The Face Thing

Workout date: 4/26/17

The big news on Tuesday night wasn't that Cline and I had broken 7 minutes in the cash-out.  It was a close second, but not quite as noteworthy as Maggie's announcement on Facebook that she had gotten a job as an 8th grade teacher in North Dakota and would be leaving KOP sometime this summer.  Maggie has been with us for less than a year, but she has wreaked havoc on the gym leaderboard (most recently taking the top spot for Fran on Monday night) during that short span of time.  She is also the driving force behind the KOP dance team.  That's nice and all, but the best thing about Maggie is that she is a math nerd.  It's definitely sad to see a numbers junkie leave, but we'll all be wishing her the best of luck on her new adventure out in the Midwest.

I got to the 7:30 class and saw no signs of Coach Jenna.  Monday is Giulz, Tuesday is LC, Wednesday is Jenna.  You can't break the pattern!  Apparently Jenna was not feeling well, so Giulz was covering for her this evening.  There were only four of us there for class, with Neil, Julie Foucher, and Marissa joining me at the 7:30.  The workout we'd be doing was the same one Gordy did on Friday afternoon.  I had watched him on my phone and I remember thinking that I was grateful that he was doing that workout and not me.  Guess I only remained unscathed for five days.  Here's a look at the WOD:

Age Qualifier WOD #1
20 minute AMRAP
100 DB snatches (50/35)
80 calorie row
60 barbell-facing burpees
40 ring muscle-ups

The snatches with 50 pound DBs would not be a new experience for me as that was the movement that kicked off this year's Open.  In 17.1, we were supposed to do 150 of them (I only made it through 141 before the time cap).  100 sounded like a more reasonable number to me, but the problem with the format of this workout was that you had to get through all 100 before you could move on to something else.  In 17.1, the DB snatches increased over 5 rounds (10-20-30-40-50) with 15 burpee box jump overs breaking up the monotony of all those DB snatches.  There was also the issue of how to do the DB snatches.  At the beginning of 17.1, I was doing power snatches with a bit of knee bend in order to conserve energy.  That took up a lot of time, which is something you can't do with a time cap.  The DB wasn't so heavy that I couldn't muscle snatch it (no knee bend), so I was going to try that out at the onset of this WOD.

There isn't a whole lot to say about rowing 80 calories other than it was going to take 5 minutes or more, depending on how tired I would be at the end of the DB snatches.  The 60 barbell-facing burpees loomed as the worst part of this workout.  I mean, let's face it, burpees tend to be the worst part of any workout.  The fact that I would have to jump over a barbell with very tired legs only made it worse.  Finally, there were the ring muscle-ups.  I can't do ring muscle-ups fresh.  There was no version of this story that ended with me getting my first one after doing all of that other work.  Giulz let us know that we could do jumping muscle-ups if we got to this stage, but she needed to see that we were doing them correctly.  She watched me and Neil do a few practice reps and was satisfied with what she saw.  My goal for the workout was to complete one jumping muscle-up before time was called.

We formed two rows of two with Marissa and I up towards the whiteboard and Neil and Julie closer to the pull-up rig.  Giulz made sure we were ready to go before giving us the green light.  The first minute of the workout went very well for me.  I completed my first 20 reps before that minute was up.  If I could finish these DB snatches in 5 minutes, then I would definitely complete some jumping muscle-ups.  Even if it took me 6 minutes, I felt like I would be on track.  I just needed to be steady as I worked through the remaining 80 reps.  That was a good plan if it accounted for how tired I was going to get and how much back pain I'd start to feel towards the end of the 100 DB snatches.  Unfortunately, it did not.  After a while, I couldn't muscle snatch anymore.  My breaks became more frequent.  Even standing near the DB was unpleasant, so I started walking in small circles whenever I put the DB down.  Just before 6 minutes was up, I heard Giulz say that Neil had gotten on his rower.  About a minute later, Julie and Marissa were on their rowers.  I was still struggling through my final DB snatches.

When I finally got to my rower, the clock was closing in on 8 minutes.  Not good.  Unless I poured it on during the 80 calorie row or suddenly became awesome at burpees, I wasn't making it to the jumping muscle-ups.  Despite being absurdly slow on the DB snatches, I was really tired when I got on my rower.  In the early stages of the row I was averaging about 13-14 calories per minute, but as I started to recover, I picked up the pace.  My average increased to 15-16 calories per minute the rest of the way and I completed the row in about 6 minutes overall.

That left me less than 6 and a half minutes to get through the burpees.  If I could average 10 burpees per minute, I'd have a little bit of time for the jumping muscle-ups.  For some odd reason, that sounded feasible to me when I began the burpees.  As I picked up speed on the rower, the adrenaline got flowing and that carried over to the burpees.  I wasn't moving insanely fast, but I didn't need any breaks (not yet).  I wasn't doing that super-slow crawl either.  Giulz kept calling out how many minutes we had left as the four of us struggled through the burpees.  I was averaging about 8-9 per minute.  Crap.  I wasn't that far off, but it was hard to see how I was going to pick up the pace enough to finish my 60 burpees.

With 2 minutes to go, I had 38 burpees done.  Typical Dave would wait until he heard Giulz say there was 1 minute left and then go balls to the wall during the final 60 seconds.  But I knew there was no way I'd complete all of my burpees in that scenario.  So I started my final sprint a minute early.  If I could get at least 11 burpees, then there was at least a chance I could hold on for 11 more burpees in the final minute.  (Note: Mathematically, there was a chance.  Physically, there was absolutely no chance.  But sometimes you have to trick your mind into thinking certain things are possible.)  I thought I was moving really fast during that minute and I secretly began to hope that I could finish off burpee #50 before the call of "one minute left".  Instead, I was hopping over my barbell after burpee #48 when I got that alert.  I wasn't completely exhausted from this faster pace yet, but that announcement broke me mentally.  The adrenaline wore off and the slow crawl began.  I was only able to get 6 burpees in the last minute.  Final score: 234.

My pace on the burpees doesn't sound very fast, but it actually wasn't too bad considering how tired you were meant to be at that point in the workout.  Neil was about 2 minutes ahead of me at the end of the DB snatches and I highly doubt that I made up ground on him on the row.  But when time was called, I was only 6 burpees behind him.  Who knew that I had the ability to make up ground on someone while doing burpees?  Color me surprised as well.

The four of us were all taking advantage of the foam rollers to work on our legs and lower back when a conversation started up.  Maggie had been doing some Olympic lifting practice while we had done this WOD, but her and Giulz were now joining us for some post-workout banter.  With Maggie's announcement fresh on our minds, we began asking her questions about her move.  More specifically, we were asking about North Dakota since the rest of us knew very little about it.  Marissa had the best question of all though.  She asked Maggie, "is that where the face thing is?"  The question generated a couple of confused looks from the group, myself among them.  Then the light bulb went on.  "Are you talking about Mount Rushmore?", I asked Marissa.  After she replied in the affirmative, I let her know that she had the wrong Dakota.  It was a really funny moment and I'm not sure I'll ever think of Mount Rushmore as anything other than "the face thing" going forward.

Weekend preview: The NFL Draft is in Philly and one of my brothers is in for a visit.  Guests in town means no Crossfit, but that doesn't mean no exercise.  A recap of my "athletic" weekend.