It wasn't a good weekend for parties. On Friday, I went to the KOP End of Summer party. It used to be my second favorite event on the KOP calendar, but this year's edition seemed to fall flat. I didn't attend this party last year, so I can't speak as to whether there was a difference between that one and the one I went to on Friday, but compared to the End of Summer parties I had been to in years past, this one felt like it lacked a spark. We don't take attendance at the End of Summer party, but it seemed to me that less people were there than usual. Later on, more people trickled in, but they didn't seem to be keen on participating. Even some of those who were there at the beginning (myself included) started to migrate to the lobby at a certain point.
That wasn't the most awkward party of the weekend for me though. A buddy of mine is getting married in November and his bachelor party was on Saturday. As I did a month ago, I got on the road early Saturday morning and drove all the way up to Saratoga. There were no ponies to bet on, but there was a beer and music festival going on at the track and that was stop #1 for the bachelor party. (Note: I had no idea other events were held at the track when racing season was over. What a fantastic idea! Although I did have to be restrained from betting on random things while attending the festival.) That part of the bachelor party wasn't so bad, but there were a lot of other things that went down that made me feel old. Here are a few:
- Before we got on the road to drive to the festival, one member of our group said that we needed to stop at Walgreen's to pick up Pepto Bismol. That's how every great bachelor party starts, right?
- After the festival, we regrouped at the hotel that a bunch of the guys were staying at. We all huddled into one room to hang out for a bit. There was a giant clear jug with liquid in it. I suspected it was some alcoholic concoction. It was not. I was told that it was "adult pedialyte" and that I was more than welcome to have some. Hard pass.
- At around 9:30, we were out at a bar. Having gotten up super early to drive 5 hours, I started yawning. My solution was to stop drinking beer and to switch to rum and coke. (Another buddy who didn't go was highly amused by this. He suggested that most people would go for coffee if they needed caffeine. I countered that this was a bachelor party and any form of caffeine needed to be accompanied by alcohol.) I was maybe two sips into my rum and coke when I heard that a bunch of people were thinking about calling it a night. My ride was in that group, so I guzzled down the remainder of my drink and headed back to my buddy's house.
I drove back home on Sunday evening. On Monday morning, I went to the doctor for my twice-a-year visit. He didn't tell me I was old. He told me I was fat. My doctor is big on getting his patients to lose weight and he has told me several times that I was dangerously close to being obese according to my BMI. I don't think they accurately measure my weight because they weigh me right when I walk in, so I'm fully clothed and have my wallet, keys, and cell phone on me, inflating my true weight. Compared to what my scale at home tells me, their measurement is always about 8 pounds higher. On my last two visits to the doctor, I tipped the scales at 215. This time I weighed 222 (so really 214). My doctor informed me that my 7 pounds of weight gain had made me officially obese. Hooray! Usually he would follow such news by launching into me about dropping some pounds, but this time he paused. He looked me over and admitted that I didn't look heavier. He asked me if I thought I might have put on muscle. I told him that I would love to believe that, but it probably wasn't true. All things considered, he went easy on me about my weight. He advocated better portion control and told me that he wanted me to fall below the obese range when he saw me in 6 months.
Some additional exercise couldn't hurt my pursuit of being slimmer, so I headed to the Monday 6:30 class at KOP. Giulz would be coaching 12 athletes this evening, which was probably going to be tricky given the WOD we were doing. The workout programmed for Monday was one that we hadn't seen in about 18 months. It was the first Open workout of 2016. Here's how we kicked off the Open a year ago:
Open Workout 16.1
20 minute AMRAP
25 ft overhead walking lunge (95/65)
8 burpees over the barbell
25 ft overhead walking lunge
8 chest-to-bar pull-ups
*Every 5 ft of overhead walking lunge = 1 rep
When this WOD was announced last year, it became a logistical nightmare for Crossfit boxes around the world. This wasn't going to be a workout where 10 people could do it at a time. Every athlete needed their own fairly wide lane to complete their overhead walking lunges. Those lanes had to be about 30 ft long (25 ft for lunges and some additional room at one end for burpees). Each athlete needed their own pull-up bar as well. We're very lucky at KOP to have a large gym, but even we had to be creative to squeeze in 6 or 7 people per heat when this all went down. Jump ahead 18 months later and we had 12 people in a class that wasn't long enough to run multiple heats. How was that gonna work?
My guess was that this would become a partner WOD. I wouldn't be heartbroken if that was the case. This was one of those workouts that dragged on and on. If we changed it so that one partner did a round while the other partner rested, it would probably result in a workout where we could push the pace for the entirety of the 20 minutes. Giulz had a different solution though. This was meant to be a re-test of 16.1 for those of us who took part in the Open a year ago. Making this a partner WOD would defeat the purpose of having this workout programmed again. So Giulz split us up into two groups. Those who had done 16.1 previously went to the near end of the gym. Those who had not went to the far end. The folks at the far end were going to do a scale of this workout that would require less space. As for the rest of us, we would have lanes of some length. Those of us closer to the lobby had full lanes. The athletes that were closer to the bathrooms would have abbreviated lanes. They would be lunging in place (25 ft was approximately 8 full lunges) for the overhead part of this workout.
I was part of the lucky group that had a full lane, but things were still very tight in the area that I was working. Mike was to my left and Tia was to my right. When we warmed up on the overhead lunges, it seemed like our barbells were going to collide with one another as we lunged, but we had a tiny amount of space between them. There were no issues on the burpees, but I was very concerned that I would kick Mike on the pull-up rig when I did my chest-to-bar pull-ups. I told him that I had no problems waiting on him to do his chest-to-bar pull-ups because he was going to be much faster than me, but he didn't think that was necessary. We'd figure it out a compromise as the workout progressed.
It was finally a cool night at the gym, so I decided to be a lot more aggressive in my approach. This was a long workout, but I was going to go guns blazing right from the start. I knew that the overhead walking lunge would be something that I'd do very well. If I could do a quick first round of burpees, then maybe I could build a lead on Mike that would help me complete the chest-to-bar pull-ups before he got to the pull-up rig. I'd be solving our congestion problem immediately. That was my hope anyways.
I did move extremely fast during round one. I marched towards the whiteboard with my barbell overhead. I got to the 25 ft mark and bounced through the burpees as quick as I could. I was more wobbly on the lunges to the pull-up rig, but I never needed to stop. This would be the pattern through the entire workout. The lunges toward the whiteboard were easy because I had done chest-to-bar pull-ups just before them and those didn't take a toll on your legs. The lunges away from the whiteboard were difficult because you had just done a bunch of burpees and those definitely affected your legs.
I had a decent lead on Mike when I got to the pull-up rig, so I tried to hurry and complete my 8 chest-to-bar pull-ups before he got there. I had 6 reps completed by the time he returned. I think he knew I was almost done, so he took his time transitioning to the chest-to-bar pull-ups. That pause he took before beginning allowed me to finish my last 2 reps. I got out of his way and started my next set of overhead walking lunges. First round time: 2:15.
I fell 5 reps short of 6 full rounds when I did this in March 2016, so I was hoping to complete the 6th round this time around. That super fast first round put me well ahead of the pace I would need to accomplish that goal. Unfortunately, there was no chance I'd keep up that pace. At the end of round two, the clock was close to 5:30. At the end of round three, it was near 9:30. 4 minute rounds weren't going to cut it. I needed to find a way to bring it back down to the 3:30 range if I wanted to get 6 rounds.
I had plenty of motivation to keep moving. I got one full section ahead of Mike during round one, but that was as big as my lead would get. Every time I looked up and saw Mike, it seemed like he was about to catch me. That would inspire me to pick up the pace as much as I could. I wanted to maintain that one section lead if only so we didn't have a dilemma to deal with at the pull-up rig.
The clock was closing in on 14 minutes when I finished round 4. At the beginning of round 5, Tia and I marched towards the whiteboard together. I got to the end of my lane first and began doing some slow burpees. Tia reached the end of her lane and dropped her barbell. It crashed into mine, rotating my barbell so that it was diagonal to the magic platform. She apologized to me, but it didn't throw me off at all. I was so tired that I just started falling on my belly at an angle to match the direction of my barbell. I did the remainder of my burpees this way.
I likely told myself that the chest-to-bar pull-ups I was doing at the end of round five were the last ones that I'd have to do. That's the only way I can explain completing the fifth round quicker than I completed the fourth round. I was back to a four minute clip for round five, leaving me two minutes to get some work done in round 6. I tried not to take too long before getting my barbell overhead because I knew I could get the lunges done fast. When I reached the end of my lane, I tried to duplicate the burpees I had done way back in round one. That was a pipe dream. After the 2nd burpee, I needed to stop. After the 3rd burpee, I needed to stop. Each time my chest hit the floor, I was knocking the wind out of my lungs and there wasn't much in there to begin with. The same thing was happening on the chest-to-bar pull-ups, which explains why those gradually took longer and longer to complete.
Giulz was counting down how much time we had left and I began to worry that I wouldn't finish the burpees. I didn't allow myself to stop on the remaining five burpees. I had a few seconds left when I completed the burpees, so I hopped up, got the barbell overhead and did two quick lunges to get past the 5 ft mark. That earned me one extra rep. Final score: 5+14 (144 reps).
That was 7 reps less than my original score on 16.1, but overall I was pretty happy with my performance. I took 10 minutes to recover from the workout before continuing on with Endurance. A couple weeks ago, I ran a mile and a half after class to get some extra cardio work done. That was six trips along the 400 meter loop. Tonight I would be doing eight loops, making it a full two miles. Once again, I wasn't timing my run, although an encounter I had at the end of my run made me wish that I had.
When I ran 1.5 miles after class a couple weeks back, I remember getting to the 3rd or 4th loop and thinking that I might prefer to stop after a mile rather than do all 6 loops. I didn't have those thoughts during this run. No one was confusing me for Usain Bolt as I trudged back and forth over and over again, but there was no point where I considered doing less than two miles.
At the end of each loop, I'd touch the door of the gym before heading back out. Actuary Mike was practicing chest-to-bar pull-ups during Open Strength and he had a perfect view of me running back and forth. He had a confused look on his face as he saw me continually running towards the gym but never coming back in. With the 8th loop complete, I could finally head back inside. All I wanted was to replenish my fluids, so I sat down, took a bottle of water from my bag, and began to chug it. Mike came over and asked me "did you just run 5 miles?" Damn. Was I gone that long? To be fair to Mike (who is an excellent runner), it might have taken me the same amount of time to run 2 miles after class as it would take him to run 5 miles fresh. But no, I couldn't claim that I ran that far. Two miles was plenty for me.
Tuesday preview: Dudes After Dark actually takes place after dark. We learn about a new athlete in class. The Prodigy learns what an EMOM is. I learn that Neil is a runner.
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