Girdle Of Pain

Workout date: 10/17/17

Last month, Jenn and I began celebrating 20 years together by taking a long weekend trip to wine country.  That was designed to be a present to her.  My present would come in mid-October.  There are two iconic race tracks in the US when it comes to horse racing.  I grew up next to one of those tracks: Saratoga.  I've been to Saratoga hundreds of times in my life.  The city of Saratoga Springs is my favorite place in the world.  It's not just the race track that puts it at the top of the list (although that is a major contributing factor).  Saratoga also has a national park.  Most of the cross country championships I participated in were held at that park and it became my favorite spot to run.  SPAC (Saratoga Performing Arts Center) was the best place in the area to catch a concert.  There's a lot going on in Saratoga, especially when the weather is nice.

The second iconic race track is called Keeneland and is located in Lexington, Kentucky.  Both Keeneland and Saratoga are only open for six weeks each year.  Saratoga is open for six consecutive weeks in July and August.  Keeneland is open for three weeks in April and three weeks in October.  Jenn surprised me by not only setting up my first ever trip to Keeneland, but by entering me in their fall handicapping contest.  The result?  I bombed out of the handicapping contest, but I did meet a guy at the contest who I've become fast friends with.  As for Keeneland itself, it is a beautiful track with top quality racing.  It's a little on the small side and it is quite a bit fancier than Saratoga, at least the part of Saratoga that I've experienced.  (Note: You can find me by the 1/8 pole on Opening Day at Saratoga, sitting on a bench with my shorts on, drinking a beer.  I'm sure you can find some people at Keeneland doing something similar, but it felt like everyone was dressed to the nines.  And the staff all have very formal green jackets on, making you wonder whether they are on loan from Augusta when the Masters isn't being played.)  Anyways, it was a bucket list item to visit Keeneland and the surrounding area, especially Old Friends farm.  Old Friends is a retirement farm for race horses and my second favorite horse of all-time lives there.  Getting to meet and have my picture taken with Silver Charm was a thrill I'll never forget.

We flew home on Monday, so I wouldn't get back to the gym until Tuesday night.  Dudes After Dark would be focused on one very special lady and her name is Nancy:

"Nancy"

5 rounds

400 meter run

15 overhead squats (95/65)

Completing Nancy in under 15 minutes was one of my goals for 2017.  My best time on this WOD was 15:35 and that came in December of last year.  Given 12 months and at least 4 attempts at it (this was a KOP benchmark WOD this year), I figured it was a slam dunk that I could trim 36 seconds off of my time.  If only it were that easy!  When I did this workout in January, I hurt my back during it, finishing in 20:36.  I had no back problems when I did this in April, but the best I could do was 16:09.    I wasn't at the gym when this came up in July, so Tuesday's attempt would be my last chance unless I decided to do it at an Open Gym later in the year.

LC had a half-dozen of us in class for Dudes After Dark.  It was me, Esra, Brian S, John McHugh, Neil, and Cline.  The six of us started out with a game on the rower.  The rowers have a "fish game" on them where you try to eat minnows and avoid sharks by rowing at different paces.  If you want to move higher on the monitor, row faster.  Trying to drop below an encroaching shark?  Row slower.  Sounds simple, but just about all of us had difficulty getting our speed right.  Towards the end I got the hang of it, but my score wasn't good enough to beat Brian's.  This wouldn't be the only time that Brian would finish as top dog.

We continued on with some stretching.  Some of that stretching involved using bands, some of it involved a PVC pipe.  When that was complete, LC asked us to put the PVC pipes away, grab a barbell, and form one line facing the lobby.  I went around and gathered up the PVC pipes from my classmates and put them away.  Total rookie move.  It meant I was the last one to grab my barbell and the last one to line up.  The only spot left was the area in the back of the gym, furthest away from the side door we'd be running in and out of.  My chances of breaking 15 minutes were already kaput.

That didn't mean I couldn't put up a time I'd be proud of.  After all, the weather was actually to my liking for once.  It was borderline chilly outside, perfect running weather in my estimation.  And this WOD was all about running.  I believed that.  Neil believed that.  Cline believed that.  The only one who didn't seem to be on board with that logic was LC.  We were asking her how she improved her running so much to make it on the gym leaderboard for Nancy.  LC said she didn't make it on the board because her running improved.  The key, according to her, was simply refusing to put the barbell down during the sets of overhead squats.  We called shenanigans.  I had gone unbroken on my overheads for this entire WOD a handful of times and I never came remotely close to LC's board-worthy time of 13 and a half minutes.

The six of us walked over to the barrier, ready for our last tussle with Nancy.  Here's my round-by-round recap:

• Round 1: Cline and Brian were out in front on the run, but I wasn't too far behind them.  I was the third one to my barbell, but after completing 15 consecutive overhead squats, I was the first one back out the door.
• Round 2: Similar story as round one.  Cline and Brian passed me on the run.  I held on for all 15 overhead squats, but I wasn't fast enough to get out the door before Brian.  Based on what LC had said prior to the workout, I was on track for 13 and a half minutes.  Except the clock was telling me a completely different story.  If I wanted to break 15 minutes, I would need to find a way to stay at my current pace.
• Round 3: Cline passed me on the run yet again and Neil and John were starting to close in on me.  I began noticing some back pain during the run.  Nothing as severe as what I felt when I did this in January, but this back pain was being accompanied by some mild abdominal pain.  I was still sore from the 60 GHD sit-ups I had done in the workout on Thursday.  This girdle of pain caused me to move slower on the overhead squats.  I continued to follow LC's directions on refusing to put the barbell down, stringing 15 reps in a row for the 3rd straight round.  Neil was out the door before me, but I was in front of Cline and John.
• Round 4: Neil is supposed to hate running, but he extended his lead on me during the 4th run.  Cline and John would pass me near the end of the 400 meters with Cline telling me to lengthen my stride and John letting me know that I needed to come back to Endurance next year.  They were both trying to provide encouragement, but I was definitely hurting at this stage.  I walked back to my barbell once I got through the door.  Once there, I did 15 consecutive overhead squats for the 4th round in a row.  Cline and John were out the door just in front of me.
• Round 5: Brian was already on his 5th round of overhead squats when I headed out for the final run.  Neil was wrapping up his 400 meters.  Cline and John were in my sights, but I was unable to reel them in during my last quarter-mile.  I tried my best to ignore the pain I was in, moving through 15 overheads quicker than I had in rounds three and four.  It was almost fast enough to catch John at the end, but I would end up finishing right behind him.  Final time: 18:47.

So much for the key to the workout being one's willingness to hold on to the barbell.  I didn't put it down once during the overhead squats and I was more than 5 minutes behind LC's time.  This was a running WOD, without a doubt.

My time wasn't as bad as it might look at first glance.  It probably took 5-10 seconds to get from the side door to my barbell in the back of the gym (and vice versa).  That extra distance was covered 9 times in this WOD, meaning my time was about 45-90 seconds beyond what it would have been had I lined up near the door.  However, even if you were generous enough to cut 90 seconds off of my time, that would still leave me north of 17 minutes on a workout that I'm supposedly good at, performed under ideal conditions.  It was clear that I had regressed.  There was no chance of me completing Nancy in less than 15 minutes this year.  And it was unlikely to ever happen.

The cash-out was a 1,000 meter row that focused on form, not time.  We all switched our monitors from the fish game to an option that showed a graphic representation of our pulls on the rower.  If we pulled properly, a perfect arc would appear on the screen.  If there was a flaw in our form, something other than an arc would show up.  Because we would be rowing for 1,000 meters, we'd get plenty of practice trying to create that perfect arc.

I think this would have been more productive had we done it before Nancy, rather than after.  The only one who seemed capable of getting this elusive arc on their screen was Neil.  The rest of us either had poor rowing form, were too tired, or were dealing with a combination of both of those issues.  I fell into that final category.  There was no arc on my screen.  Each of my pulls resulted in a graph that looked like roadkill more than anything else.  It was a lumpy blob with a flat portion along the top that resembled a tire track.  I don't think I'll be teaching any rowing seminars in the future.  I slowly made my way to 1,000 meters and was happy to head home once that was done.

Wednesday preview: A barbell EMOM with some built-in rest.  What a novel concept!  Neil and I focus on taking down Rich.  A member of the BBC keeps getting accosted by barbells at Wednesday night classes.