Whose Tires Are We Slashing?

Workout date: 2/27/17

The fallout from 17.1 was that everyone had a sore back.  Okay, not everyone.  Somehow the guy who went into the workout with back problems came out of it feeling decent.  Don't get me wrong, my back definitely felt like it had been through an intense 20 minute workout.  But there's a difference between feeling "workout sore" and "injured sore" and I was relieved to be feeling the former.  I didn't work out on Saturday or Sunday as has become my habit, but I felt well enough that I could have worked out on Sunday if I really wanted to.

Instead I waited until Monday to come back to the gym.  Part of me wanted to wait until Tuesday after seeing what the workout was going to be.  It was our last benchmark WOD of the month, a hero WOD that I had never done before.  It was filled with thrusters, pull-ups, and sprinting.  Not that I don't like sprinting.  It's just that I don't want to have to do thrusters and pull-ups after sprinting.  Those movements are hard enough when I'm fresh.  We'd be cycling through thrusters, pull-ups, and sprints many times in the WOD known as Holbrook:

"Holbrook"
10 rounds
5 thrusters (115/75)
10 pull-ups
100 meter sprint
*1 minute rest between rounds

So that was 50 thrusters, 100 pull-ups, and 10 sprints in total.  Doing 5 thrusters per round didn't sound terrible as I could usually get through at least 3 at a time using a moderate weight even when I was tired.  My sprints were likely to turn into fast jogs as the rounds passed by.  That probably wouldn't affect my time too much given how short the sprints were.  Those pull-ups though...

I had discussed in a previous blog post how there seemed to more workouts programmed with large volumes of pull-ups.  100 pull-ups definitely qualified.  The toughest aspect of this for me was that in this workout, it seemed essential that you did the pull-ups quickly.  So I'd either need to be very fast with my single reps or I would need to remember how to string pull-ups.  My plan for this workout was to approach pull-ups the same way I approach double unders: calmly.  Rather than try and generate some massive kip while maintaining a death grip on the bar, I was going to pretend that I was floating between reps, relying on the little upper body strength I have to get me back up for additional reps.  Didn't seem like it could be any worse than the method I had been using.

Coach Giulz had 10 people in her Monday 6:30 class.  It wasn't such a big class that I was concerned about having enough room for our barbells.  I was a little concerned about space for the pull-ups because the far end of the gym was being used for people who wanted to do the Open workout, but there was just enough space to squeeze me in at the end.  I chose the farthest station from the door because I expected to be one of the slower athletes in this workout and I wanted to leave the closer spots for those who were likely to crush this WOD.  So if I wasn't concerned about space for the thrusters and the pull-ups, what was I worried about?  Well, the idea of 10 of us sprinting in and out of the side door chaotically while having to cross the street twice per round gave me pause for the cause.  That concern felt warranted when traffic seemed to oddly pick up on that small street for 7pm on a Monday.  In the end, no one was struck by a car.  I came close in the last round though.  I'll get to that near-miss later on in this recap.

When I read the workout description, I thought setting a goal of 29 minutes was reasonable.  Then I saw all the times from the morning and afternoon classes.  Almost all of them were under 29 minutes and plenty of them were well under 29 minutes.  I came up with 29 minutes because I thought averaging 2 minutes per round would be a strong pace for me (10 rounds x 2 minutes + 9 rest periods x 1 minute = 29 minutes).  There was no way I could shave time off the sprint.  I could do less than 10 pull-ups per round, but that seemed counterproductive to my goal of getting accustomed to workouts with tons of pull-ups involved.  So I made the decision to scale the weight on my thrusters from 115 pounds to 95 pounds.  That would ensure that I got through that segment of each round quickly.  It also would keep me from wearing out my arms prior to getting to the pull-up bar.  Giulz told all of us during the warmup that she expected us to string our thrusters in every round, a declaration that made me feel much better about my choice to use 95 pounds.  It would still be tight averaging 2 minutes per round though.  I figured the thrusters would take about 10 seconds and the pull-ups could take a minute.  The run from the back of the gym, out the door, to the annex and back would take at least 30 seconds.  That was an estimate of 1:40 if everything went as planned (and it rarely does).

Giulz had us get to our barbells so we could kick this thing off.  Cline would be starting alongside of me, but I didn't think we'd be spending much of this workout next to one another.  He was better at pull-ups and he was likely going to be faster than me on the sprints.  My only advantage would be on the thrusters, where I probably wasn't going to gain more than 2-3 seconds on him, if that.  Giulz started the clock and I ripped through 5 thrusters.  I walked over to my pull-up bar as calm as I could and tried to string a big set.  Worked out pretty well as I got through 5 before coming down.  I went 2-2-1 the rest of the way and then weaved through all of the barbells to the side door.  As I ran to the annex, Cline went by me.  I ended up finishing the first round about a second behind him.  That was a nice start.  Even better than that was seeing how quickly I finished my first round: 1:14.

I wasn't under the delusion that I could keep that pace for 10 rounds, but that speedy first round meant I could have some rounds of 2:05-2:10 later on and still have a shot at 29 minutes.  Rounds two and three were very similar for me.  I did 5 fast thrusters, 5 sets of 2 on the pull-up bar, and then found myself running out the door after Cline, completing the round about 5 seconds behind him.  Round four was when I moved to quick singles on the pull-up bar.  The 5 thrusters weren't a problem (I'd end up stringing all of these in all 10 rounds), but I was getting tired enough that I knew I couldn't do 5 sets of 2.  I led off with a set of 2 and then went to 8 singles.  The gap between me and Cline started to grow as my time per round drew closer to two minutes during rounds four and five.

As I rested between rounds five and six, I decided that I needed to change the grip I was using on the pull-ups.  I had been using a full grip (thumb wraps around the bar) because it helps me when I'm trying to string reps.  Now that I wasn't stringing reps, there was no reason for me not to change to the monkey grip (thumb wraps over the bar).  This grip shortened the range of motion necessary, which would allow me to move faster.  It was up to me to keep pushing through singles and not take breaks when I wanted to.  During rounds six and seven, I made up a little bit of ground on Cline.  Maybe I could reel him in by the end of the workout!

My push to catch Cline began when I changed my grip at the start of round six, but it was in rounds eight and nine that I had to dig deep in order to get close enough to have a shot at catching him.  It's a cool feeling when you can finish strong, but I think there have been too many times where I've been able to finish strong because I slowed down so much in earlier rounds.  I've been afraid that I'll run out of energy before the end of the workout.  Recently I've challenged myself to push earlier and worry about the finish when I get there.  That's what I did in this workout.  I increased my pace in round six and held on to it through rounds seven, eight, and nine.  Round ten was another story.

Before I get to round ten, I should mention the obstacle that affected me, Cline, and Steph C in round nine.  We were all on the lookout for traffic as we went running out the door to conclude each round and early on we had to hold out our hands and signal to drivers that we needed them to stop for a second as we crossed the street.  As the WOD progressed, I noticed less traffic, but that didn't mean I wasn't keeping an eye out for cars that might make a quick turn off of DeKalb Street and possibly hit us.  So being able to see traffic was kinda key.  When Cline, Steph, and I ran out the door for our ninth run, we couldn't see traffic because someone had parked their car directly in front of the side door to the gym.  That meant we not only had to run around the car, we had to slow down as we came around it to make sure we weren't about to become roadkill.  It was an annoyance that we didn't need late in a tough workout.

I had one last minute to recover from that ninth round.  I needed to make up about 10 seconds on Cline if I wanted to catch him.  Even if I didn't catch him, I needed to go fast to hold off Steph, who had been on my tail the last few rounds.  The thrusters were just a formality, but I hit the wall during pull-ups 91 through 100.  I tried to keep jumping up to the high bar, getting quick singles like I had in rounds 6 through 9.  But my gas tank had hit E.  I took two longer breaks during that final set of 10 pull-ups.  Cline was gone before I hit the halfway point.  Steph had trailed me going out the door in rounds 8 and 9, but I'd be chasing her in round 10.  After completing the last pull-up, I ran out the door, around the car, and barely paid attention to the fact that a car was coming from the left.  Pretty sure I wouldn't have broken 29 minutes for the workout if I had been hit by that car.  The guy driving was nice enough to let a tired guy cross the road before continuing on.  I fast-jogged the rest of the way and got in the door just before the clock hit 27 minutes.  Final time: 26:59.

I didn't catch Cline.  (Cline actually used 105 pounds for his thrusters, so he beat me by much more than it seemed.)  I didn't hold off Steph.  But I was pretty happy about that time!  Was 29 minutes an easy goal for me?  I don't think so.  I think most people would tell you that I tend to set my goals on the difficult side, so even if 29 minutes wasn't some stellar time for the average KOP athlete, it was daunting to me.  To come in 2 minutes under that was a big deal for me.  Now I just gotta get better at stringing pull-ups for when this shows up in May.

While we were all rolling out afterwards, Steph asked me whose tires we were slashing outside.  Amen!  I think we were all pissed that someone had not only blocked the path that we were running on, but that they had also made things dangerous at the end of the workout.  They must have gotten the memo eventually because when we looked outside after rolling out, the car in question had taken off.  Next time there will definitely be some flat tires!

Tuesday preview: A pure strength day.  Some back squats.  Some deadlifts.  Some Chipotle.