Fran's Tasting Menu

Workout date: 5/23/17

Tuesday's have become known for three things this year:

1. Dudes After Dark (duh)
2. Workouts with insane amounts of pull-ups
3. Birthdays

Not just anyone's birthdays.  For some odd reason, the diehards who attend Dudes After Dark have seen their birthdays end up on a Tuesday in 2017.  Last month, Neil's birthday fell on a Tuesday.  LC has already informed us that her birthday will fall on a Tuesday in August.  And on May 16th, Cline celebrated his birthday.  Wait, isn't this a post about events occurring on May 23rd?  Well yeah, but like Neil, Cline avoided coming in on his actual birthday.  We'd have to wait a week before we could all celebrate the day he came into the world.  How do Crossfitters celebrate birthdays?  The correct answer should be "ice cream cake", but unfortunately the real answer is "burpees".  Typically the number of burpees we would perform would match the attained age of the guest of honor, but unless Cline is much older than I think he is, we probably went overboard with our "celebration".

The warmup was a tabata-style rotation through three stations: the ski erg, a burpee station (for Cline's b-day), and an air squat station.  We'd spend 20 seconds at each station before moving on and we did three full rounds through the rotation.  There were five of us in class, so we had a pair starting at the ski erg (Neil and the belated birthday boy), a pair at the burpee station (me and Bryan), and one lone lady starting with air squats (Ashley).  Bryan and I were facing each other at the burpee station and I did my best to be synchronized with my partner even though I knew he was faster than me at burpees.  I couldn't help but be distracted by Bryan's smiling during the burpees because...well because no one should ever smile during burpees.  They are an instrument of the devil.  The delirious look on Bryan's face was freaking me out.  I was very relieved every time we moved on to the ski erg.  Since there were 5 of us doing 20 seconds of burpees three times over, I'd estimate the class honored Cline with close to 100 burpees.  That's more than enough to cover him for next year too.

Now that we had Cline's birthday covered, it was time to deal with another Tuesday tradition: a workout with way too many pull-ups.  I estimated we did 100 burpees in the warmup.  I wouldn't need to estimate that we'd be doing 100 pull-ups in the WOD.  We would be taking on Holbrook for the second time this year.  It was a hero WOD that had been selected as one of our 2017 benchmark workouts.  Here's what it looks like:

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

You can think of this workout as Fran's Tasting Menu.  You get 10 tapa-like courses of thrusters and pull-ups with just a hint of sprints added in for flavor.  My memories from doing this in February included:

• Initially freaking out about having to do 100 pull-ups, especially in a workout that included thrusters and sprinting.  How in the world was I going to keep my time in the realm of respectability?  And how was I going to stay within shouting distance of the rest of the class?
• My solution to those two questions was to go light on the thrusters.  Rather than try and use the RX weight of 115 pounds, I scaled down to 95 pounds.  I thought the thrusters might tire me out for the pull-ups and I needed to save as much energy as I could if I was going to get through 100 of those.
• I did a decent job of staying with the class, although Steph C and Cline got away from me towards the end of the workout.  I was concerned that this workout could take me over 30 minutes, but I managed to finish one second shy of 27 minutes.
• I nearly got hit by a car on the final sprint of the night, so I was going to need to stay alert on the traffic situation during those 100 meter sprints.
• Cline told me at the end of the workout that he used 105 pounds for his thrusters.  I tend to go slightly heavier than Cline when it comes to barbell movements, so this was a role reversal.  Perhaps I was a little too cautious with my choice of thruster weight.

LC had each of us go through our standard pull-up progressions first before we turned our attention to the thruster.  Each of us grabbed an empty barbell to practice with as LC broke down the movement and made sure we displayed proper form.  Then she told us to grab plates so that we could get our barbell ready for the workout.  I wasn't the only one that remembered I had gone light on the thruster back in February.  As we loaded up our barbells, Cline turned to me and asked me if I was going to be sandbagging again.  Super offensive.  I mean, he was 100% accurate in calling me out for going so light in February, but words hurt.  I planned on redeeming myself by using 105 pounds this time, while attempting to beat my previous time of 26:59.  Cline was also using 105, while Neil was going with the full 115.  Ashley and Bryan would be using 75 pounds.

When I did this in February, it was as part of a larger class, so there were more targets that I could latch on to in hopes that I wouldn't fall way behind everyone.  If I was going to stay with this class, I would need to keep up with Neil and Cline.  Bryan was strong on pull-ups, so he was going to be quick in this workout.  Ashley had only done 5 pull-ups per round in February and it sounded like she was going to do the same here.  There was no chance I'd be going twice as fast as her on the pull-up bar.  That left Neil and Cline.  Neil was likely to be a little faster than me on the thrusters and Cline was going to be faster on the sprints.  As for pull-ups, I rated us all as pretty even.  The deciding factor in how the three of us finished might just come down to how well we held it together for 10 rounds.

As much as I love to divulge every detail that I can remember from the workout in these blog posts, there was no way I was going to be able to remember all of my splits from this workout.  I noted what my time was at the end of round one and at the end of round ten (obviously), but everything in between was a bit of a blur.  You are constantly looking at the clock in this workout, but that is so you can see when your one minute of rest begins and ends.  I did try to figure out what my pace was as I went along in this workout to see if I was on track to beat my time from February, but it was too hard to remember the times at the end of every round I completed.  Sorry!

LC had told us that we should be able to complete 5 unbroken thrusters with the barbell weight we chose and that is precisely what the Dudes After Dark quintet did to kick off this workout.  When I got to the pull-up bar, I planned on doing sets of 2 pull-ups as fast as I could.  After completing my 5th set of two, I turned to run out the door.  As suspected, Bryan and Ashley were out leading the way.  I headed out the door alongside of Neil and we were joined by Cline before we hit the turnaround point.  The three of us came back into the gym together.  Time at the end of round 1: 1:10.

That was a nice quick round for me.  My splits per round were definitely going to get slower as this workout progressed, but if I could sneak in some sub-1:30 rounds early on, it would help even out those slower 2:30-ish rounds that were inevitable later in the WOD.  Round 2 began and I knocked out 5 more thrusters before sticking with the plan of doing five sets of two pull-ups.  Those 10 pull-ups took longer than the initial 10, but when I headed out the door, I was right behind Neil and Cline.  I hadn't dropped away from them.  Yet.

I didn't feel all that winded as I got ready for round 3, but this was where my performance began to tail off.  I made it through the 5 thrusters, but then I struggled on the pull-up bar.  The second pull-up of each set was becoming eerily close to a strict pull-up.  After four ugly sets like that, I decided to finish the round with 2 singles instead.  When I made my way out the door for the sprint, I saw that Cline and Neil were already at the turnaround point.  I was 50 meters behind them.  If I continued to be this far off their pace each round, they might lap me by the end.  I was not pleased.

Round 4 got off to an even rockier start.  Maybe I was rushing things because I was behind, but as I transitioned from the end of my third thruster into the start of my fourth thruster, the barbell got away from my body.  I couldn't control it and had to drop it.  I was quick about picking it back up again to complete the last two thrusters, but I'm sure LC began to have doubts about whether I chose the correct weight for this workout.  I was dead last.  I was supposed to go unbroken on my thrusters in every round, yet here I was dropping the barbell in round four.  The optics weren't good.  At the pull-up bar, I tried to get back to sets of two, but I only completed two sets like that before moving to singles.  Things were looking pretty bleak, but this would actually be the moment when I turned this workout around.  

As I did the first couple of singles, I noticed that I was getting my chin way over the bar as I wildly kipped myself upwards.  It dawned on me that I was probably wasting precious energy kipping that hard and propelling myself that high.  I needed to get my chin over the bar, not my entire neck.  So I decided to experiment a little bit.  Why not try and use a less forceful kip?  Sure, there was the chance that I'd not kip hard enough and get a no rep.  If that happened, I could go back to the wild kip.  But if this worked out, maybe I'd save enough energy to keep Neil and Cline from lapping me.  The lighter kip worked on my last few singles of round four and as I headed out the door, I saw that Neil and Cline were beginning the run back towards me.  I hadn't lost much ground to them in round four.  More importantly, I was feeling better about my chances of staying somewhat close to them.

For the rest of the workout, I completed all of my thrusters unbroken.  I'm not sure why, but I still felt compelled to start my pull-ups with a set of 2 before trusting in the singles with the light kip.  For the last 8 pull-ups of each round, I did two blocks of 4 quick singles.  That happened in each of the next four rounds.  When I headed out the door for sprint #5, Neil and Cline were no longer inward bound on their run.  They were still outward bound, meaning I had made up time on them.  As I headed out for the 6th sprint, I was right behind them, back in the same position I was when we had done round #2.  When I completed the 10th pull-up of round 7, I ran out the door knowing that Neil and Cline were still doing pull-ups.  I was now ahead of them!  I had worked so hard to push the pace and make up the deficit that I didn't want to let them catch me again.  I extended my lead even further on round 8.  I was headed back towards the gym before either of them started their run.  Now I was the one with a lead of over 50 meters.

As I took my required 60 seconds of rest before round nine, I made the decision to quit with that set of 2 I was doing to begin my pull-ups.  The singles with the light kip were working so well that there was no reason for me not to do all 10 reps that way.  I could go 4-3-3 on my quick singles and likely move faster than I had been the last four rounds.  After completing my 5 thrusters, I did 4 quick singles like I planned.  As I began the next set of 3, LC started yelling to me to stay on the bar.  I'm not sure if she meant "string those reps" or "don't take a break", but I interpreted it as the latter.  Rather than go 3-3 on the last 6 reps, I kept leaping up to the high bar until I completed all six pull-ups that remained.  My sprint was more of a jog, but I completed all 100 meters before Neil or Cline had finished their ninth round of pull-ups.

I lied.  I have a general idea of what the clock said at the end of round 9.  It was close to 23:00.  I know that because I remember thinking that I needed to finish the last round in under 2 minutes to break 26 minutes total.  (Round 10 wouldn't begin until around 24:00 due to the mandatory 1 minute rest period between rounds.)  I'd have to hustle, but it wasn't an impossible task.  I wasn't racing Neil and Cline anymore, I was racing the clock.  When my minute was up, I did those 5 thrusters as quickly as I could.  At the pull-up bar, I began with 4 quick singles.  I tried to keep the break short.  I had dreams of duplicating round 9 where I stayed on the bar until the remaining 6 pull-ups were done.  That was not to be.  I had to break these ones up into two blocks of three.  I did keep the break between those blocks relatively short though.  When pull-up #100 was finished, I bolted for the door.  I hesitated for a second to make sure I wasn't about to get crushed by a truck, then I sprinted to the turnaround point and back.  Final time: 25:39.

I'm not sure I can think of another Crossfit workout that I've done where I managed to completely turn around my fortunes in the middle of it.  Nearly 40% of the way through this workout, I was struggling badly.  Then I figured something out and picked up the pace the rest of the way.  I ended up a minute ahead of Cline and two minutes ahead of Neil after worrying early on that they were going to lap me.  It was great figuring out something that helped me with my pull-ups, but I think I was even prouder of the fact that I kept pushing the pace all the way until the end.  I could very easily have fallen into a lull once I caught back up to Cline and Neil.  Instead I kept finding ways to motivate myself and avoid letting up.  And I beat my time from February by 1 minute and 20 seconds with 10 more pounds on my barbell.  I'll definitely be trying this workout with the RX weight of 115 pounds the next time it gets scheduled.

Wednesday preview: The toll from two hard days in a row gets paid on Wednesday night when I foolishly decide to push my limits.  My body decides not to comply.