Double Grace, Double Cardio

Workout date: 8/7/17

I waited 21 months for the WOD that I wrote about in the last post to reappear in our programming, but it never showed up, so I just did it on my own.  That's not uncommon.  Our benchmark WODs show up every 3 months.  There are other famous Crossfit WODs that will pop up every 6-12 months.     Certain strength WODs will appear regularly throughout the year.  If a workout doesn't fit into any of those categories though, it might be a long time before you see it make another appearance.  That's why it is always a bummer to miss a WOD that looks good on the KOP blog.  Who knows when that opportunity will arise again?  That's how I felt when I missed Double Grace in June.

"Double Grace"
60 clean and jerks (135/95)

Grace would qualify as a famous Crossfit WOD that isn't part of our benchmark program this year, but Double Grace wouldn't.  The first time I had even heard of Double Grace was when I was watching the 2014 Crossfit Games.  It was announced as the final event of the Games and it was captivating watching the athletes complete 60 clean and jerks at 135/95 pounds in the time it took me to complete the more common 30 reps.  If they were taking on regular Grace, these monsters would have ripped through the 30 reps at breakneck speed.  With 60 reps required, these world-class athletes had to pace themselves.  It was still a fast event, but they couldn't afford to sprint at the start and hope to hold on at the end.

Having seen the fittest people on Earth dial it back a notch when taking on this WOD, I thought it would be wise of me to do the same.  I just didn't think I'd be doing this workout in early August.  I had seen it programmed on a weekend in June, but I wasn't around to participate.  (By now you know I'm not a big fan of working out on the weekend, so the fact that I would have come in had I been around lets you know how interested I was in this WOD.)  There was part of me that thought it could end up as a benchmark WOD in 2018, so maybe I'd only have to wait until January to see it again.  I had never seen it in the programming prior to June (4.5 year dry spell), but here it was again a mere 8 weeks later.  Not that I was complaining.  I was pretty excited to see it return because I had a game plan in my head already.

I'd get to implement that plan while taking part in the Monday 6:30 with Coach Giulz and 8 other folks.  Giulz covered stringing together clean and jerks with the 9 of us before talking about the various strategies that we might use to get through so many reps.  My strategy?  I was going to do 20 sets of 3.  I figured 3 reps was a small enough number that I could string the reps without completely wearing out my grip.  It also seemed like an amount where I wouldn't need long breaks between sets. Giulz told us that we should keep this workout under 10 minutes, which worked out to two of my sets per minute.  That wasn't a lot to ask.  I also knew that my best Grace (30 reps) time was 2:35, so even if I did the first 30 reps in a laid back 4 minutes, I'd still have 6 minutes for the back half.  Because I had convinced myself that 10 minutes would be "easy", I lowered my personal goal to 8:30 for this workout.

How'd that go?  Not so well.  I paced this workout way too much.  I was calmly stringing three reps at a time and taking a breather between sets.  When my grip started to fatigue, I transitioned to three quick singles, which didn't take much longer to do.  The problem was that I had built 19 breaks into my workout.  Your breaks are always longer than they feel, so I was shocked when I got to 30 reps and saw 4:35 on the clock.  I was breathing heavily at the midway point and I was well beyond the pace I needed for 8:30.  I wasn't even sure I'd make it under 10:00!

I stubbornly stuck with my plan for 7 more sets, bringing the number of reps completed to 51.  When I got there, 10 minutes had already elapsed on the clock.  I was mad at myself for moving so slowly, for coming up with yet another lousy plan, and for being in such poor shape that these sets of 3 were exhausting me.  I had tried doing this workout calmly.   Now it was time to be angry.  I grabbed the barbell, cleaned it up to my shoulders, and jerked it overhead.  Instead of dropping it to the floor, I threw it down.  Then I got right back up to the barbell and did it again.  And again.  I kept using my rage to motivate me until all 9 remaining clean and jerks were finished.  Final time: 11:02.

Yeah, that was a dumb way of tackling that workout.  If it comes up again in two months (or two years), I would take on much bigger sets.  It wouldn't be necessary to string the reps, but having less rest periods would improve my time tremendously.  10 minutes is a very reasonable time domain for this workout.  I just need to attack it the whole way through like I did at the very end of this attempt.

Danielle and Actuary Mike were both in the 6:30 class and they both wanted to do more work at Open Strength.  Neither of them got enough cardio from Double Grace.  Danielle was advocating for double cardio in the form of an assault bike WOD, while Mike was advocating for double cardio in the form of the Flight Simulator.  It was tough to ignore the momentum I had built up with my jump rope, so I told Mike that I would join him and Chris S on the Flight Simulator.  I apologized to Danielle for snubbing her and the assault bikes.

I believe this was Chris's first experience with the Flight Simulator and I warned him that it was a mental battle as much as it was a physical one.  Chris seemed just as proficient with the jump rope as I was.  He could do the 500 double unders required in this workout.  It was all the extra double unders that didn't count that could drive you crazy.  I shared stories with him of how I'd gotten up to the sets of 45 or 50 and came within one rep of completing that stage of the workout only to fail and have to start over again.  That was the real difficulty in this WOD.  Could you avoid those big sets that didn't count?  And if you couldn't, how well could you recover from them, both physically and mentally?

While I was counseling Chris on the importance of not getting angry during the Flight Simulator, I was also taking time to remind myself to stay calm over the next 25 minutes.  I had hit the home stretch of this workout several times only to fall just short.  I could finish this, I just had to remain calm.  There was no point in beginning a new set if I didn't feel relaxed enough to get through the entire round unbroken.  If that meant taking a longer break than I normally do between sets, so be it.  That was a much sounder strategy than rushing into a set and falling a few reps short.

Rather than start a clock and watch it count up to 25 minutes, we decided to just look at one of the running clocks, pick out a time to go and count up from there.  So if it read 38 minutes when we began, we would be capped at 63 minutes.  This was a good plan, except somebody else in the gym reset the clock we were using about 13 minutes into the workout.  That created some unnecessary stress, but we just turned around and counted off 12 minutes from the other running clock and used that the rest of the way.

I haven't had trouble with the early sets of the Flight Simulator recently and that remained the pattern on this try.  I got through the sets of 5, 10, and 15 in under a minute.  The sets at 20 and 25 would follow soon after.  It wasn't until I got to the set of 30 that I tripped up.  On my 1st attempt, I got 8 reps.  On my 2nd attempt, I got 17.  I told myself to remain calm.  There was part of me beginning to fear the worst.  If I was screwing up multiple times on the round of 30, how was I going to get through the rounds of 45 and 50 unscathed?  I took a few extra moments before going after 30 a third time.  I made it through 30 in a row and took a break.  I couldn't take three tries at every big set.  I needed to get them on the first attempt more often than not.

That's when I got hot.  I did 35 in a row.  Then 40 in a row.  Followed by sets of 45, 50, 45, 40, and 35.  Seven big sets in a row and I didn't mess up on any of them.  I took ample time between those sets, but I felt ready each time I began to twirl the rope.  While I was knocking out the hardest rounds in this workout, Chris was struggling.  I heard him swear at one point and it was a result of him failing after 39 reps in the round of 40.  I completely sympathized with him.  If not at that point, then definitely after he did the same exact thing two more times.  That was 117 double unders he had done and he got credit for none of them.  It's an incredibly frustrating feeling that I had definitely experienced myself.

My hot streak officially came to an end when I went to begin the round of 30 and hit myself with the rope before completing a single rep.  I was definitely getting tired, but the clock was telling me I had a ton of time left to get through the last six sets.  I started doing math, thinking to myself that 105 double unders in the remaining time was like my opening lifts at the BBC meet: something I should be able to do in my sleep.  I took some additional time before trying again.  I got 30 in a row.  75 to go, plenty of time, stay calm!

My pre-set hiccup would follow me to the rounds of 25 and 20.  I went to start the set and hit myself before completing the first rep.  I took a few moments to reset each time before completing the round on my next attempt.  All I had left were the rounds of 15, 10, and 5, the three sets I rattled off in about 40 seconds at the beginning of the workout.  There was nearly 4 minutes remaining.  Unless I set a new low in terms of choking at a big moment, I was going to complete the Flight Simulator.

Someone must have spooked me because the pre-set hiccups went away.  I got the set of 15 without messing up.  I took a breath before going into the set of 10.  Didn't mess up there.  Just 5 more!  One big exhale, followed by one big inhale, then I did the last 5 reps.  I finally made it!  I tossed my jump rope towards the empty pull-up rig and let out a small "yeah!" to celebrate.  I had made a bunch of attempts at this WOD over the last two years and fallen short, but now I could check it off my list.  Final time: 22:10.

Neither Mike nor Chris would end up finishing the Flight Simulator on this evening, but their form is strong enough that I suspect it won't take many more tries before they get to the end.  As for me, I had no desire to ever do this workout again.  It's not that I hate it or anything.  It was just one of those goals that I thought would be cool to reach and now that I've reached it, I don't see the point in doing it a second time.  I almost wanted to throw my jump rope away now that I had completed my two major goals of 100 consecutive double unders and the Flight Simulator.  With those two challenges in the books, I could spend more time working on one of my many other deficiencies in the gym.

Tuesday preview: It's LC's birthday and she's nowhere to be found.  Hot Helen is horrendous.  I find myself not enjoying pistols for once.