Snapped

Workout date: 6/8/17

Inside our gym, we have a giant whiteboard that shows the top 3 male and female performances in various workouts and lifts that are common to Crossfit.  Want to know who is fastest at Fran or Grace?  Want to know who has performed the heaviest back squat or has the highest box jump?  Curious as to who has been the fastest rower or runner at KOP through the years?  It's all up there.  The longer I've been doing Crossfit, the more I've had to come to grips with the fact that my chances of getting on that whiteboard are fading.  I used to think I might make it on there for the overhead squat, but I'm now almost 50 pounds behind the top 3 men despite being above average on that lift.  My best shot now is to make it for rowing, but trimming 5 seconds off of your 500 meter time is harder than it sounds.  If only one of the categories on that whiteboard was "sweat produced".  I could probably hold on to the top spot in that category until the day KOP closes its doors.

Everyone likes to say that they sweat a lot, but the truth is that I've encountered very few people at KOP who come close to perspiring as effusively as I do.  Scott was a big guy who used to go to our gym and that man could make it rain during a workout.  More recently, I've discovered that Actuary Mike can soak his way through a shirt while completing a WOD.  Those examples tend to be the exception rather than the rule, which is why I don't think most people can appreciate how difficult the summer weather can be for me.  It's not just that the excessive humidity in our gym makes me dehydrated.  Being a sweaty, slimy mess causes other problems.  Holding on to the pull-up rig becomes very difficult.  I'm terrified of losing my grip on the KB whenever I swing it.  Catching a wall ball is no longer a given as it can slide right through my hands.  The degree of difficulty with nearly everything in the gym gets ratcheted up when I'm flinging sweat everywhere and that can have an effect on me mentally.  These WODs are tough enough to do when you are fresh and sweat-free.  The combination of working with slippery objects while being extra fatigued can drive you nuts.  Pretty soon everything in the gym is bothering you, sweat-related or not.

As the temperatures began to rise in late May and early June, I found myself becoming more frustrated in the gym.  You might remember that I went through a similar phase last year.  I was in the middle of Fight Gone Bad when I hit my breaking point.  I left during the second round of the workout and didn't return for 5 weeks.  I needed to get my head right.  It's also not a coincidence that when I returned, it was Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer.  Cooler temps were on the way.  Conditions in the gym were about to become more hospitable to me.  Last year I made it until August before I needed a break, but this year I could tell things were getting to me earlier in the calendar.  Things came to a head with Thursday's workout.

There are several reasons that I don't work out in the annex anymore.  It always feels crowded in there.  Occasionally there were disputes about who signed up for class in there and who did not.  Packing a large amount of people into a small space can make it feel even hotter than it is (and it could be pretty warm in there to begin with).  Thursday's 6:30 class in the main gym felt like it was taking place in the annex.  When I signed up for this class late Thursday afternoon, there was only 1 other person signed up at the time.  Open Strength was scheduled for the same time in the main gym, but no one was signed up for that when I looked.  Fast forward to 6:30 and the gym was packed.  There were only 9 of us there for class with Coach Giulz, but there were lots of people there for Open Strength.  Lifters were lined up on the "magic platform".  They were lined up along the far end of the gym.  Some of the racks were being used.  As the 9 of us got out our equipment for the WOD, I couldn't help but feel like a member of Jon Snow's army in the Battle of the Bastards:

We're going to have to climb over the mound of dead bodies to finish this workout

Part of the problem was that each of the athletes needed quite a bit of room to do this WOD.  Here's a look at what we'd be doing:

Thursday's WOD:

100 double unders, then
21-15-9 of
Hang power cleans (115/75)
Chest-to-bar pull-ups, then
100 double unders

You needed room on the pull-up rig for everyone (made more difficult with lifters using racks connected to the pull-up rig).  You needed room for barbells and you needed room to jump rope (made more difficult with lifters on the platform and along the back of the gym).  I could feel claustrophobic anxiety setting in before we even began.

I thought I was already obsessing about worst case scenarios, but the warmup showed me that I was mistaken.  Giulz wanted us to practice jumping rope by doing 30 seconds of single unders.  Easy enough, right?  Wrong!  As I was in the middle of working on my single unders, my rope snapped.  One of the handles came flying off of my rope.  I looked around to see if I could find the screw that should have held the handle in place, but my search was in vain.  That silver screw had seemingly melted into the gym mat and disappeared.  I did not have a backup jump rope with me, so that meant I'd have to grab one of the ropes hanging over behind the ring area.  I've had my struggles doing 200 double unders with my own rope and that one was specifically sized for me.  I could only imagine how things were going to go with a random rope that I was hurriedly picking so that I could rejoin the warmup.  When I found one that seemed suitable, I hopped back in with class.  Giulz had asked everyone to do as many double unders as they could in 30 seconds to determine whether or not they should scale the 200 asked of them in this WOD.  There was only about 10 seconds left when I came back with my rope, so I was lucky to get 13 reps in before time was called.  Giulz didn't look impressed when I told her my score was 13, but I assured her I'd be okay doing all 200 double unders.

Next we went over the hang power cleans.  I knew these were grip killers and that they would have an effect on my ability to do chest-to-bar pull-ups, so I decided to scale the weight, using 95 pounds instead of the RX weight of 115.  I tend to go with the same weight as Rob C and Matt E (who were both in this class) when there are barbell movements in a WOD, so it was understandable that they both gave me the eyebrow when I said I was using 95 pounds rather than 115.  All I could say was that the chest-to-bar pull-ups were a bigger priority for me in this workout.  Giulz watched me warm up and gave me some advice on the hang power cleans.  Usually I would let the barbell come all the way back down to my knee before moving into the next rep, but Giulz advised me to try and cycle through the reps from the high hang (barbell at upper thigh) to try and save some grip strength.  Sounded like a plan to me.

The chest-to-bar pull-up warmup was no different than what we always do in preparation for work on the pull-up rig.  There was some time spent in a dead hang, then some kipping progressions, followed by a request from Giulz that we show her a few reps of what we planned on doing in the workout.

The warmup was over.  It was time to take on this WOD.  I was down at the back of the gym along with Steph C and Mike C.  There were two lifters stationed between us and the bathrooms.  Bekah was using the rack at the far end of the gym.  The class made two lines out of the barbells, one line near the pull-up rig, one across the way closer to the rings.  For the double unders, we were going to be single file between the two rows of barbells.  It was definitely tight quarters, but it was what we had to work with.

My plan for the double unders was to try and do as many as I could in a row without burning myself out.  I've been trying for a while to do 100 in a row, but even if I pulled that off at the beginning of this WOD, I'd be too tired to continue on and do the rest of the workout.  My first set was fairly large as I came up just short of 40 reps to start things off.  I needed 3 more sets to reach 100 and I didn't feel like I took long breaks between sets (although I did keep checking to make sure I wasn't too close to the lifters at the beginning of a new set).  Despite moving at what I thought was a solid pace, all of my 8 classmates were on to the hang power cleans before me.  Frustration meter: rising.

Because I had gone light on the weight for the hang power clean, there was a real chance that I could do all 21 reps in a row and catch up with my classmates.  But I wasn't used to cycling from the high hang.  I made it through 12 reps and had to drop my barbell.  Breaking up the 21 reps into two sets wasn't awful.  How winded I was after only doing 12 reps was.  I needed a good-sized breather before I continued on and finished off the remaining 9 reps.  Frustration meter: continuing to rise.

The worst part of this workout took place at the pull-up rig.  With Bekah using up the rack at the back of the gym, the remaining space needed to be shared by Mike and me.  I had already decided that my time wasn't going to be very good on this workout, so I deferred to Mike on the pull-up bar for the most part.  Still, it was aggravating that in a class of only 9 people, I had to wait on someone to do my chest-to-bar pull-ups.  Don't get me wrong.  Mike was very gracious about waiting on me as well.  And Bekah did her best to move her plates out of the way so that I had a bit more room to operate.  But with only 9 folks in class, we never should have been this cramped.  The fact that I was messing up as I did the chest-to-bar pull-ups only made matters worse.  I was trying to be efficient and save energy by only doing a mild kip for each rep, but I missed hitting my chest against the bar several times during that initial round of 21.  Exhaustion + dehydration + no room + no reps = one very unhappy athlete.  Frustration meter: boiling over.

I guess the good news about falling so far behind in class is that you get some separation from the other athletes.  Mike had moved on to his barbell while I kept working on my 21 chest-to-bar pull-ups.  When I was done there, he was ready to come back to the pull-up rig.  For the most part, we didn't have to wait on each other in the rounds of 15 and 9.  I did three sets of 5 reps for the hang power cleans.  I should have been able to do larger chunks than that, but my head really was no longer in the workout.  I was able to get all 9 reps during my last round at the barbell.  For the chest-to-bar pull-ups, I used a lot of energy with my wild kip, but I was sick of no-repping myself and didn't want to take any chances.  Yes, my chest was crashing against the bar each time, but that was better than missing it.  I did small sets of singles to get through the rounds of 15 and 9.

There were only a couple of us still working when I got back to my rented jump rope for the day.  The one positive I could take from this workout was that my double unders weren't completely awful given that I was using a random rope that was probably a bit too long for me.  It took me 5 sets to complete my final 100 reps.  No complaints here about averaging 20 reps per set.  Final time: 18:17.

As I put back the jump rope I used, I couldn't help but be angry.  For the last four years, the gym has generally served as a sanctuary for me.  I go there to get away from my frustrations, to make myself feel better.  But during the last couple of weeks, I had several instances where I was leaving the gym feeling worse than when I had walked in.  A lot of that was due to the weather and the effect it has on my body.  I can't make myself sweat less and I can't make the gym any less humid.  My performances at the gym were bound to be worse than normal over the next few months and there was little I could do about it.  That wasn't a pleasant thought for me, but that was the reality of the situation.

There was more to it than that though.  Part of what used to drive me to go to the gym so much was having real goals that I wanted to achieve.  I'm not talking about the 10 goals that I come up with at the beginning of the year (although it would be nice to check another one of those off of my list!).  I'm talking about becoming consumed with something.  After the Rebuilding Together Philadelphia outing, I talked with Shawna about her goals at the gym.  At the brew pub on Wednesday night, I talked with Jenna about her goals.  Other folks from the gym came up in conversation and we talked about what they were working towards.  And when the question of "what are you working towards" was pointed back to me, I didn't have much of a response.  I don't really have some big goal that I'm trying to achieve.  I don't do individual competitions anymore.  I wasn't doing King and Queen this year because it conflicted with opening weekend at Saratoga.  I agreed to join Cline, Kris, and Raj for Brawl In The Burbs at the end of August, but that is more of a fun event than a serious one.

What am I working towards?  What is driving me to keep coming back to the gym?  I didn't know.  I felt like it was time for another break from the gym.  Not a 5 week break.  I just wanted to do some stuff outside of the gym for a change.

Saturday/Tuesday preview: Could I possibly get another medal at a local 5K run?  Would my second time taking a spin class be as traumatic as my first experience?  (The first one was so bad that it kept me away for over 15 years!)