My biggest concern was how wobbly my legs were getting at the end of that round.  The pistols were the separator in this workout, so I couldn't have them fail me only two rounds in.

My pistols might not be pretty, but they count all the same

I moved on to the double unders and things didn't change much from round one.  My sets tended to be in the 8-12 rep range.  My breaks between sets may have been a little longer, but I could see that Dana and JP were still working on their pistols, so my lead on them wasn't shrinking.  I reached 40 reps, dropped my jump rope, and trudged over to the climbing ropes.  The clock was nearing 6:30 so 6 rounds was definitely out of the question as I was already breathing heavily.  5 rounds was the new goal.

The rope climbs were still going well in round three, but as I began the second climb, I saw Jill make her way to the ropes.  Uh oh.  I was definitely behind her.  If I were a betting man (and I am), I would say there was little chance of me catching her.  The best I could do is stay relatively close to her the rest of the way.  That meant keeping pace on the pistols, something that became really hard starting in round 3.  I had a couple of no reps from falling over.  There was a time or two where I had to stop before I even tried to do the pistol because I felt shaky.  I was only going to be able to do these 4-6 at a time and even that would require a break between sets.  This workout was taking a toll on me.  My double under sets remained in the 8-12 rep range, but longer breaks were necessary.  I had reached the middle of the workout, the time when my pace starts to fall off.  It's easy to go fast when you're fresh.  It's easy to find a second wind when you're near the finish line.  But it's tough to avoid that lull in the middle and I was definitely in the middle of that lull as I wrapped up round three.  About 11 minutes had passed as I made my way back to the rope climbs.

Stuck in the lull during a round of double unders

When I got to the rope climbs, all three ropes were spoken for at the far end of the gym.  Jill was on one of the ropes and had just descended from her first climb.  She went to grab some chalk between climbs and I decided to wait on her.  I knew that once I got on the rope, I was going to want to do both of my climbs.  It didn't seem fair to me to make her wait on me for two climbs just because she needed chalk.  As she headed up for her second climb, another rope opened up and I began my fourth round.  I didn't take much of a pause between climbs.  Before the workout, I thought I could push the pace on both the rope climbs and the pistols, but it turns out that the rope climb was really the only spot where I could consistently move quickly.

It was slow going through the pistols and the double unders as long breaks were sprinkled in among the sets I did, with the sets slowly becoming shorter in length.  While I took a break, I looked around and saw many of my classmates doing the same.  This was a rough one, but we were all trying to fight on until the clock hit 20 minutes.  At the end of round four, I had less than 4 minutes remaining before time would be called.  5 rounds wasn't happening.

Surprisingly, I still had a chance to catch Jill.  The rope climbs and double unders had fried out her forearms, so when I completed round four, she was still standing at the ropes getting ready to do her rope climbs.  Now to be fair, she still had another minute to work once I was done, but if I could get ahead of her again before my time elapsed, I'd feel pretty good about how hard I pushed through this workout.  When I was ready to climb, Jill was already on her way down from climb #1.  However, I was able to catch up to her on climb #2 and we headed to the pistols at the same time.

Jill was working down at the other end of the gym, but I could see her as we did the pistols.  Even the pistol queen gets tired after a while and I could see she was breaking up her pistols similarly to how I was spacing them out.  Less than a minute to go for me and I wanted to get as many double unders as I could.  There was a lot of wincing as I made my way to pistol #100, but I got there with about 30 seconds remaining.  I quickly grabbed my jump rope and started twirling.  I had a good set going when I heard that 10 seconds remained.  I had done 14 in a row, but that wasn't enough for me.  In a foolish attempt to pad my total, I tried to twirl the rope faster.  Naturally, I hit myself with the rope on the next rep.  I still had time to go again, but my attempt to hurry failed a second time.  If I kept the cadence I had, maybe I would have gotten to 20-22 double unders.  Instead I ended up with 14.  Final score: 4+36.

I sat on the floor exhausted and watched Jill as she continued on.  All of a sudden, she stopped working.  It turns out Jill and Matt started working 30 seconds after Group 1 began, so I wasn't as far behind her as I thought I was.  I came up 26 double unders short of 5 rounds, but Jill was able to finish her 5th round.  Matt, who had been alternating with Mike Sim on the middle rope, went one better, completing 5 rounds and 1 rope climb.  As for Dana and JP, they both completed 4 rounds, with Dana beginning her 5th round of pistols when time was called.

Fast forward four and a half hours and it was time for Endurance.  The group was a little smaller this week and the workout was a little longer.  Eight of us took part in a workout that was similar in format to the one we had done the week before.  Instead of moderate 400 meter runs and 200 meter sprints, we were doing moderate 800 meter runs and 200 meter sprints.  At the end of the 800 meter runs, we had to slowly jog 50 meters before doing a 200 meter sprint.  From there, we got a little more of a break than we had gotten last Thursday, as were allowed to walk 100 meters and then slowly jog 50 meters to get back to the starting line.  Unlike last week's workout where we split into groups and then stayed in those groups for both the longer run and the shorter sprint, in this workout we would start the longer run as a group, but each athlete would sprint as soon as they reached the 200 meter starting line.

Coach Tim explained the workout to us after our typical one lap warmup/drills/stretching routine.  Then we came around to our unusual starting line (at the midway point of the backstretch) for round one of the workout.  Tim had mentioned a target time of 4:00-4:30 for the 800 meters, so I was more than happy when I crossed the line at 4:06 to conclude my first half-mile run.  I was behind John McHugh, Joy, and Flounder.  Borden, Maggie, Mike San, and Jill Herman came in after me.  I had mentioned last week how the slow jog recovery was not kind to me and I slowed it to a crawl during the 50 meters before the 200 meter sprint.  The three in front of me were long gone by the time I started my sprint and Borden caught up to me.  Tim made it clear that the sprints were the key part of this workout, but I was not gunning it on the first one like I had done last week.  Borden went by me early and Maggie went by me late.  I would call my effort a very controlled sprint.

I was relieved that we could walk 100 meters as part of the recovery, but John, Joy, and Flounder were already waiting at the starting line as I strolled around the turn.  Borden had just begun his 50 meter jog to the line.  Maggie had stayed back to wait on Mike and Jill.  That left me on my own.  As I approached the point where I would have to jog again, Tim asked me if I wanted to be part of the second group.  It would make things even if I let Joy, John, Flounder, and Borden go off in one group while I stayed with Maggie, Mike, and Jill.  But asking me if I wanted to go with the second group rubbed me the same way that Tim's question about skipping a round did the week before.  I never want an out.  I go to these classes to push myself, even if I fail.  So the slow jog became a quick jog and I got my butt back to the starting line, letting Tim know that I wanted to run with the first group.

The 800 meter runs for the next three rounds played out the same way.  John and Joy were off in their own little world with Flounder next behind them.  Then it would be me with Borden not far off my pace.  During the second round, Flounder slowed up at the end of the first lap and I probably picked it up a little on the second lap (gotta show I belong with the first group), resulting in me finishing just before him with a time of 4:08.  Joy and John would sprint together, with John getting an early lead before Joy reeled him in as they turned into the straightaway of the sprint.  This would happen in all 4 sprints they did.  I went super slow on my 50 meter jog again, allowing Flounder to jump back ahead of me.  I tried harder on the second sprint, but I didn't have energy to catch Flounder.  Borden almost caught up to me, but I had just enough to get to the finish line ahead of him.

In round three, Joy, John, and Flounder went off on their own again.  I cut into the gap a little bit, but couldn't catch up to Flounder, finishing the third half-mile in 4:22.  Flounder was halfway done with the sprint when I started, so I ended up doing a controlled sprint like I did in round one.  Had to try and save a little something for the final round.  When we got back to the starting line, I wasn't close to recovered, but I was ready to go when Tim gave the word.  Borden decided to sit out a little longer and go with the second group when they came back around.  Tim told Joy and John to try and go for 3:45 on this last 800 meter run, but they put that time to shame.  I could tell they were smoking up front on the first lap and Flounder was doing a good job of staying within shouting range of them.  I was running on my own.  It was gonna take a lot of effort just to stay under 4:30.  There was no way I could move at the pace they were running.  Afterwards, I was told Joy and John ran about 3:22 while Flounder ran 3:51 or 3:53.  I was a long way back, but I stayed within the range I was supposed to, completing the 800 meters in 4:23.

I was by myself on the sprint yet again, but it was the last one and I was going all out.  It's always harder when you don't have a target to aim at, but I did my best to pretend there was someone ahead of me who I was closing in on as I neared the finish line.  Pretty sure the last sprint was my best one.

That was the end of a long day.  I was sore and tired and had no intentions of working out on Friday no matter what was programmed.  With classes in the annex over the weekend, I'd be taking three days off unless I worked out at home.  (Spoiler: I did not work out at home.)

Monday preview: Another aggravating weigh-in.  Plus, a promising workout goes bad near the end when I redline.