The 3D Competition: Don't Disappoint Danielle

Workout date: 11/12/16

It's no secret that I've reached the point where I dread all Crossfit competitions.  I used to approach them with at least a sliver of optimism.  Perhaps more importantly, I went into them feeling very determined.  Today you're going to put it all together!  That event you were worried about is going to go much smoother than you think.  You're not going to win, but you're going to put yourself into contention!  All nice thoughts.  None of them accurate.  I've only had one positive moment in an individual competition and that came earlier this year during the 1RM thruster event at the Festivus Games.  Beyond that, nothing but disappointment.  Team competitions have gone a little bit better, although there have still been some moments where I definitely felt like I was dragging the team down.

Exhibit A!

So you can understand why I don't volunteer to do these things anymore.  The problem is that very few of the guys at my gym volunteer for competitions.  And since most team competitions are co-ed, the ladies of KOP are forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel and ask me if I'd be willing to join their team.  When they ask, my mind begins screaming "NO", but then my mouth utters the words "I guess, if you can't get anyone else".  I thought I'd be able to avoid the Brawl In The Fall because it involved two-person teams rather than four-person teams, meaning there should have been extra guys around to fill in any vacancies.  But then Danielle asked me if I could fill in for EJ and once again I was adding a Crossfit competition to my Google calendar. 

First priority: coming up with a team name.  Danielle asked me if I had any ideas, so I gave her my top five.  These were the options I gave her:

1. Bad to the Gambone (Danielle's last name)
2. The Bald and the Beautiful
3. Muscle-ups?  Yeah right!
4. Dudes After Dark: The Co-Ed Mid-Day Edition
5. Slapfight in Autumn

Danielle informed me that the consensus (little did I know she had a panel to vote on such things) was to go with option #4.  That is how we ended up with the longest name of any team in the competition.

The other priority was having matching outfits.  We honestly didn't spend much time on this, so calling it a priority is a bit of a stretch.  A few days before the Brawl, I sent a message to Danielle asking if we should match.  We hadn't ordered t-shirts for the competition as many teams tend to do, so we were left with wearing a t-shirt that both of us owned.  We thought there may have been some KOP shirts that we both owned, but that turned out not to be the case.  Then a lightbulb went on in my head.  EJ had a fundraiser at the Bridgeport Brewpub recently and they were selling t-shirts to raise money for the fire chief's son, who is battling cancer.  I had purchased a t-shirt for me and Jenn while I was there.  I could let Danielle borrow Jenn's shirt and we'd match!  (Turns out Danielle had bought one herself so she didn't need to borrow Jenn's.)

The downside to this idea?  Everyone thought we were Team Brando.

(Props to Jess A on the awesome photobomb!)

Team DAD TCE MDE was taking part in the Scaled division and, by luck of the draw, we ended up in heat #1.  That meant the spotlight was on us immediately.  The procrastinator in me was not thrilled, but at least I'd get to see almost all of the other KOP teams compete.  And there were plenty of KOP athletes taking part in the Brawl.

Event #1: "Han Solo Season"

8 minutes for each member of the team to find their 1RM clean

This event would be much more chaotic than I originally thought.  I knew we would have a limited amount of plates and that we had to plan out what our attempts would be so that we had the right plates for each barbell.  What I didn't realize was that the plates would not be in the middle of our lane, but to the far left of the lane.  That meant only one of us would really have access to the plates (unless the person who was furthest from the plates wanted to waste a lot of time running back and forth).  And since the male barbell was on the left side of the lane, I felt the need to get Danielle set up with her barbell before I turned my attention to mine.

(Note: Making sure Danielle was happy throughout the competition became my main focus during the Brawl.  After all, she was the one who signed up for the competition.  I was simply EJ's understudy.  I would do my best not to mess up like I typically did.  Because I love alliteration so much, I shrunk the day's motto down to Don't Disappoint Danielle, or 3D for short.)

We got set up in lane 1 so that we could be close to all of our KOP supporters.  The clock was set and our 8 minutes began.  Danielle's first attempt would be using 95 pounds, so I passed over the plates she needed and helped set up her barbell.  Then I rushed over to put 165 on my barbell.  As I began to put on the outer plates, Danielle did her first clean and needed more plates for her next lift.  I stopped assembling my barbell and passed her the plates she needed.  I think I got a little panicky at this stage because Danielle was about to have 2 lifts done before I had done my first one.  I was planning on squat cleaning all of my reps, but in the interest of time, I power cleaned 165 just so I could get on the board.  I continued to go back and forth between shuffling plates over to Danielle and getting plates on my barbell for my next attempt.  At 195, I did my first squat clean.  The adrenaline must have been pumping because it didn't feel all that heavy.  Danielle had done 95 and 110 in her first two lifts.  She kept her momentum going with a successful clean at 120.  I wasn't telling Danielle how much was on her barbell because she didn't want to know.  All she knew at this point was that she was 3-for-3.

Because Danielle was going up to 130 (her PR was 125), she could put big 45 pound plates on her barbell and remove the smaller plates she had been using.  That transition would take some time, but it would also give us extra medium-sized plates depending on how high we'd end up going.  While she was working on changing her plates, I did a squat clean at 215.  This weight is typically a struggle for me, but I stood it up without too much trouble.  The only 10 pound plates I had nearby at that point were the smaller ones, so I grabbed those to move to a PR attempt of 235.  I placed one on my barbell when Danielle asked me to check that the weight on her barbell was correct.  She had put on the 45's and 2.5's, so she was all set.  Unfortunately, she leaned forward as she went to catch her next clean attempt and had to drop it.  I came back to my barbell and added the other 10 pound plate I had in my hand.  I told myself I could get 235.  I went into my setup, began to pull the barbell from the ground, and...realized that the right side of the barbell had come off the ground while the left side had not.  What the heck?  I thought I had put both 10 pound plates on.  Turns out I did, only I put both of them on the left side of the barbell, making that side 20 pounds heavier than the right side.  In the confusion of checking on Danielle's barbell, I had forgotten which side of my barbell I had already loaded.  At least I got a laugh out of it.

Back at Danielle's barbell, she gave 130 a second try and nailed it.  I let her know that she had beaten her old PR and she seemed very happy.  It was time for me to match what my partner had done.  Maybe it was due to the fact that I didn't have time to dwell on my mechanics, but each time I went into my setup, I felt comfortable.  I went to do the squat clean and felt very excited when I caught the barbell in the bottom of my squat.  I'm not sure if my body needed a second to process what had just happened, but I didn't immediately rise from the bottom of my squat.  I couldn't stay down there long though, so I told myself to start pushing my hips forward.  It felt like a very long process to stand up (Giulz was watching me and later told me she had no idea how I stood the weight up), but I managed to rise all the way up with the barbell.  We both had a new PR!  After a team high five, I told Danielle to give me the 2.5's from her barbell and to throw 5 pound plates on hers instead.  We'd each be going 5 pounds higher.  There was only about 45 seconds left, so once my barbell was ready, I attempted 240.  I admit, it was rushed and it showed.  I didn't come close to catching it in my squat.  Oh well.  I could still help Danielle get 135.  I was a little confused as to why she hadn't gone yet when she told me she couldn't find one of the 5 pound plates.  I started flipping the bigger plates out of the way, but we were still one 5 pound plate short once the buzzer sounded.  Total score: 235 + 130 = 365 (10th out of 19 teams).

(Epilogue: At the end of the event, each team was told to stack their plates off to the side again.  That is when the judge in lane 2 noticed that they had three 5 pound plates instead of the two they started with.  Guard your plates in a Crossfit competition, because people will just grab whatever is in their line of vision!)

Heat 2 had three KOP teams (Josh M and Alicia, Kevin B and Theresa, Raj and Mike C), heat 4 had two KOP teams (Queen Pam and King JP, Becky and Mike Sim), heat 5 had one KOP team (Tim and Laura Pappas), heat 6 had two KOP-ish teams (Laura A and Rich, Aimee and random Regional athlete guy), and heat 7 had one KOP team (Keithie and LC).  It would obviously take way too long to recap all of them, so I'll post three notable highlights from this event:

• Josh had a PR of 205 pounds (After obsessing over whether he could get 185 all week)
• Mike Sim power cleaned 245 pounds like he was bored
• LC had a PR of 220 pounds (Which led to the line of the day, as someone said the following to me: "Rachel got 220 pounds?  Wait, what did you say you got Dave?")  Ouch.  And I was feeling good about my 235.  To be fair, LC was being fueled by her breakfast of champions.

Reeses and Red Bull: Everything a strong girl needs

Event #2: "Basic Bitch"

15 minute AMRAP

10 deadlifts (185/135 for Scaled)

20 KB swings (53/35 for Scaled)

30 wall balls (14#/10# to 10'/9' for Scaled)

This was the event that we practiced in the annex with Ashley serving as my twin.  (Note: Ashley hurt her back a few days before the competition, so Raj took her place as Mike C's teammate.)  During our practice run, we used heavier wall balls than we would be using here.  I ran out of steam on my 6th round of wall balls and we were in the middle of our 7th round of KB swings when time ran out.  With the lighter wall balls, I thought we had a good shot at 7 full rounds, but this was still going to be a lung burner.  

In practice, Danielle and I had used a system where one person did all 10 deadlifts, then we split up the KB swings and wall balls evenly, alternating as we went from one movement to the next.  Prior to event #2 starting, Danielle asked if we were still doing that and I said, "sure, unless you want to do all 30 wall balls".  I had mentioned that strategy in practice because Danielle loves wall balls so much, but she thought the even split was the way to go.  I had only repeated the idea as a joke.  We agreed that I should lead us off on the deadlifts, so I took care of those.  We each did 10 KB swings.  And then Danielle went bonkers on the wall balls.  As she got close to rep #15, I waited for the tag so that I could finish off round one.  Except she kept going.  And going.  And going.  When she had finished all 30 reps, she tagged me in for another round of deadlifts.  Same order for round two and when Danielle kept going after 15 wall balls, I turned to the people cheering us on and shrugged my shoulders.  3D!  If she wants to do a crazy amount of wall balls, so be it.

Turns out that I should have been paying attention, because as I was laughing with the crowd, Danielle suddenly tagged me in.  She made it through 20 reps in round two before letting me get my first action at the wall.  Since I was only doing 10 reps, I thought I would just continue on to the deadlifts, but as I was passing Danielle, she kinda tagged herself back in.  I was confused about our plan at this point, but I decided to just go with the flow.  As I watched Danielle do her first set of deadlifts, I could see Ryan Brennan in the crowd.  He and his wife Andrea don't go to KOP anymore, but they are two of my favorites from back in the day.  It was cool to see them competing together (they won the first two events in the 35-44 age group).  Ryan had a puzzled look on his face as he pointed to my barbell and began doing a shrugging motion.  Was I really shrugging during my deadlifts?

Yeah, I was definitely shrugging

You can even see Actuary Mike and Andrea wearing matching "why the hell is he shrugging" looks on their faces in that photo.  So why was I shrugging?  The standard for deadlifts is to have your shoulders behind the barbell at the top of the movement.  In my attempt to go fast, I was shrugging my shoulders as I stood up to ensure my shoulders were behind the barbell.  It was wasted energy and I didn't even realize I was doing it until I saw Ryan in the crowd.  (Afterwards Ryan told me he thought I might be working on my traps in the middle of the event.  Of course that is what I was doing!  <wink>)

There was no more shrugging on my remaining deadlifts and Danielle was more than happy to only do 15 wall balls each round.  We kept moving as fast as we could, although it seemed like the team next to us was moving at a breakneck pace as well.  I had focused on controlling my breathing from the beginning of the event, but when I looked at the clock and saw we were only 8 minutes in, I began to worry.  I was starting to tire out.  I couldn't afford to go into a squat to recover.  I had to stay upright whenever I wasn't doing work.  So I went to my second favorite standby:

The low fuel light has definitely come on

To make it through 7 rounds, we needed to finish a round every 2:08.  We were well ahead of that pace through 4 rounds.  Then we started to slow down during the next two rounds.  (Note: Giulz came over and no repped quite a few of Danielle's wall balls which slowed up our pace.  That and fatigue.)  As 12 minutes passed, we were working on our 6th round of wall balls.  I was exhausted, but I told myself there was just one round left.  I could get through that.  Round 7 was a light one for me too because I didn't have to do any deadlifts.  Just 10 KB swings and 15 wall balls.  When I finished off my wall balls, there was about a minute left.  We were going to finish 7 rounds.  I managed to do one final set of deadlifts (no shrugs, I swear!) and Danielle managed 7 KB swings before our 15 minutes were up.  Final score: 7+17 (8th out of 19 teams).

Other highlights:

• Because Kevin and Theresa were always in the lane next to Raj and Mike C, I ended up watching the four of them during heat 2 from here on out.  (Sorry Josh and Alicia!)  Danielle wasn't the only person to tag herself in during this event, as I saw Raj slap Mike on the chest as he was in the middle of KB swings so that she could start a set.  I felt bad for Mike because no one enjoys KB swings like he does.  Seriously.

Pure KB joy

• I mentioned that Team Brennan won this event in the 35-44 age range.  I didn't mention that they crushed all teams in all divisions, winding up 9 reps short of 9 full rounds.  I was psyched just to finish 7 rounds.
• Aimee's partner muscle snatched his KB for 15 minutes.  It was that light for him.  So glad I was in the Scaled division.

Event #3: "Pumpkin Spiced Latte"

Two individually scored events

Part A: 2 minute AMRAP of double unders

Part B: 8 minute AMRAP of 25 pull-ups, 25 hand release push-ups, 25 knee raises, and 25 air squats

We had more than 2 hours before our next event, so Danielle and I discussed how we were going to tackle event #3.  We had actually begun discussing this event days earlier because the two of us had broken out into a cold sweat just thinking about it.  Neither of us felt confident about our double unders.  Danielle was originally excited about the second part of the event because she thought we were doing jumping pull-ups (nope) and snake push-ups (strike two).  She was much less pleased when I told her they were real pull-ups (she expressed concern that she couldn't do any) and real push-ups (she expressed concern that she couldn't do any).  That was kind of a big problem since I suck at pull-ups and my push-ups tend not to be strong if I've worn out my arms doing pull-ups.  How was I going to do 25 of each?  The two of us accepted from the start that we were going to finish last in the second part of this workout.

Things became less bleak when Danielle realized these were hand release push-ups.  That meant for a moment you are just laying on the ground as you take your hands off the floor.  As opposed to strict push-ups, the hand release variety had a certain snake-like quality to them.  Danielle told me that she should be able to do "some of those".

As we stood in our lane waiting to begin, Giulz told the entire first heat that she was about to start the clock.  Wait!!!  We didn't have a judge in our lane and neither did the athletes in the lane next to us.  Kris volunteered to be our judge.  The lane next to us got a judge and we were set to go with the double unders.  Giulz started the clock and I began jumping rope for our team.  For the first time ever, I didn't completely embarrass myself doing double unders in a competition.  I'm not sure how many I got in subsequent sets, but during my first set, I got 28 in a row.  Danielle and I tagged back and forth over the next two minutes, doing much better than either of us had expected.  Final score: 112 reps (14th out of 19 teams).

The second part of the event began immediately, but I was tired out from the double unders.  I came over to the high bar and attempted to do quick singles.  I think I made it through 3 before I had to tag in Danielle.  I had it in my head that she would probably do 3 as well, but it didn't work out that way. I think Danielle was a little tired too, because her pull-up attempt did not meet Judge Kris's standards.  I might have had it in my head that Kris would be somewhat lenient on Danielle because they are friends, but she held her to the proper standard.  (Note: I'm not saying Kris should have given us reps that weren't legit, but in the moment, I was surprised that she kept no repping Danielle over and over again.)

Whenever Danielle got no repped, she would come over and tag me back in.  I would go over and do 3-4 single reps and then send Danielle back to the pull-up rig.  Only I'm not sure if she ever got the thumbs up from Kris during round one.  As we closed in on 15 reps, I looked around and saw that all other teams in heat one had moved on to the push-ups.  By the time I finished off our 25th pull-up, a couple of teams had already gotten to the knee raises.  We were way behind.

That was when Danielle went into beast mode.  Remember how she claimed she might be able to do some of the hand release push-ups?  Apparently that meant all 25.  I was waiting for her to tag me in, but she was intent on getting us closer to the rest of the teams.  She blew through the entire set before sending me off to do the knee raises.  I have to confess that I didn't practice knee raises at all.  They don't come up in our programming very often either.  So despite being a very simple movement, I found a way to get no repped on it quite a bit.  Then when I began swinging my legs behind me to get good reps, I lost control on the bar.  My whole body began to swing.  I made it to 19 reps before needing to tag Danielle in.  She did the last 6 and then tagged me in for the air squats.  I went as fast as I could during those air squats, trying to duplicate what Danielle had done on the hand release push-ups.  I was done in no time, although Giulz warned me that I needed to open my hip more in the next round.  I let her know she wouldn't have to worry about that as there was no chance we were getting back to the air squats.

The story didn't change much during the second round of pull-ups, but I was so tired that when Danielle got no repped and tried to tag me in, I told her to go back and try a few more times.  Perhaps she just needed some practice, because as her older partner gasped for air, Danielle began getting reps for us on the pull-up bar.  I continued on with sets of 3-4 and we made it back to the push-ups.  Danielle must really hate my push-up form because she blew through 25 more as time winded down. I ran over to the pull-up rig and got 6 knee raises in before time was up.  Final score: 1+56 (19th out of 19 teams, the only team that didn't complete 2 full rounds).

Poor Danielle had torn up her hands during all of those pull-up attempts, so I let her borrow the band-aid kit (complete with neosporin) that I always bring with me to the gym.  As she got patched up, I checked on the scoring in the lobby.  Alan had everything under control.  I don't think I remember much from the other teams' performances because this event was so traumatic for us.  Let's move on to the finale.

Event #4: "Bad Hombres"

5 minute AMRAP of calories on the rower

5 minute AMRAP of shoulder-to-overhead (75/55 for Scaled)

We had made it to the final event!  This workout didn't seem too awful.  I had done the first segment as a a cash out in class once before, so I knew what to expect there.  The shoulder-to-overheads were using the weights from Fight Gone Bad, so I had a bit of an idea of how that would feel.  We don't go for 5 straight minutes during that WOD, but we do a minute's worth of work three times.  This was going to be a much better workout for us than event #3 had been.

Keeping with the theme of the day, we didn't have much of a plan for the workout and I wanted Danielle to be happy.  So when Danielle said she wanted to row first, I was happy to stand at the tag station and await my turn.  We hadn't discussed how long we would row either, but I assumed it would be for spurts of about 45 seconds.  Danielle ended up rowing longer than that, but I wasn't complaining about getting extra rest.  I got an unexpected compliment during my first turn on the rower.  I was pulling as hard as I could, rocking back and forth to generate power like I had done on Thursday.  The calories per hour figure on the display went over 2,000, getting up near 2,200 for a big chunk of my first set.  Gordy was our judge and he told me that he had never seen the number get that high.  (He should have watched Ryan Brennan, who probably had it near 3,000 when he rowed.)  I hopped off after close to 45 seconds and Danielle went again.  We each had three turns on the rower, with my last row being closer to 30 seconds.  Final score: 103 calories.  (Note: Somehow we beat Aimee and her partner on the row.  I thought that was quite the accomplishment for us.)

Just five minutes to go and only light shoulder-to-overheads remaining.  Well, they were light at first. I know exactly how many reps I did because I went 20-20-15-10-10.  During that first set of 20, I was like "I got this for 5 minutes!"  By the last set of 10, I was thinking "don't drop the barbell after only 5 reps".  Those shoulder-to-overheads became difficult quickly.  I had wanted to hold on to that last set until the buzzer, but I simply couldn't do it.  Danielle wrapped up our day with a few final reps.  Final score: 147 reps.  Final score for the event: 250 (9th out of 19 teams).

I was relieved to be done because now I could enjoy watching the rest of the KOP teams without any anxiety about upcoming events.  Highlights from the final event:

• Watching Tim row with his feet not strapped in.  I would not be able to row very well like this, but Tim looked comfortable.  I'm sure he got just as many calories as I did too.  I have to learn how to do that.
• The winners of best costume of the day went to Becky and Mike Sim.  If you asked me beforehand if I could see Becky wearing this outfit, I would have said yes.  But Mike?  I never would have guessed he'd go along with this:

Real men push press in tutus

That pretty much covers everything.  Danielle and I finished 11th out of 19 teams in the Scaled division.  Considering that there was one event we had no shot in, I think we did pretty well.  Danielle was an awesome partner and I hope that when she left at the end of the day, she wasn't disappointed.

After the competition, I ran home, showered, packed a bag, and began a 5.5 hour drive to Albany for my annual football game that was taking place the next day.  Because of the road trip, I'd be taking the next two days off from the gym.  Having done four workouts in one day, I felt like I earned a few days off.

Tuesday preview: More shoulder-to-overhead!  The Lyons Medley is programmed.  Plenty of shoulder presses, push presses, and push jerks for everyone!

Almost Beat Aimee

Workout date: 11/10/16

With the Brawl In The Fall looming on Saturday, I knew that I was taking Friday off.  I thought about taking Thursday off as well since I have the tendency to be sore two days after a workout, but then I saw what was programmed for the WOD.  It was a workout that might leave my lungs sore, but probably not the other parts of my body.

"Cardio-kick"
50 double unders
40 calories on the rower
30 burpees
30/25 calories on the assault bike

If I'm being completely honest, the second half of this workout was going to put a hurtin' on my legs, but that pain would only be temporary.  The part I was most looking forward to was the double unders.  Could I string all 50 reps and get off to a really fast start?  The thought of doing something like that was inconceivable at the beginning of the year.  Sure, I had done a set of 49 in a row in 2015, but when that set was complete, I needed to sit on the floor for 10 minutes while holding on to the pull-up rig as my body recovered from the shock that had set in from completing that many.  Was doing a big set like that worth it in this workout?  Would I have anything left for the other three movements?  My hope was that all of the double under practice that I've been doing would provide me with the endurance to complete 50 reps quickly (unbroken or otherwise) while not crippling me for the remainder of the WOD.

Twelve of us had shown up at 12 o'clock to take part in Aimee's nooner.  The class was filled with familiar faces who typically attend the express, but we were joined by someone who I hadn't seen at the gym in a while: Tre.  I think the last time I saw Tre was at the 4th of July WOD that I did with him.  I think of Tre as an older athlete at the gym, at least in terms of experience.  He's still in his late teens/early twenties, but he's been a member of KOP for as long as I can remember.  It's possible that I'm becoming overly nostalgic as the years pass by at KOP, but I always enjoy seeing those folks who were members of the gym back when I started my Crossfit journey.

While Tre was likely to be one of the fastest people in class, he'd have to work hard to get the top time.  Queen Pam and Mike Sim. were both at the nooner as well.  I'm not sure anyone is better at cardio workouts in our gym than Pam is.  And Mike was going to blaze through the row and the assault bike faster than anyone else.  My goal was to try and stay reasonably close to Tre, Pam, and Mike, as I suspected there was almost no chance that I'd be able to beat any of them in this workout.

Aimee got us warmed up on the rower with some strict pulls (all arms) before allowing us to use our legs.  This method is designed to show how much more power you get in each stroke by focusing on your legs rather than your arms.  I think everyone's natural tendency is to pull as hard as they can, thinking that your arms need to do most of the work, but that isn't quite right.  (Nor is the idea that speeding back and forth on the rower will help you complete your row faster.)  I have definitely struggled with using my legs more on the rower, which explains why I have been stuck in rowing purgatory.  I've gotten slightly better on the rower over time, but I can't quite keep up with the Mike's, Cline's, and Josh M's of the world.  In short, my form needs work.

Sometimes help comes from unexpected places.  Aimee asked us to row with good form for 30 seconds and to take note of how many calories we got.  "Good form" meant driving with the legs before using our arms and returning back to the start in the reverse order.  It also meant keeping our feet flush to the footholds because we weren't getting maximum power if our feet were coming out of them.  (Think of this as "stay in your heels" while horizontal.)  After 30 seconds of rowing, we were told by Aimee to row with bad form for the next half-minute.  I interpreted "bad form" to mean that I would not stay in my heels as I rowed.  When those thirty seconds elapsed, Aimee asked if we got more calories with good form or bad form.  And I was forced to respond "bad form", as did several others in class.

How could that be?  Well, I can't speak for the others who got more out of their bad form, but I think the reason I did better was because I had misunderstood what good form and bad form meant in terms of your feet.  I thought good form meant that your feet essentially stayed glued to the footholds the entire time that you were rowing.  Depending on the workout, I've tightened up the straps so that my foot could not move off of the foothold even if I tried.  Bad form was simply the opposite, allowing any part of my foot to leave the foothold.  In that scenario, I was not efficiently transferring the power from my legs into my stroke.  Except that wasn't completely true.  What I discovered during this exercise was that I could rock back and forth on my feet to create more power.  When I was returning towards the flywheel, I could rock up on to my toes.  Then as I began my stroke, I could naturally rock back into my heels and drive my feet down.  I guess I always thought of this as "bad form", so I avoided it, but it worked pretty well in practice and I'll be trying it out more and more going forward.

With my rowing discovery complete, it was time to move on to double under practice.  Aimee brought out one of her favorite games for this part of the warmup: double under poker.  Each person "wagers" that they can do a certain number of double unders in a row.  If you fail, you do burpees.  If you win, you get nothing.  I always ask Aimee if I can fold, stating that it's only fair since life has dealt me a bad hand on the athletic front.  That argument doesn't do much for me though as folding is not allowed in double under poker.  As a fairly avid poker player, I'm not sure how this game is like poker at all.  Calling it double under frogger would make as much sense to me.

I wanted to see if I had bigger sets of double unders in me today, so when Aimee asked me for my wager, I told her I was going for 20 in a row.  I thought there was a solid chance that burpees awaited me, but I got through 20 consecutive reps without a hitch.  Then Aimee let us know that if we were successful in round one, we needed to wager more in round two.  Oops.  Going for 21 seemed awfully weak-tight for a poker player, so I told Aimee that I was attempting 25 in round two.  I must have been super burpee-averse because I made it through 25 in a row without hitting myself with the rope.  I headed to the cage, cashed out my fake winnings, and got ready for the workout.

Aimee split us up into two heats since we had a limited number of assault bikes (5).  Not everyone was interested in using the assault bikes, so it wasn't a problem to run 6 people per heat.  The first heat would include Pam, Mike, Tre, and Tim H, while I was joining Joe M and Erika L as part of the second heat.  There was a funny moment when Aimee told those of us in heat two to figure out which bike we would use.  For some reason I didn't think Tim was that much taller than me (spoiler: he is), so I tried his bike out after he had set the seat to his liking.  And I looked positively silly trying to pedal the assault bike with the seat as high as Tim needed it to be.  I'd be using Mike's bike instead.

With three minutes between heats, I had time to run off for a quick bathroom break while heat one got underway.  When I came back, I found Mike, Pam, and Tre were all on their rowers.  I wasn't paying a ton of attention to their pace, but I knew they had all gotten through their double unders in under a minute.  I stood with my jump rope in hand awaiting my turn.  When the clock hit three minutes, I set out on my mission to get 50 in a row to begin this workout.  The bad news is that it didn't happen.  The good news is that something better may have taken place.  I got through 27 in a row before the rope hit me.  After a decent-sized set like that, I'd usually take a couple seconds to compose myself before attempting the next set.  And when I did that next set, it would probably be very small (or I'd immediately hit myself with the rope).  Not this time.  When that first set ended, I stepped over the rope, began twirling it again, and got 23 in a row to wrap up my double unders for the day.  Took less than 45 seconds before I was headed to my rower.

Finishing the double unders quickly was essential because the row served as a bit of a breather in this workout.  Not that I was dogging it on the rower, but I was able to calm my heart rate down from the double unders once I was rowing.  I also knew the toughest elements of this workout were in the back half of the WOD, so there was little advantage to going nuts on the rower.  I kept a nice steady pace, utilizing the new technique I had stumbled across during the warmup.  Forty calories later, it was time to smooch the floor as 30 burpees were up next.

I thought that if I focused on my breathing during the burpees that I might be able to get through all 30 of them without resorting to crawling.  My estimate was 17 reps off.  I got through 13 reps of dropping down, popping up, and clapping before it became necessary to drop to a knee, slink down, step up, and baby hop with a weak clap.  I didn't take any breaks during the crawling, so that was a minor victory.  Tim was in front of me doing burpees and I did my best to move through my burpees faster than he was moving through them.  We completed our 30th burpee at the same time, so I had made up 3 minutes on Tim, who was in the first heat.  Unfortunately, I wouldn't keep up with him on the assault bike.

Guessing this was taken during the first 13 reps

When I got to the assault bike, I saw that most of the first heat was laying on the floor recovering.  I desperately wanted to join them.  The burpees had weakened my legs and knocked the wind out of me.  Not the ideal situation for a sprint on the assault bike.  I tried to convince myself that I could go faster, but the sane part of me told my body that I was already tired.  I slogged through the 30 calories on the assault bike.  The only burst I had came with about 5 calories remaining.  Final time: 8:40.

I took a spot on the floor, needing a minute or two to recover before I got up and cheered on the people in my heat who were finishing up on the bike.  When they had finished, I looked over at the main board to see the times from the first heat.  Tre had completed the workout in 7:37.  Pam was done in 7:19.  Mike had beaten everyone in our class with a time of 7:16.  My initial reaction to those times was disappointment.  I knew I had slowed down on the burpees and the assault bike, but I thought I had moved fast enough to stay close to the three speedsters at the express.  60-90 seconds behind them in a sprint was not what I had hoped for.  My mood changed when I saw the times from earlier that morning.  There were a few others who had gone as fast as Tre, Pam, and Mike (Jeff B even went sub-7:00), but there was one name and time that made me feel much better.  Aimee had completed this workout in 8:36.  While I may have had an advantage on the rower and the assault bike, there was no way that I could feel bad about finishing within 4 seconds of the best athlete in the gym.  My cardio still needs some work, but I was looking at my last workout before the Brawl as a positive one.

Saturday preview: Danielle and I take on the Brawl In The Fall!  Four workouts in matching t-shirts.  Coverage of as many KOP athletes as I was able to watch during the event.

You Suck So Much

Workout date: 11/9/16

One of the new benchmarks being tested in 2016 has been the 15RM overhead squat.  When I saw this was added to the list this year, I was very excited.  The overhead squat has been my favorite lift at the gym ever since I started Crossfit.  I can't really explain why, but I have much more confidence in my ability to overhead squat than I have with any other lift at the gym.  Throw in that most other athletes loathe the overhead squat and, voila, I had stumbled upon a movement at the gym that I was above-average with.  I knew what my 10RM for the overhead squat was at the beginning of the year, (165 pounds) but I didn't know what my 15RM was.  So when I did this in February, I figured I'd feel out what my 15RM should be and then try to add 5 pounds on to it when it came up again every three months.

Fast forward to November.  That simple plan had gone off the rails.  In February, I was able to do 15 reps using 135 pounds, but I missed getting 155 pounds by 1 lousy rep.  No worries, I'd certainly get it in May.  Prior to attempting 155 again, I did 15 reps at 140 to establish a new PR.  But that wasn't the mark I wanted.  155 was the goal and there was really no reason why I shouldn't be able to get that 1 extra rep that was missing from my February set.  Instead of picking up a rep, I dropped a rep, as I was only able to complete 13 reps at 155 before dropping my barbell.  13-14 overhead squats at a heavy weight is an awful lot of work for no payoff.  A very aggravated Dave would have to wait until August to get 155.  Except that was right when I needed both a physical and a mental health break from Crossfit.  That meant November would be my last chance to get 15 reps at 155.  So much for adding on 5 pounds every three months.  The goal now was to tack on the one rep that had eluded me during my maiden voyage with this strength test back in February.

I attended the 6:30 class with Coach Jenna instead of my normal slot at the 7:30 class because Shawna was leading a mobility class in the upper level of the annex at 5:30.  Mobility is something that I should be better about, especially since I definitely notice more aches and pains in my older years.  However, I tend to do little in terms of mobility beyond some minor foam roller work after workouts.  With an actual mobility class on the schedule, I could force myself to do some of the stretching that I forget to do when left to my own devices.  This class would also mark my first visit to the upper level of the annex.  I've written about the fact that I don't care much for the lower level of the annex, but because the upper level is used almost solely for yoga classes, I had never seen what that area looked like.  First impression: there are an awful lot of hooks on the walls.  I'm not completely clear on why there are three rows of hooks lining the walls (maybe they are there to connect elastic bands to, as we would do during the mobility session), but it is a little creepy to see them when you first walk in.  Kinda looks like a serial killer's bachelor pad.  Anyways, the class had a solid turnout of nearly a dozen people and I was happy to see some folks I hadn't seen in a while (like Jill Herman and Vania).  It was also good to get some stretching in, but as is the case with everything in Crossfit, if you don't consistently do it, you won't see the dividends.  I need to incorporate mobility into my schedule even when special classes are not being held.

Shawna let those of us attending the 6:30 class (me and Cline) leave a few minutes early.  We joined the 11 others who were waiting for the 5:30 class to end.  Among the people in that group was Matt B.  Just as I knew I'd be working out with Cline on Monday, I knew I'd be doing overhead squats with Matt today.  It didn't become official until after Jenna walked us through the finer points of the overhead squat, but once we were told to grab racks, Matt and I talked and agreed that we should share a rack.

The strategy I'd be employing for my final 15 rep attempt at 155 pounds in 2016 was different from what I tried in February and May.  In February, I wanted a respectable score in case I couldn't hit 155 pounds, so I did a set at 135 pounds.  In May, I wanted to improve upon that score of 135 at least a little bit before trying 155 again, so I did a set of 15 reps at 140.  Did those sets take too much out of me, leaving me a rep or two shy of getting all 15 reps at 155?  Maybe.  I'd find out this time around.  The plan was to warm up with short sets at lighter weights before doing a set at 125.  After that, it would be time to confront 155 one last time.  It was a much bigger jump between sets, but I was hoping I could handle it with the energy I saved by going lighter before that set.

Matt and I started out with some reps using an empty barbell, then did small sets at 75 and 95 pounds.  From there it was on to 125 pounds.  I knew Matt wanted to eventually get to 135 pounds, so I wasn't sure if he wanted to jump right up to 125 pounds, but he was cool with it.  He did his set first and made it through all 15 reps.  I didn't realize it at the time (because his goal was 135 pounds), but that was a PR for Matt.  I stepped up and attempted the same weight.  I got through 11 reps without missing a beat, then had to pause before completing the last 4 reps.  That was the kind of set I was looking for.  It wasn't a big struggle, but it got a little tough towards the end, so I got to experience what it was going to be like for most of the set at 155.

Matt moved up to 135 for his next set.  He looked good as he moved through 5 or 6 reps, but suddenly he dropped the barbell in front of him.  Apparently it didn't feel as good as it looked and Matt let me know that he wasn't interested in trying it again.  We got the barbell back on to the rack and I added 20 pounds to it.  After walking around for a few minutes to try and get my mind right for the challenge ahead, I removed the barbell from the rack and got it overhead.

I ran into trouble quickly.  On my second rep, I felt I was leaning too much to one side.  I overcompensated and felt like I was leaning the other way on rep #3.  On rep #4, I felt very wobbly and had to stop at the bottom to steady myself once again.  After those initial troubles, I managed to slowly grind through the next 7 reps.  I didn't feel comfortable under the barbell, but I only needed to get through 4 more reps.  There was a definite wobble on rep #12.  Then I had to stop in the bottom again on rep #13.  Matt kept yelling at me that I was almost there and that helped me rise up to complete the third-to-last rep.  The 14th rep was another shaky one as I was starting to lose the shoulder strength needed to keep the weight overhead.  I found a way to stand up with it though.  Only one rep left.  I took a deep breath, descended into my squat, began to shake, and lost control of the barbell.  I was beyond enraged.

"YOU SUCK SO MUCH", I screamed.

I couldn't believe that I had fought through all of those shaky reps only to end up 1 rep short just like I had done back in February.  That was a whole lot of work for nothing.  I looked at the clock and saw that only a few minutes remained before we had to get ready for the cash out.  I highly doubted that I could put together 15 reps only a couple minutes after having done 14 reps.  My body certainly doesn't recover that fast.  But I'm a stubborn SOB and I had to give it a try.  I made it through 7 reps before my shoulders gave out on me.  I dumped the barbell to the floor and began to strip the weights.  Who knows when the 15RM overhead squat will pop up in programming again, but I'll have to wait until then to conquer 155 pounds.  (Unless I have some sick desire to take it on during Open Strength.)

It didn't seem like there was much chance that the cash out would make me feel any better.  It was an 8 minute AMRAP of 2 bar muscle-ups (still don't have those!) and 10 burpees (yuck).  Jenna mentioned that we should make attempts at whatever scale we hadn't quite reached yet, so if we had the ability to do chest-to-bar pull-ups, we should move on to banded bar muscle-up attempts.  That is precisely what Matt, Borden, and I would be doing.  The only problem was that we didn't have a lot of room to operate.  Matt was on the low bar in front of me and I was on the low bar in front of Borden.  Because we are all bigger guys who would be flailing around wildly, there was a really good chance that we'd be bumping into one another.  We did our best to avoid that by staggering our positions on the bar, with Borden and Matt setting up their bands on the left side of the bar while I set mine up on the right side.  I think Borden also waited for me to make an attempt before making an attempt of his own so that we weren't going at exactly the same time.  In later rounds, I'd do the same for Matt as he was in front of me and I could see when he was going.

I figured this would simply be 8 minutes of weak bar muscle-up attempts and crappy burpees, but I actually learned something in the midst of my bar muscle-up tries (also, my burpees weren't as bad as I thought they might be).  My bar muscle-up attempts in the first few rounds probably weren't very good.  I think I rushed them so that we didn't have a logjam at the pull-up rig.  By the time we got to round three, Borden, Matt, and I had some separation from one another, so I was able to concentrate more on my form, which led to some better attempts.  Jenna saw my second attempt of round three and told me I almost had it.  After 10 more burpees without any crawling, I came back to my band.  I made two more solid attempts, but I couldn't get my belly up over the bar.  That's when Jenna pointed out that I was worried too much about my belly.  She pointed out that if I just controlled myself once I got my upper body over the bar, I could probably press out from that position and complete the bar muscle-up.  Huh.  I had been so focused on getting my entire upper body over the bar all this time, yet that wasn't necessary to get in position for a bar muscle-up.

That eureka moment may have given me a little boost with my burpees.  I was feeling tired, but I didn't want to resort to crawling through my burpees.  And if I did get to that point, I wanted to make sure I was still moving and not taking breaks.  Borden was right alongside of me and I was having an Alona flashback to when we went rep for rep on the burpees in a cash out several weeks ago.  Borden wasn't slowing down, so I couldn't either.

During the next two rounds at the bar, I tried to control myself at the top of my muscle-up attempts, but couldn't quite stick it.  There was less than a minute left when I got to the sixth round of burpees, so I had to move fast if I was going to complete those before time was up.  Alona flashback part deux, as I knew this would be my last round of 10 burpees.  I dropped down and popped up as fast as I could, finishing up the sixth round with about 10 seconds left.  I hurried over to the bar to get one more muscle-up attempt in, but rushing to get in the band did not go as smoothly as I had hoped.  Six full rounds would have to do for the cash out.

After an extremely disappointing experience with the overhead squats, I ended the night with the hint of a silver lining.  Maybe there was a chance I could get a bar muscle-up with a band.  And if I figured out how to get one of those, then it wasn't impossible to think that I might perform one without a band in due time.

Thursday preview: My last workout before the Brawl In The Fall is a cardio-heavy trip to the nooner.

I Just Want To Eat

Workout date: 11/8/16

Tuesday night would have been an excellent time to take a rest day.  Over the previous two days, I had done that Brawl workout where I fell apart late and then I went as hard as I could during Fight Gone Bad.  I typically don't like to take rest days after only two consecutive days of working out (ok, let's be honest: I don't like taking rest days period), but in this case, I gave it some thought.  The WOD programmed for Tuesday evening was one that I probably wasn't going to be great at and I'm wonderful at wimping out when given the chance.  Here is what was on tap for Tuesday night:

12 minute AMRAP:
21 KB swings (53/35)
15 Toes-to-bar
9 Handstand push-ups

I am mediocre at best in each of those three movements and combining them together was not going to improve my abilities any.  And something told me that 12 minutes of that triplet was going to feel more like 24 minutes of work.  All the signs were pointing towards staying home on Tuesday and getting back after it on Wednesday.

But it was Dudes After Dark!  I'm not sure why I feel like I need to be there each week for this class, but I kinda feel like it's my baby and I need to nurture it.  The Dirty 9:30 used to be the noteworthy class at KOP.  Now the Noon Express and the 6am crew have their own followings.  Those classes are offered throughout the week though.  Dudes After Dark feels special because it happens once a week.  Everyone who attends knows it's gonna be extra sassy.  They know the coach will spend the first 15 minutes of class in the lobby.  They know that Cline is going to ask a good question.  It simply feels unique.  And since I named the class, I feel semi-obligated to be a regular attendee.

You know who doesn't feel that obligation?  LC.  We searched every inch of the lobby, but LC was nowhere to be found.  Coach Giulz would be running Dudes After Dark this week and she had an old-school sized class.  There were only 3 of us there for the 7:30 as Fight Gone Bad had likely caused many of the Dudes After Dark regulars to take the rest day that I had thought about taking.  Joining me in class were Neil and Actuary Mike.  Oh, I almost forgot.  There was one other attendee for our class that would have an unmistakable impact on it.  That attendee?  Kettlebell Kitchen.

We had received word that Kettlebell Kitchen would be at the gym on Monday giving out samples of their food, but they showed up a day later.  It is probably a good thing that they were not there during Fight Gone Bad.  The mental battle of getting through that workout is difficult enough without having to ignore the enticing smells of dinner over in the corner.  It was actually tough just getting through the warmup on Tuesday night with those scents wafting through the gym.  At one point, I looked at Giulz and let her know that I just wanted to eat instead of doing the workout.  The gentleman from Kettlebell Kitchen came up with a better offer.  He'd make the three of us doing the 7:30 class a to-go plate that we could enjoy post-workout.  Fine, I'll do the workout I signed up for.  But I am scarfing down that free food as soon as I get home!

Giulz walked us through what she expected from us in the workout.  On the KB swings, she wanted us to hold on for all 21 KB swings during each set.  That seemed ambitious.  Giulz claimed that she was not particularly good at KB swings, but she held on for all 21 swings when she did this workout earlier in the day.  Her pitch was that if she could do it, we could do it, even though it was going to suck.  At the toes-to-bar, Giulz explained that she wanted us to try and string reps, but that she didn't want us hanging on to the bar flailing about in an attempt to do multiple reps.  She would rather have us do singles with good form if we couldn't string reps properly.  Finally, when it came to the handstand push-ups, she wanted us to choose a scale that kept us moving through the workout.  She didn't want us getting stuck on something we were scaling.  If we could do something that involved getting upside-down, even better.  If not, we could do L-sit DB presses instead.

I was using the 53 pound KB for this workout, although I didn't have a lot of faith that I could string all 21 reps in later rounds of the WOD.  I was going to do toes-to-bar, with the expectation that it would be the element of the workout where I'd spend most of my time.  Finally, I was going with my standard scale of doing strict handstand push-ups with 2 abmats.  Most people had done 3-4 rounds in the 12 minute timeframe given for this WOD, so I set my sights on completing three rounds as my goal.  While this wasn't a workout filled with specialties of mine, I'd still be a little disappointed if I couldn't make 3 rounds happen.

Giulz reset the clock, told us to get ready, and then sent us on our way.  I'm pretty sure that all of us got through the first 21 KB swings without putting down our KBs.  That may have been ability.  Or it may have been fear, as I'm sure none of us wanted to be called out by Giulz for not holding on for the entirety of that first set.  From there, we moved on to the toes-to-bar.  I did a set of three reps correctly to begin.  On the next set, I only got two reps before my form fell apart.  If there is one movement at the gym that has gone from semi-strength to liability for me, it is toes-to-bar.  I used to practice this a lot and I could bust out a quality set of 10 in a row if need be.  Now?  I feel lucky when I can get that set of three.  I knew I was at the point where I was going to have to revert to singles if I wanted to keep decent form.  I did four of them before realizing that singles were not a good solution for me.  I was using a lot of energy jumping up to the high bar for each single rep.  And I felt like I was dropping from the bar unnecessarily even though my grip wasn't failing.  Against coach's orders, I decided to hang on going forward, doing larger sets even though I wasn't kipping between reps.  I would just do an extra swing before completing the next rep.  I could knock out sets of three that way.  After two sets like that, I could move on to the handstand push-ups.  Having done two sets of at least 9 consecutive handstand push-ups during JJ, I knew I should be able to handle that many in this workout.  I quickly did 9 reps and round one was finished.  Took close to 3 minutes.

I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep that pace up and finish 4 rounds.  Based on my toes-to-bar struggles, I was still concerned that 3 rounds might not happen.  I grabbed my KB and told myself that I had to get all 21 reps again.  I was slightly ahead of Neil and Mike after round one and after holding on for 21 more KB swings, I was the first one moving on to round two of toes-to-bar.  Again I resorted to the sets that Giulz told us not to do, but it was my only shot at completing three rounds.  My shoulders were fatiguing and I needed longer breaks between sets.  When I got through 15 reps of toes-to-bar, I needed another break to shake out my arms.  That first round of handstand push-ups wasn't that difficult, but I knew the second round would be a different story.  I got to 4 or 5 reps before I started to struggle.  I paused while upside-down against the wall, then continued on through the rest of the set.  The clock was nearing 7 minutes when I completed round two.

Round one: 3 minutes.  Round two: 4 minutes.  Round three: 5 minutes?  That seemed to be the logical conclusion and if that was the case, I needed to keep moving if I was going to finish three full rounds.  I was behind Mike when I started round three and I'd be behind Neil by the time we were finished with the KB swings.  That's because I couldn't string all 21 reps in round three.  Yes, Giulz was right in front of me when I put the KB down, but I figured if she was going to yell at me, she would have done it during my sloppy sets of toes-to-bar.  I broke up the 21 swings into sets of 12 and 9.

I had already lost time from my round 2 pace by breaking up the KB swings, so I attempted to make it up on the toes-to-bar.  I began with my usual set of 3, but on my second set, I held on for 5 reps.  Yes, I required a longer break after that set, but I held on for 4 reps in the next set.  That left me one more set of 3 that I got through after convincing myself that these would be the last 3 toes-to-bar that I'd have to do in the workout.  I moved on to the handstand push-ups, but my shoulders were burning and my arms felt weak as I attempted to go upside-down.  I was able to kick up on to the wall, but I had to come back down after 5 reps.  Giulz let us know there was one minute left as I was taking a break, so I was definitely finishing three rounds.  The question now was could I get through a fourth set of KB swings.

I kicked back up and took care of the last 4 handstand push-ups.  As I jogged back to my KB, I saw there was less than 45 seconds left.  I know every wall ball I do takes about 2 seconds on average, but I had it in my head that each KB swing takes that long as well.  If that math was correct, I had just enough time to get through 21 more swings, but I could not put the KB down.  I started swinging the KB with the thought in my head that I couldn't put it down until time was called.  The early swings must not have been very fast because I only had 10 done when Giulz let us know there was only 20 seconds left.  I picked up the pace (and the grunting) as I raced to finish the last 11 swings.  They were probably more like KB snatches than swings, but I was moving as quick as I could.  It was just fast enough, as I got the 21st swing overhead with 1 second to spare.  Final score: 3+21.

Both Mike and Neil were able to get back to the toes-to-bar for a fourth round, but I had a different destination in mind after completing my fourth round of KB swings.  I marched over to the Kettlebell Kitchen table and grabbed my plate of food.  I didn't eat it right then and there, but there was something about looking at what I'd be eating in about 10 minutes that was very comforting in that moment.

Wednesday preview: If people cared about finding a 14RM for the overhead squat, I would be king.  More frustration with my favorite lift.  And I discover during the cash out that I may have been overthinking this whole bar muscle-up thing.

Rocky Three...Oh Six

Workout date: 11/7/16

Monday was weigh-in day again.  Can't really say I had any expectations this week.  I continue to try and eat better than I did pre-September, but it's hard for me to believe that I'll reach 190 pounds by the end of January.  Here's what the scale told me this week:

Original weight:  213.2 pounds

Last week's weigh-in:  211.0 pounds

This week's weigh-in:  209.4 pounds

Hey!  At least we're headed in the right direction again.  I haven't seen 207 on my scale in quite a while, so let's see if we can make our way down to that number.  Baby steps...

Double unders update: Knocked out a set of 57 in a row.  Feeling good about the fact that I can consistently find a big set like that, although I would like to build up enough stamina that doing 100 in a row would seem feasible.  Right now, I can probably do about 60 in a row with solid form.  Finding another 40 after that with deteriorating form is a bit of a reach.

As for the WOD, I was incredibly nervous about going to the gym on Monday night.  A lot more nervous than I usually am.  It was my first time taking on Fight Gone Bad since my ill-fated battle with it back in August.  That encounter is best exemplified by the first fight from Rocky 3, with yours truly in the role of Rocky Balboa:

In the first round, I came out determined.  Things hadn't been going very well for me at the gym, but I was going to pull it together and show that I could conquer one of the toughest WODs that is regularly programmed at KOP.  I did really well on the wall balls and the sumo deadlift high pulls.  I ran into some trouble in the middle of the round as I got to the box jumps, but I had a resurgence when I got to the push press.  As the end of the round drew closer, I knew I was in trouble.  I struggled on the rower, but the clock saved me.  I had 60 seconds to recover before I headed back for more punishment.  I hadn't made it very far into round two before I discovered that I was struggling to raise my arms.  I didn't even last through half of the second round before Fight Gone Bad knocked me out.

(If you really want to draw out the parallels, you can view Mickey as the embodiment of my desire to continue on with Crossfit at that point in time.)

Eventually I came back to the gym and slowly I got to the point where I felt my workouts were respectable again.  I'd even like to think that I've improved on the cardio front.  Either that or I've gotten mentally stronger during WODs.  (I ain't picky, I'll take either of those improvements!)  Still there was apprehension about doing this particular workout.  This was the one that broke me last time.  Could I put that out of my thoughts this time around?  What if my arms began to tire out again?  What if I felt like I was too exhausted to continue?  Was I going to be able to dig deep and find more, or would I throw in the towel like I did back in August?

I tried not to think about any of that when I walked in the door for the 6:30 class.  There were 14 of us present and none of us looked all that thrilled about what we were witnessing.  The 5:30 class was wrapping up it's second heat.  (Fight Gone Bad is almost always run in two heats so that someone can count for you as you're pushing through 17 minutes of agony.)  Everyone looked pretty miserable as they trudged from one station to the next as part of the third and final round.  When the clock struck 17 minutes, bodies immediately tumbled to the side of their rowers and on to the floor.  That would be us soon enough.

Coach Giulz sent us out on a 400 meter run and when we came back, we were told to partner up.  It was only fitting that Cline and I partner up for this workout as he was my partner when things fell apart back in August.  I think we both had pre-determined that we would do this workout together, at least that's the excuse I'm going with to explain how I ignored the other offer I received.  I honestly didn't even know she was asking me, but apparently Michal asked me several times if I wanted to be partners.  You might remember Michal.  She used to do Crossfit, but she has turned her attention to Olympic lifting and has become crazy good at the snatch and the clean and jerk.  We used to work out together all the time, but it's been a while since we took the same class.  Here was a rare opportunity to work out with her again and I blew it because I wasn't paying attention.  Had I been aware of her offer, I likely would have had to ask for a rain check anyway, but I did feel bad that we didn't do this one together.  Hopefully we'll get to be partners in a workout in the near future.

Giulz had us warm up on each of the stations included in Fight Gone Bad.  Here's a quick recap of this WOD in case it's not ringing a bell:

• 3 rounds
• 1 minute of work at each station
• 1 minute rest after completing a rotation through all 5 stations
• Stations include:
• Wall balls (20#/14# to 10'/9')
• Sumo deadlift high pulls (75/55)
• Box jumps (20" for everyone)
• Push press (75/55)
• Rowing for calories

Cline tends to prefer going first and I'm a constant procrastinator, so I was going second.  I probably would have saved myself a lot of anxiety by going first, but I think there was part of me that wanted to derive some inspiration from Cline.  I remembered how hard he fought through this workout back in August and I needed some of that fight today.  Don't let me down, Cline!

He didn't.  He had set a PR in August with a score of 255, but I got the sense early on during his heat that he would be going even higher today.  He didn't let the wall ball drop at all during the first round, getting 28 reps there.  He then made his way to the barbell to perform what I suspect is his least favorite movement in Fight Gone Bad: the sumo deadlift high pull.  It is always during this movement where Cline puts on the pain face, often closing his eyes as he grinds out rep after rep.  The funny thing is that he is extremely reluctant to let go of the barbell unless he has done a decent-sized set.  When I get tired, I tend to default to quick singles.  And that's the difference between having some extra fight in you and switching to what feels less painful.  Cline got 22 reps here and was already up to 50 reps overall.

Cline was methodical on the box jumps, routinely jumping up, stepping down, taking another step back, then charging forward for his next rep.  He got 18 reps here before returning to his barbell.  I'm not sure Cline is a huge fan of the push press either, but he kept working through big sets here, completing 22 reps before it was time for the row.  I am confident that this is his favorite part of each Fight Gone Bad round and not because it means the minute-long break is near.  Cline never looks like he's going all out on the rower, yet he's always faster/more powerful than I am on it.  He racked up 16 calories to end round 1, giving him a score of 106.  Even if he dropped to 75 reps over the next two rounds, he'd still have a new PR.

Unless you are some super athlete, you tend to have a considerable drop-off after round one of Fight Gone Bad, with rounds two and three being pretty similar (in round three, you're more tired, but that gets counterbalanced by the adrenaline rush you get from knowing the end is near).  The drop off is not something that sneaks up on you.  You quickly realize it when you attempt the wall balls in round two.  Keeping that ball in the air for a full minute is extremely difficult.  You simply try to do solid sets and keep breaks to a minimum.  That is what Cline did here.  Same thing with the sumo deadlift high pulls.  His box jump routine didn't change, but the push presses appeared to be more painful.  At least he got to enjoy some rowing to cap off the round.  Cline's second round score was 85.  He only needed 65 more reps to best his August tally.

There was a lot of the pain face in round three, but there was no giving up.  Cline's score on the wall balls went down by two reps and he lost a rep on the sumo deadlift high pulls and the box jumps, but he was able to match his round two scores on the push press and the rower.  Final round score: 81.  Total score for Cline: 272.  It was a 17 rep PR and he had shown the fight in rounds two and three that I needed to have to get through this workout.

(Lest you think I remembered every rep of Cline's 17-minute workout, here is the cheat sheet that I used for this recap.  Cline had posted it on Facebook.)

My handwriting is terrible

There was no time left to procrastinate.  It was my turn to fight.  And there was only one certain prediction for this fight:

My best score for Fight Gone Bad (ya know, when I actually completed it) was 270, so Cline had just topped that in his heat.  My most basic goal for this workout was to not give up.  The competitor in me had a different goal and that was to put up a score of about 275 so that I was back ahead of Cline. How was I going to reach 275?  Well, there was one station where I was expecting an improved score.  Last week, I did a workout that included 110 box jumps with the box height being 24".  I was able to rebound on and off of the box for that entire workout.  If I was able to manage that, there was no reason why I couldn't handle rebounding on and off of a 20" box for one minute at a time.  I had tried to rebound while doing my box jumps during previous attempts at Fight Gone Bad, but I always gave up on that method during round one.  Today I needed to do it for all three rounds.  If I did that, 275 was attainable.

Heat 2 got started and I made sure not to drop my wall ball for that first minute.  Wall balls tend to take about two seconds per rep, but I guess I slowed up a little towards the end of the minute as my score wound up being 29 reps.  That is the only non-rowing score I remember from this workout.  At the sumo deadlift high pull, I did a long set to begin, followed by a couple of medium-sized sets.  Nate was working in front of me and I noticed that my speed on this movement was much faster than his was.  (His form was likelier much better than mine.)  When the buzzer sounded, I moved over to my box.  This is where I had to fight.  I knew as I got tired that I was going to want to step down.  I couldn't do what felt better.  I needed to suck it up and deal with the pain.  Were there times when I needed to pause on top of the box for a mini-break?  Sure.  But I refused to step down.  No idea what my score was, but it was much higher at this station than it usually is.

Because I was so determined on the box jumps, I paid the price at the next station.  My favorite part of Fight Gone Bad has always been the push press and it is usually where I accumulate the most reps.  Part of that might have been the result of me using the box jumps as a bit of a breather.  Now that I was no longer doing that, I needed to catch my breath before I picked up the barbell.  I also wasn't able to string together as many reps in that first large set.  My performance at this station was by no means a disaster, but I got less reps than I normally do here.  I moved on to the rower, where I typically struggle, but I was very happy to end up with 14 calories in my final minute of round one.  Cline informed me that my first round score was 121.  That was 11 reps higher than my previous best.  I needed to average 77 reps in rounds two and three to hit 275.

I had gotten through the "easy" part of Fight Gone Bad.  It was time for the part that crushed your soul.  I didn't want to allow myself to think that I was tired (spoiler: I was), so instead of spending the first 30 seconds of my break sitting on the rower like I typically would do, I got up and started walking back to the wall.  Cline decided to lighten the mood by telling me I only had three rounds left (so wrong) and that no matter what happened in round two, I shouldn't leave KOP for five weeks again.  As my break came to an end, all I could think about was proving to myself that I could handle these next two rounds.  Be strong on these wall balls, set the tone for the rest of the workout.  I had done Fight Gone Bad enough times that I knew how bad the next minute at the wall would be, but I still needed to put up a good score at this station to make myself believe that I could carry things through all the way to the end.  When the buzzer sounded, I did 10 reps before letting the ball drop.  After a few seconds break, I picked up the ball again.  I misjudged how much energy I had at that moment and didn't throw the ball high enough.  "No rep!", yelled my counter.  For a brief moment, I thought that a repeat of August was about to happen.  That probably pissed me off enough to inspire the next set of 7-8 reps that I did.  I didn't end up with 29 reps again, but I did far better than the 10 or so reps I finished with in round two of wall balls when I crumbled in August.

My mindset was the same at the sumo deadlift high pulls.  I knew my score would be less, but it didn't have to be ridiculously low.  Whenever I needed a break, Cline would yell at me to get back to the barbell, even doing a countdown sometimes, knowing that my stubbornness would drive me to at least place my hands on the barbell before he reached zero.  From there I moved on to my box, where stepping down was not allowed.  I needed an extra break or two during this minute, but I kept rebounding through my reps when I was moving.  The push press was tough because I was struggling to breathe, but the weight was light enough that I continued to get a decent score there.  I did the best I could on the rower, but I was definitely hurting by the time I got there, winding up with only 12 calories in round two.  My round two score?  91 reps.  Total score through two rounds: 212.

I needed some extra time on the rower during the second break.  As I sat there, I did the math.  I only needed 63 reps for 275.  Unless I really fell apart, I was reaching that goal.  With 212 reps through two rounds, I could dream bigger.  Somehow 300 reps was a possibility.  I needed another strong round of 88 reps to do it, but it wasn't nearly as far-fetched of an idea as it would have been at the start of this workout.  I trudged back towards the wall, knowing that I needed to duplicate what I just did in round two.

That didn't happen on the wall balls.  I think my sets were about 6-7 reps long and I did three sets (don't remember whether I finished the third set or if the buzzer sounded).  I definitely lost some reps there.  I came to the sumo deadlift high pulls and tried to do my best Cline impression.  My arms were shot, but I had to keep pushing along and the best way to do that was to not let go of the barbell in between reps.  When I needed a break, Cline was on my case, telling me I needed to keep going.  I was even or possibly better at this station than I had been in round two.  At the box jumps, I told myself to not be afraid of rebounding because I was not going to trip over the box during this minute. And I didn't.  I desperately wanted to step down or take an extended break, but every time I showed any sign of doing so, Cline was on my ass about it.  As was the case with the sumo deadlift high pulls, I was at least even with round two at this station.

Cline was really on my case when I got back to the push press.  I was a mess at this point in the workout, with my walk turning into a woozy saunter.  I knew I only had two more stations left though.  I did two medium-length sets before Cline let me know that time was running out on the push press.  I immediately picked the barbell up and fired out as many reps as I could before the buzzer sounded.  I think I gained reps from the previous round due to that late surge.

As I strapped my feet into the rower, Cline told me that I was ahead of my pace from the previous round.  If I had any awareness at that point, I would have realized how close I was to 300 reps.  Matching the last round would get me 303 and I only had 12 calories on my second row.  None of that went through my mind as I hit the final 60 seconds of this workout.  There was only one word echoing through my noggin: PULL!  I was desperate to match the 12 calories from round two.  At first, it seemed like I wasn't going fast enough as I only had 4 or 5 calories after 30 seconds.  But it takes you about 10 seconds to get situated on the rower, so the number of calories showing at the halfway point is misleading.  I pulled harder and harder as the seconds ticked down and it became clear that I was going to get to 12 calories.  A few final pulls got me to 14 calories.  I let go of the handle and collapsed to the side of my rower.

I've tried not to get into a habit of laying on the floor for a long time post-workout.  I'll usually lay there for what feels like 20-30 seconds, then tell myself to get up.  That wasn't happening after this workout.  I was completely tapped out, so much so that opening my eyes to look at the ceiling felt like work.  Cline came over to me and began with the words "I'm not sure if my math is right..."  Uh oh.  My brain interpreted that as Cline telling me that he gave me the wrong scores for rounds one and two.  I was short of 300.  He continued "but I think you got 306."  My eyes were still not open, but I raised my arms and yelled "YES!" as loud as I could.  I've never been one to show a lot of positive emotion, but I couldn't help it this time around.  I had officially exorcised the demons of Fight Gone Bads past.

(Note: Just to be clear, Cline didn't have some dramatic pause in the middle of telling me my score.  I simply reacted before he finished his sentence.)

When I did Fight Gone Bad for the first time, I thought it was going to be my first RX workout.  Then I stupidly did 6 step-ups and had scaled written next to my score of 206.  The worst part about that mistake was I could have gotten rid of those 6 reps and been delighted with the remaining score of 200 RX.  Fast forward three years later and once again I had 6 extra reps that I didn't care so much about as I had reached 300 RX.  Crossfit can be a really frustrating journey filled with many plateaus.  And then there are those really tough times where things feel like they are getting worse.  When I walked out in the middle of Fight Gone Bad in August, I wasn't sure that I wanted to do this any more.  But then you have moments like I had on Monday night.  Moments that almost make you glad you went through the shit so that you could appreciate how far you've come.  There are certainly more plateaus and pitfalls awaiting me, but I'm happy that I've stuck with my Crossfit journey.

Tuesday preview: Rocky 4!  (I kid.  I kid.)  Another tough workout involving KB swings, toes-to-bar, and handstand push-ups.  Making it even tougher is the strong scent of free food.

Do You Know What My Karen Time Is?

Workout date: 11/6/16

Danielle had asked me earlier in the week if I wanted to meet up on Sunday to practice for Brawl In The Fall and I told her sure.  Did I realize that classes were being held in the annex?  Of course not.  Would I still have agreed to it if I knew that fact?  Probably.  I'm a sucker like that.  But there's not much to like about working out in the annex.  There's never enough room.  Never enough equipment. It's great that we have an extra space to work out in when training courses are being held in the main gym, but most of the time I would prefer to stay home and work out there.  That wasn't really an option for Brawl practice, so to the annex I went.

There were 5 of us that were going to be practicing for the Brawl: me and Danielle, LC and Keithie (they're competing in the RX division), and Ashley.  Ashley's partner, Mike C, wasn't able to make it on Sunday, so Ashley decided she would be my twin during the one event that we tested out.  That event was the following:

"Basic Bitch" (seriously, that's the name of the event)
10 deadlifts (185/135)
20 KB swings (53/35)
30 wall balls (14/10 to 10'/9')

That was the scaled version of the event.  In the RX version, the deadlift weights are 275/185 and the wall ball weights are the typical 20/14.  When I saw Keithie's barbell loaded up with 275 pounds on it, I felt terrible for him.  I had attempted several rounds of this workout on my own on Monday and 10 deadlifts with 185 pounds wasn't easy.  I couldn't imagine how badly I'd be hurting with 90 additional pounds on my barbell.

There were a ton of things that we needed to work out due to the fact that we were in the annex and because we had an odd number of people.  I already mentioned that Ashley was my twin, which meant that whenever I was working, she was working (using Danielle's weights).  In these workouts, only one of the two teammates can work at a given time, so Danielle's weights were free for Ashley to use whenever I was working.  We used the pull-up rig as our designated tag-in/tag-out station in order to get a feel for what that will be like during the actual event next weekend.

In terms of how the annex affected our setup, Keithie originally rotated the barbells that he and LC were using so that they were perpendicular with ours, figuring that would save some much needed space.  But after looking it over, he turned them parallel once again.  Keithie and I would be back-to-back and fairly close to one another, but once the workout began, it was clear that we had more room than we thought and wouldn't bump into one another.  The other issue was the wall balls.  The annex had no 10 pound balls.  There were two 14 pound balls and two 20 pound balls.  LC was using a 14 pound ball and Keithie needed a 20 pounder.  I asked Danielle if she was okay with using a 14 pound wall ball.  She let me know it wasn't a problem at all.  She loves wall balls.  She even looked at me and asked "do you know what my Karen time is?"  I did not.  In fact, I'm not sure I know what my Karen time is.  With Danielle confident that she could handle 14 pounds for this workout, I was left to figure out what I would use.  My first instinct was to be super wimpy.  (Surprise!)  I thought about asking LC to use the 20 pound ball (she loves wall balls and was on an RX team after all) so I could use the 14 pound ball.  Then I said screw it and decided I'd take my chances with the 20 pound ball.  It went alright.  For a while.

I'm not sure what strategy LC and Keithie used, although I know they split up the deadlifts 5 and 5 each round.  It also looked like whoever did the final 5 deadlifts went right into the KB swings.  Maybe that was the way to go, but I thought the deadlifts were quick enough that it wasn't worth switching in the middle of the 10 reps.  If I had 275 pounds on my barbell, I'd probably feel differently.  The game plan I came up with for me and Danielle was to have Partner 1 do all 10 deadlifts.  They tag in their partner for 10 KB swings, and then Partner 1 is tagged back in for the other 10 KB swings.  Same deal on the wall balls, with Partner 2 doing the first 15 and Partner 1 cleaning up the rest.  The next tag would put partner 2 on the 10 deadlifts and everything continues on in that fashion.  It was going to take 2 minutes (or more when we got tired) to complete a round, so 7 rounds would be a very good score.

I tried to ignore LC and Keithie during this workout because they were using RX standards and because they are beasts, but we were in such close proximity that it was hard not to notice where they were along the way.  They would end up doing more than me and Danielle, but not a lot more, most likely because our lighter deadlifts gave us a chance to catch up.  As for my team, Danielle didn't seem to struggle much at all.  Neither did my twin, who is also in better shape than me.  Towards the end of the 15 minutes, Ashley was finishing her sets several seconds before me.

The weak link (as expected) was me.  After 3 rounds, I looked at the clock and saw nearly 6:30 had elapsed on the clock.  We weren't even halfway done and I was in trouble.  I tried to stay upright, avoiding my favorite resting position (the squat) and holding on to the pull-up rig for support.  The deadlifts weren't so bad for me.  The KB swings required more and more grunting as the rounds rolled on, but I got through those.  The wall balls were the worst.  I guess I should take solace in knowing that my ball will only weigh 14 pounds at the competition, but doubt crept into my head fairly early on about whether I could do sets of 15 reps the entire 15 minutes.  In round 6, I finally broke.  I did 8 reps and then had to let the ball drop.  My shoulders were fried.  I took a short break, then picked up my ball again.  In order to get the last 7 reps to the 10 foot mark, I had to jump during each rep, but I got the ball above the mark every time.  There wasn't much time left when we got to round 7.  I did the 10 deadlifts and Danielle got 9 KB swings in before time was called.  Final score: 6+19.

That wasn't a horrible score and it will almost certainly go up with lighter balls at the competition.  7 rounds seems very feasible.  The only problem was how drained I felt at the end of it.  We'll get 2.5 hours to recover between events at the competition and I might need all of it for the event that follows this one as that will be very shoulder-intensive as well.

There wasn't enough room in the annex to attempt that next workout and neither of us felt the need to go over the rowing/shoulder-to-overhead workout that will conclude the competition.  So Danielle and Ashley worked on their cleans while I tried to offer Dave advice (translation: I'm not sure what to do, but I certainly know what not to do).  Neither of them felt comfortable doing squat cleans, so I tried to help them with that.  The two of them spent a considerable amount of time alternating between barbells that I had loaded up with different amounts of weight.  I would say Danielle looks a little more comfortable doing a squat clean, which will allow her to go after heavier weights.  On the other hand, Ashley is probably slightly stronger.  She did one clean where the barbell didn't hit her body at all, yet she got it to her front rack without much of a problem.  The end result was that they both cleaned 125, but were unable to clean 135.  Each of them was very close to getting 135 though and I'm sure they will hit get that weight in the very near future.  Perhaps next Saturday?  I wouldn't be surprised.

Monday preview: It is the return of the workout that broke me and made me leave Crossfit for 5 weeks.  Yes, the fight will go bad one last time for 2016.  But this time I go from punching bag to counter-puncher.