One Dub Short

Workout date: 1/10/17

I have this incredibly strange ability to figure out what will be part of the next day's programming.  Whatever I spend extra time on post-workout ends up in the next day's WOD.  It's not 100% or anything, but it seems to happen way more often than it should.  Being the superstitious type, I think part of the reason that figure is not closer to 100% is because there have been times where I've worked on something and thought "can't wait to see this on the blog at 10pm".  At that point I've jinxed it.  The Crossfit gods are not going to allow me to manipulate the system like that.  It's only when I'm not paying attention to this cosmic connection that it works out.  That's why it was no surprise that Tuesday's WOD included 250 double unders a day after I had done 180 double unders with Danielle and Ashley.

Dudes After Dark was gonna be heavy on the cardio.  And naturally it was gonna be heavy on the dudes, with 5/6 of the class being male.  (Esra was our honorary dude for the evening.)  LC would be coaching us through the following workout:

Tuesday's WOD:
5 rounds
15 burpees
50 double unders

It's funny that I've reached the point where 250 double unders seems like the pleasant part of a workout, but there was no getting around how badly 75 burpees was going to suck.  Aside from Andrew, no one seemed very excited about all those burpees.  It seemed like a foregone conclusion that he was going to destroy this workout.  I've seen him do large sets of double unders without getting tired, so if the burpees didn't break him, he'd be finished long before the rest of us.

There isn't much to discuss when it comes to burpees, so LC talked to us about double unders.  She asked the six of us to practice doing small sets of them and then checked in with us on whether we felt comfortable doing rounds of 50 for the workout.  The only person who expressed reservations about their double unders was Actuary Mike, but he was better at them than he was giving himself credit for.  He was going to stick with double under attempts while the rest of us signed up for 250 double unders.

With a skill segment taking place after the WOD, there was no point in wasting any more time.  LC set the clock and got us started on round one.  Things started out promisingly for me.  I hate burpees, but I can do 15 of them pretty quickly when I'm fresh.  I grabbed my jump rope and didn't mess up the start like I had done the night before.  Instead, I embarked on a really big set.  I began thinking I might get all 50 right out of the gate.  I was a little disappointed when I tripped up after getting 42 reps, but all I had to do was one more small set and I'd be on to round two in well under two minutes. I began the next set and seemed to have my first round of 50 in the bag.  Then I lost focus at the end.

I'm not sure there's anything more frustrating than getting to the last rep of something and then failing.  When I failed on rep #50, it was simply because I thought I had it and I didn't follow through on completing the rep.  No worries, there was only one rep to go.  I'll just twirl the rope and...hit myself again.  Ok, that was a blip.  Let me get this rep out of the way...nope, hit myself again.  What. The.  Hell.  Instead of pretending that I was beginning a big set, I was doing this stupid thing where I was trying to spin my rope quickly while taking a ridiculously large jump.  Things were going smoothly and then I had to change things up because it was only one rep.  Incredibly dopey of me.  On my fourth attempt at rep #50, I finally got it.

I went from excited about quickly finishing round one to aggravated that I spent so much time getting a solitary double under.  I probably wasted energy being frustrated and that cost me on the second round of burpees.  I didn't make it halfway through the round before it was time to start crawling.  Maybe I could make it up on the double unders.  I got back to my jump rope and wasn't able to shake the problems I had developed at the end of round one.  After several attempts, my rep count was still below 10.  It was time for a sanity break.  I didn't need rest as much as I needed to get my mind right. I had to be calm and I had to be focused to get my double unders back.  When I was ready to go again, things returned to normal.  I had a set of 20-25 reps before completing the round with a medium-sized set.

There was no point in trying to recover my burpee form.  I had reached the "it's okay to crawl, just keep moving" stage.  I didn't enjoy it at all and I know it was slow, but it was effective.  There was no point along the way where I needed to stop like I did during my last round of burpees in "The Seven" workout.  At the jump rope, I had a couple of hiccups to start the round, but soon I had those medium-sized sets going again.  I was breathing hard, but my mindset here was similar to what it was with the burpees: just keep chipping away.

It was during the third round that I started to keep an eye on my neighbor to my left.  His name was Kevin and I had never worked out with him before.  I had been ahead of him during the first round, but he had passed me in round two.  As I was going through round three, I saw that he was only a few burpees ahead of me.  He completed his double unders when I only had about a dozen reps remaining.  In short, he was my new rabbit.  He wasn't so far ahead of me that I couldn't catch him if I got my act together.  During round four, that small margin he had on me remained about the same.  I had to do better in round five to catch him.

I certainly wasn't going to draw level on the burpees.  I did throw in a couple of reps where I dropped down and then popped up off of the floor rather than crawling, but it wasn't that many.  I might have trimmed a few seconds off of his lead.  All I knew was that I needed to find the double under magic I had in round one if I was going to finish before him.  My first set was okay.  I didn't waste time getting into my second set, which concluded with my rep count for round five at 27.  I took a peek over and saw that Kevin was in between sets.  I could rest when I was done.  I got the next set started.  When I reached rep #40, I told myself I could get all the way to the finish.  Just don't stop one rep short again!  I avoided that aggravation by completing the entire set of 23 to end the workout.  Kevin finished five seconds later.  Final time: 13:35.

That wasn't a great time.  Most of the times from earlier in the day seemed to be in the 10-12 minute range.  I was happy that I had some fight left in me late in the workout though.  I walked down to the far end of the gym to cheer Cline on as he finished his last round of double unders.  I had no idea how many reps he had done until he hit himself with his rope and expressed much more frustration than I'm used to seeing from him.  I knew that look.  He had one rep left.  Cline was much better about getting that last rep while mad than I was, so a second later he was done.  I came back down to the front of the gym and cheered on Esra as she finished her workout.  Originally she had expressed disgust at the burpees we would have to do.  As she closed in on the end of the WOD, she didn't seem to love double unders either.  She did a nice job of chipping away at her 50 reps and soon she was done as well.

The skill session that we would be doing afterwards involved handstand work.  Andrew was able to do handstand walks and strict handstand push-ups, but the rest of us needed to work on kipping handstand push-ups.  I think Cline started with two abmats.  His kip looked good.  I think he eventually progressed to only one abmat during this skill session.  Mike had two abmats and Esra was using three.  Their kips looked good too, although they were struggling for completely opposite reasons.  Mike was kipping outwards, causing him to come off the wall.  Esra was kipping inwards, causing her heels to hit the wall before her arms were fully extended.  I told them that they ought to watch each other because if they mixed their styles, they would fix each other's problems.

As for me, I stubbornly attempted handstand push-ups with no abmats.  I got one, but then I started to struggle because I wasn't generating enough force from my kip.  Just because I could do 1 or 2 didn't mean that using no abmats was the best way to improve.  I thought back to how I approached double unders last year and how I had to work on aspects of that movement separately before I was able to pull it all together.  I grudgingly headed to the back of the gym and grabbed 2 abmats.  It would be better to work on that explosive kip with a limited range of motion before I tried to employ it with the full range of motion.  I also wanted to practice getting my head through my arms because LC has told me that it helps her finish her reps when upside-down.  That was also going to be easier to practice with 2 abmats.  I only had 10 minutes to practice it here, but I'm sure I'll continue working on these pieces of the movement after other classes.

Wednesday preview: Fran's first appearance of the year!  It goes worse than I imagined, even though it goes better than it ever has.  Yeah, I was confused too.