Be My Valen-Cline

Workout date: 2/14/17

When I was a teenager, there was a show on the USA Network called the Gonzo Games.  It was sort of like a hybrid between Double Dare and American Gladiators.  Men and women would participate in various events and at the end of the show, one male and one female would be declared the champions for the day.  I remember watching the very first episode of this show.  A bunch of potential contestants were assembled near the Statue of Liberty.  The contestants picked for this episode would be those people who could survive a test of endurance.  Each person would have to hold a weighted torch above their heads, a la Lady Liberty.  The men and women who kept their torches up the longest got to star in the first episode.  I don't remember how much the torch weighed (probably important), but I do remember that people started dropping out left and right awfully quickly.  And even though I was a scrawny cross-country runner at the time, I told myself that I could have held that torch above my head longer than most of the people on my TV screen.

A much older, much heavier Dave got the chance to prove it on Tuesday night.  Tuesday was Valentine's Day and that meant there was a very special WOD on tap.  One that I had avoided my first three years at the gym.  The name of this WOD?  The Valentine's Day Massacre.

"Valentine's Day Massacre"
Partner WOD
800 meter run
50 wall balls (20#/14# to 10'/9')
75 KB swings (53/35)
100 push-ups
150 sit-ups
200 air squats
*One partner must keep a plate (45/25) overhead while the other partner is working.  If the plate ever rests on a body part or comes below the level of the head, both partners must do 50 burpees.

Yeah, that last little tidbit is an important one.  On one hand, no one wants to do 50 burpees.  On the other hand, that is a hell of a long time to hold a plate overhead.  You get to switch back and forth between partners, but the plate must remain overhead during the transfer.  You can switch to a lighter plate, but one partner must hold the heavy plate overhead until their partner gets a lighter plate overhead.  While you're on a "break" from holding the plate, you're busy racing through all of that work listed above.  Because the slower you move through that work, the longer you end up holding the plate.  It's all very messed up.

I had heard all sorts of horror stories about this workout, so I avoided it during my first 3 years at the gym.  A lot of people would do this workout with their significant other, but there's no situation in which Jenn would ever agree to being my partner for this.  I didn't really have someone else in mind to do this with.  The most likely partners for me from the gym would be LC and Michal amongst the girls, with Matt B, John McHugh, and Cline rounding out possible all-male pairings.  One of those five was participating in this WOD at Dudes After Dark and was willing to share this misery with me.

There were seven of us at the 7:30, meaning that one team would have a Valentine's third wheel (aka Siamese twin).  I had been a Siamese twin very recently and wasn't looking forward to doing it again, so I jumped at the chance to be partners with Cline while the other five members of our class figured out how they were going to team up.  In the end, Noel and his friend Ryan worked as a team of two, while Marissa worked with her Siamese partners, Neil and Colin.

I had successfully avoided this workout for years and years, but Cline was an old pro at it.  Since he was the experienced one, I left him in charge of how we should attack this workout.  The first major decision was figuring out how much we wanted to hold overhead.  I was thinking 35 pounds, but Cline had done that already and wanted to use more.  He was on board with my thinking that 45 pounds might be too much, so he suggested 40 pounds.  Except we don't have any 40 pound plates.  We began testing out how tricky it would be to transition two plates (a 25 pound plate and a 15 pound plate) from one person to another.  It turned out to be easier than I thought it would be.  (Keep in mind we hadn't done any of the work yet!)  Since 40 pounds didn't feel awful when we were testing it out, we decided to start with a 45 pound plate.  We also put the 40 pound plate combo on the bench along with a 35 pound plate in case we needed to cut down on the weight we were going to hold overhead for more than 20 minutes.

(Small segue: This month's Athlete of the Month is Kris.  I got a kick out of reading her AOTM write-up.  It made me want to go back and read what I had written in March 2014 when the gym gave me the honor.  In the "what do you still feel you need to work on?" section, I wrote that I "would love to become as determined as Derreck and as intense as John McHugh."  If I could add one thing to that answer, it would be "and learn to suffer like Cline".  I didn't really know Cline back then, but I've done plenty of workouts with him over the last two years.  And no one suffers better than Cline.  I've seen that pain face of his a million times, but somehow he seems to hold on to the barbell or push through whatever movement is killing him.  When I get to that point, I tend to take a break.  In this workout, I would get to suffer along with Cline.)

Holding that plate would be excruciating, but the rest of the workout would be no picnic either.  You could choose what order you wanted to do the work and the smart play was to do the run first.  You could split it up into two 400 meter runs or four 200 meter runs.  Depends how much faith you had at the beginning of the workout.  I had none since this was my first time doing it, so I convinced Cline to go with four 200 meter runs.  There would be extra transitions involved, but neither of us would have to hold the plate for more than 45 seconds at a time.  The next part of the workout would have to be the push-ups.  Getting through 100 push-ups late in the workout might be impossible because your arms would be wobbly from holding the plate.  Had to get the push-ups out of the way as soon as possible.

For the rest of the workout, I wasn't sure what order was best.  My first instinct was to move on from the push-ups and go to the wall balls and the KB swings.  Those movements also required arm strength, so better to get them done earlier on.  But Lindsey gave me some good advice before we started.  She was in the 6:30 class and said that doing all of the arm-heavy movements one after another was too much.  It was a better idea to throw in one of the movements that wasn't arm-heavy (sit-ups or air squats) to break things up.  That is what we ended up doing.  After the push-ups, we would go on to the sit-ups before finishing things off with the wall balls, the KB swings, and the air squats.

The three teams lined up outside to get started.  All of us were doing the run first, though the other two teams decided to run two 400 meter segments instead of the shorter sprints Cline and I were doing.  Cline seemed okay holding the plate while I ran.  I felt pretty good holding the plate while he ran.  I wasn't sure I could hold on to it for over 20 minutes while having to do half of all that other stuff, but it didn't feel impossible right off the bat.  I ran first for our team, so I had the plate last.  As Cline ran the last 200 meters, I walked inside with the plate, barely able to walk in the door while holding it overhead.  Cline came back and I gave him the plate while I started the push-ups.  Things got ugly here quickly.

It had only been 24 hours since my arms failed me while doing 45 push-ups.  Now I was on the hook for approximately 50 of them.  Yesterday I could shake out my arms while I wasn't doing push-ups.  Today I'd have to hold a heavy plate over my head during my "breaks".  This was not going to end well.  Cline and I agreed to do sets of 5 push-ups each.  I made it through my first 3 sets, but each time I got the plate, I became concerned that I wasn't going to be able to keep it over my head.  Cline got us to push-up #30, but I couldn't get us to 35 on my next turn.  I had to stop after three.  Cline told me to switch, but I wasn't any better at holding the plate.  My arms were starting to shake.  We still had all of the wall balls, all of the KB swings, all of the sit-ups, and all of the air squats to go, yet I was already about to lose control of the plate.  When Cline switched with me after doing his push-ups, I let him know that I needed to go to a lighter plate on my next turn.  After a few more push-ups, I ran over and grabbed the 35 pound plate.  No point in screwing around with the two plates.  We'd each be doing 50 burpees if I had grabbed those.

Cline was still doing solid work on the push-ups, but I was struggling mightily.  I apologized to Cline and let him know I'd need to start snaking my push-ups or I wasn't going to be of any use.  At first, I was only getting two per set.  Cline would also do two push-ups, although they were of the legit variety.  We hadn't even gotten to 60 push-ups and we were only doing two at a time.  This was going to take forever to get to 100.  I sucked it up and started doing sets of 4.  Cline began snaking his push-ups and got larger sets as well.  I'm not sure whether it hurt more to do the push-ups or hold the plate, but our prospects for the rest of this workout were not looking good.  All I wanted was for this push-up torture to be over.  Eventually we got to 100 reps and I got my wish.  On to the sit-ups.

Cline led us off on the sit-ups and did 5 reps.  Then I did 5 reps.  My arms were already feeling a little better since they weren't being used in this movement, so I told Cline to do more reps each set if he could.  From there on out, we each did 10 at a time.  With the push-ups, I wasn't sure whether it was better to be working or holding the plate.  With the sit-ups, it was definitely nicer to be on the floor than holding 35 pounds overhead.  There were times during Cline's sit-ups where I started to have shaky arms again, but my body was starting to get used to this torture.  As I did the last 10 sit-ups, I told Cline to walk towards the wall with the plate.  I'd meet him over there for the next part of the workout.

Without a doubt, the biggest surprise in this workout was the wall ball portion of it.  We agreed to go back to doing 5 at a time here, although I'm not sure either of us would have been able to do more than that.  Cline had the pain face on during his first 5 reps and I learned why that was when I went to do my initial set.  I almost had to check the label on the ball to ensure that it was 20 pounds because it felt like the 30 pound ball instead.  I could manage 5 reps, but it was much harder than usual.  When Cline finished his first set of 5, he didn't look like he wanted to take the plate, but he did anyway.  At the end of his second set of 5, I told him to take a few seconds to shake out his arms.  I had reached a point in the workout where I was feeling okay with the plate, so I could manage it a little longer than I could when we were doing push-ups.

After I got us to 20 wall balls, Cline could only do 4 on his next set.  I must admit that I wasn't great in my communications during this workout, but Cline was.  When he dropped to 4 reps, he let me know that he only wanted me doing 4 reps as well.  We alternated back and forth until we got to 44 reps.  Cline did 3 reps and then said "do 3" to me.  That made sense.  There were only six reps left and he wanted us to split them evenly.  Seemed fair.  I did the three reps and he handed the plate back to me.  Only he began walking in the wrong direction.  I thought he dropped to three reps to break up the final six reps of the round.  That was not what was running through Cline's mind.  He thought we had to do 75 wall balls, so he was just going to smaller sets.  When he handed me the plate, he started walking to the wall ball again.  I yelled over to him that we were done and he kinda gave me the "you sure?" look before turning around and going to the KB.

I had recovered somewhat during the sit-ups and the wall balls, but I'd struggle again at the KB swings.  The KB swings themselves weren't so bad, but my arms and shoulders were getting sick of holding that 35 pound plate.  Cline and I did 5 each to lead things off.  Cline then did another 5.  I was getting the impression that Cline was better at holding the plate and I was better at doing the stuff on our work list, so I kept swinging the KB until Cline told me to switch.  When I told him that I had done 7 swings, he told me to stick to 5 reps.  (See, poor communication on my part.  I should have asked if he wanted me to do more reps instead of assuming that he'd want me to.)  The sets of five didn't take very long, but I could feel my arms wobbling a lot as Cline did his swings.  With 200 air squats still to go, I began having doubts as to whether I'd make it to the end.  When we got to 52 swings, Cline told me to drop to 4 swings per round.  Cline got us to 56, I got us to 60.  Cline got us to 64, I got us to 68.  Cline got us to 72 and I got a tiny round of 3 swings to bring us to 75.  Only the air squats remained.

There was nothing better than that round of air squats.  We had 200 of them, but we could have done 200 each and I would have been fine.  We decided to do sets of 10 reps.  That feeling of duress that was present as Cline did KB swings had gone away.  Not only that, it felt good to knock out 10 quick air squats instead of 4 or 5 painful KB swings.  The finish line was drawing nearer and my mood was rapidly improving.  With 40 reps to go, Cline let me know that we were each going to do a set of 20 to finish up.  Holding on to the plate for that set was not so wonderful, but I kept telling myself that it was the last suffering I'd have to deal with for the night.  I passed the plate to Cline, did 20 air squats as fast as I could, and we were done.  Final time: 28:44.

My immediate reaction once we were done was annoyance at myself.  I had avoided this workout for a reason.  Why had I come in and done it this year?  Even if I was desperate for a workout on Tuesday, I could have rowed or something.  Then as some time passed and my muscles recovered, I began thinking of this workout in a more positive light.  It isn't often that I face a mental test at the gym and pass it.  Even though I needed to drop to a lighter plate, I felt that holding on for the duration of this workout was the rare example where I overcame my mental hurdles.  I needed to be able to block out the pain in more of my WODs.  Perhaps this workout would help me progress on that front.

Wednesday preview: The return of the 2RM hang squat clean along with a surprisingly tough cash-out.  Those air squats will get ya!