How I Walked Before Crossfit

Workout date: 1/18/17

Tuesday night's workout contained a lot of technical movements.  Wednesday's WOD?  Not so much.  There was a metcon and a strength-focused cash out, but they were both as straightforward as it gets. The metcon portion would have us row for 750 meters five times with 3 minutes rest in between rows.  The cash out was 30 L-sit pull-ups (holding your legs straight out in front of you while doing pull-ups) or 30 strict chin-ups (gripping the bar underhand).  This was not for time, which was a relief because I was going to have to break those up quite a bit to make it through 30 reps.

Maybe I could make this class sound exciting by talking about how big it was and documenting how all the other people performed!  Nope, can't work that angle either.  There were only 3 of us in Coach Giulz's 7:30 class: me, Ms. January, and Therese.  I mean, we weren't the only ones there. The gym was actually packed with people.  It's just that the vast majority of them were there for the Bridgeport Barbell Club.

There wasn't a lot to go over in the warmup and we didn't have a lot of time anyways.  Despite being very basic, this workout was going to take a considerable amount of time.  At a pace of 3:00 per 750 meters, the metcon would go on for a solid 27 minutes.  We'd then need to recover and do the pull-up work.  So it wasn't long before Giulz had us setting our monitors so that they would count down from 750 meters and keep track of our 3 minute breaks between sets.  Giulz made sure the three of us were ready to go and row #1 got underway.

When I'm trying to keep an easy pace on a row that begins a workout, my pace tends to be about 2:00 per 500 meters.  That would result in a time of 3:00 for each of these sets.  Since these rows were the entirety of the workout, I felt like I needed to go faster than that.  A 1:50 pace per 500 meters would get me to 2:45.  I wasn't sure I could maintain that pace for 5 sets, but that felt like the type of goal I should be setting for myself in this workout.  Early on in row #1, I was below that pace even though I wasn't pushing incredibly hard.  My focus wasn't so much on the number on the monitor, but maintaining a solid pace that wasn't going to break me before I got to the remaining four rows.  As I reached the final 250 meters, my pace started to slow down some.  It was still a solid start to my workout.  Row #1 time: 2:42.8.

Ms. January and Therese were completing their first row as I got up and stretched my legs.  We would be spending a lot of time sitting on the rower, so I was going to get up and walk around during the breaks.  As I walked towards the rings and back, I began to shake one leg at a time as I stepped forward.  Giulz was very amused by my new strut and I told her that this was actually how I used to walk before I joined Crossfit.  The functional fitness has helped me walk like a normal person once again.

Most mandatory breaks in the middle of a workout feel like they fly by much too fast, but that wasn't the case in this WOD.  I'd often sit back down on my rower with about a minute left in each break.  I wouldn't strap my feet in until there was less than 30 seconds left in the break.  If anything, I got a little antsy to start rowing again as each of the breaks slowly ticked down.  The first 3 minute break ended and I got to work on row #2 alone while Ms. January and Therese enjoyed the last part of their breaks.  I approached the second row just as I had the first: a solid, non-exhausting pace with no reason to gun it towards the end.  At the end of this row, I felt pretty similar to how I felt at the end of the first row.  The only difference was that my time was a little slower.  Row #2 time: 2:45.2.

That wasn't bad.  2:45 was the target for me and I hadn't been forced to really push it to get there so far.  That would change on row #3.  The first 250 meters were fine, but it was that middle section where I started to waver.  I wasn't intentionally letting my foot off the gas pedal, I was just starting to feel some fatigue.  As I closed in on the last 100 meters, Giulz encouraged me to push, so I picked up the pace until my monitor showed 0 meters left to row.  Row #3 time: 2:47.2.

That third row left me worried because I definitely had to work during it and I still ended up 2 seconds slower than I had been for the second row.  I knew these final two rows were not going to be a whole lot of fun, but I could get through them.  Both rows ended up being like the third one.  I started off at a decent pace for the first 250 meters, before trying not to let the middle 250 meters get away from me.  I quickened somewhat with 250 meters left, then went all out with about 100 meters to go.  Row #4 time: 2:49.3.  Row #5 time: 2:48.2.

As you might expect on a longer metcon like this one, I was a sweaty mess at the end of it.  My average time for each 750 meter row was 2:46.5, right in line with the goal I had set for myself prior to the workout.  I sat on my rower, relieved to be done, before I went over and cheered on Ms. January and Therese as they finished up their final rows.  Once they had taken some time to recover, the three of us started the cash out together.  I say "started" because Ms. January was done way before me and Therese.  I was able to knock out sets of 3 chin-ups at a time for a while.  I was going for my 7th set of 3 when I failed on the 3rd rep.  I guess the universe wanted me to do 6 sets of 3 and 6 sets of 2 for the sake of symmetry.

That failed rep introduced some doubt into my mind as to whether I'd complete all 30 chin-ups, so I began going with longer breaks between sets.  The problem was that the Barbell Club had moved on to the back squat portion of their workout and Ashley needed the rack below the bar I was using for chin-ups.  I had 6 chin-ups to go when she first came over to see if I was done.  I tried to move things along, but my arms were feeling tired, so I couldn't speed up all that much.  Finally I got through rep #30 and got out of Ashley's way.

Overall I was happy with how the rowing went.  Wasn't as psyched about how tired I became on a non-timed cash out, but I've never been a big fan of anyone from the pull-up family.

Thursday preview: Strength work with Matt B.  I make a very poor decision.  Aimee tries to figure out how to get out of jury duty.