Friday was my 20th anniversary with Jenn (11 years married). Saturday was my friend's 40th birthday party. Sunday was the recovery day necessary after two nights of celebrating. Missing weekend workouts was nothing new for me, but skipping class on Monday night was. I was all set to resume training at KOP on Monday, but the WOD involved heavy deadlifts and bar muscle-ups. That was completely unappealing to me, so I decided to follow the lead of KOP's Athlete of the Month. Alan was our AOTM for September and he always posts on Facebook about "Cardio Monday". Instead of participating in the WOD, he does work on the rower or the assault bike (or both). That inspired me to re-do the workout that I wrote about in my very first post on this blog. I would be rowing 10,000 meters at home.
I ran 1.5 miles after class on Thursday night to get some extra cardio work in. That took me roughly 15 minutes to complete. Rowing 10,000 meters was going to take almost three times as long. When I did this on 1/1/15, I needed 45 minutes and 32 seconds to complete this very long row. How long would it take me on this night? My goal was an odd-sounding 43:20. How did I land on that strangely specific time? Well, when you're on the rower, you tend to focus on the 500 meter pace showing on the monitor. If I could maintain a pace of 2:10 for every 500 meters, that would work out to a total time of 43:20.
I made sure I had an ice cold bottle of water next to me because I was desperately going to need that when this marathon was over. I got Pandora set up on my phone because 45 minutes of rowing was going to bore me to death without some tunes to rock out to. I started off with a 500 meter warmup just to get loose. Then I set the monitor to 10,000 meters and got ready for what was likely going to be an unpleasant journey. Here are the highlights:
- I discovered that I had made a huge mistake early on in the row. You can set the monitor to show various metrics. I definitely wanted "overall pace per 500 meters" on there and that was showing. The other thing I wanted to see was "elapsed time". That was not visible. It was showing me "current pace per 500 meters", which was a bit of "pace per 500 meters" overkill. It would have been easier for me to do math mid-row if elapsed time was visible, but I'd have to stop and start over again if I wanted to see that. I decided to row my 10K without it.
- My "overall pace per 500 meters" was under 2 minutes during the first 1,000 meters, but then it tailed off after that. I hadn't even gotten to 2,000 meters when I began questioning my sanity for doing this. That was not a good sign with more than a half hour of work left to go.
- Shortly after I passed 2,000 meters, the "current pace per 500 meters" began to close in on 2:10. I couldn't let it go higher than 2:10. If I did, then my overall pace would eventually head north of that mark. I felt like I was rowing with a consistent rhythm, but every now and then I would have to surge a little to prevent the current pace from exceeding 2:10.
- I knew my hands were going to get sore while rowing this much, so I had to re-grip over and over again as I pulled the handle. There were a bunch of times where I wanted to take one hand off of the handle for a second just to keep it from being under constant duress, but I was certain that I'd lose the rhythm I had going. (Spoiler: At the end of the row, I discovered that I had ripped the skin on one of my hands. See, I don't need a pull-up bar to mess up my hands!)
- My current pace kept flickering back and forth between 2:07 and 2:10 for most of the middle portion of the row. The really strange thing was that the overall pace didn't move for a very long time. It was stuck at 2:07.7 for so long that I began to worry that part of the monitor had short-circuited.
- As I closed in on 8,000 meters, the overall pace finally started to move north. After being frozen for more than 20 minutes, it suddenly started ticking up one tenth at a time. I was beginning to fade. It seemed unlikely that I would slow down enough that my overall pace would reach 2:10 or worse, but I was definitely not pleased that I had come this far only to fall apart late.
- I tried to maintain a current pace under 2:10 from the 8,000 meter to 9,000 meter mark. With 1,000 meters left, I picked up the pace. I steadily got faster until there was about 350 meters left. That was the point when I kicked into high gear. It wasn't exactly a sprint, but every pull had some aggression behind it. The sprint began with 100 meters left. It seemed like I was getting about 10 meters per stroke, so I began counting down how many strokes were left as I sprinted.
- When I hit 10,000 meters, the elapsed time was finally shown. Final time: 42:31.4.
I immediately reached over for my water bottle once I was done. After chugging most of the bottle, I reached for the paper towels next. The air conditioning was on in my house, but there was no chance of me working out for over 42 minutes without sending sweat flying everywhere.
Rows of sweat alongside my rower
It was a painful workout, but I was happy to beat my previous time by 3 full minutes. I'm not sure what button I hit on the monitor, but I pressed something that showed me my splits along the way. It revealed that I had done this workout in a way that I could never replicate even if you gave me 100 attempts at it.
My weirdly symmetrical splits during the 10,000 meter row
If you look closely at that photo, you will see that each of my three middle 2,000 meter segments were within 0.3 seconds of one another. The first and last 2,000 meters? Also within 0.3 seconds of one another. That is the most symmetrical endurance row that you will ever see!
It was back to the gym on Tuesday night for Dudes After Dark. We would be doing a partner WOD with a 30 minute time cap attached to it. 30 minutes? Weak! That was like a 7,000 meter row. Why even bother? Turns out that this WOD would be a bit more stressful than sitting on a rower for nearly 45 minutes. Here's what we'd be doing:
Tuesday's WOD:
Partner workout
100 double unders
80 med ball cleans (20/14)
60 burpee box jump overs (24"/20")
40 pull-ups
20 deficit handstand push-ups (45# + 25# plates/45# plate)
40 pull-ups
60 burpee box jump overs
80 med ball cleans
100 double unders
*Time cap: 30 minutes
There were seven of us in class, which wasn't ideal for a partner WOD. Giulz was filling in for LC and she gave us the choice of having a team with 3 people (thus requiring siamese twins) or letting one person do half the reps on their own. There were 4 guys (me, Noel, Neil, and Adam) and 3 ladies (Caitlyn, Marissa, and Tia) in class, so it was really up to the girls to decide how they wanted to handle it. Mixed gender teams form much less frequently than they used to at the gym. I'd guess they only come about now if there are both an odd number of men and women in class. Sure enough, Noel and Adam formed a team and I partnered up with Neil. Marissa was comfortable doing this one solo, so Caitlyn and Tia joined forced on team #3.
My partner was not thrilled about this workout. Neil told me that he had just come from work, but he had hoped that the call he was on ran longer than it did so that he would miss class. That is some serious dedication towards avoiding a workout that you hate. At first, I couldn't figure out why Neil was throwing this WOD so much shade. Then I remembered how much he hated double unders. The outer layer of this workout was all double unders and he was probably going to be responsible for more of them than he cared to do. I saw this as an opportunity to barter. Maybe Neil would do more pull-ups or burpee box jump overs if I was willing to take on extra double unders. We could make this work!
Giulz walked us through all of the stations of this WOD. The only part of this workout that me and Neil would need to scale was the deficit handstand push-ups. Even if these were just your garden variety handstand push-ups, we would have needed to scale. Each of us felt comfortable doing handstand push-ups with two ab-mats. We were both on the hook for 10 reps, which didn't sound too traumatizing. The last thing we went over was the double unders. Neil looked miserable as he practiced, only getting 1-2 at a time. I asked him if we should figure out a plan for the workout, but he said that we should just split everything evenly. Then I asked him if he was cool with doing 25 double unders at a time. He said sure. I was pretty impressed that he felt confident enough to do sets of 25 double unders even though he was struggling during the warmup and just tended to hate double unders in general. We were ready to take this monster on.
Giulz started the clock and I did 25 consecutive double unders. I stopped and looked over to Neil, telling him I did 25. His response was priceless: "You want me to do 25?" That impressive confidence Neil had displayed was really just him ignoring what I was saying but agreeing with whatever came out of my mouth. He had a really hard time with the double unders. He started alternating singles and doubles to put together sets of 3 double unders, but that was the most he could get. He was hitting himself with the rope a lot, so I told him to let me go again when he reached 10 reps. When it was my turn, I did 25 in a row again. Neil did not want it to be his turn again. He made a few more attempts, but only got 1 double under. He was clearly frustrated, so I said I would do the rest. I thought it would take at least two sets, but I was able to do 39 in a row. My falling out with double unders was officially over.
The med ball cleans were much more to Neil's liking. He fired off 25 reps before it was my turn to go. As I started to do my med ball cleans, I could tell that 25 was pushing it for me, so I stopped after 15. We each did a set of 15 after that, bringing us to 70. Neil took care of the last 10 reps and it was on to the burpee box jump overs.
I knew this was going to be the most time-consuming aspect of this workout. We agreed to do 5 burpee box jump overs at a time to keep things moving. During the first two sets, I stayed at the same pace as Neil. However, I was definitely slower than him on the last four sets we did. We hadn't hit the halfway point in terms of time or work and I was already hurting. There was little chance that pull-ups and handstand push-ups would give me a second wind.
I was leading things off for us at the pull-up rig. We were sticking with 5 reps at a time over here as well. During the first couple of sets, I was able to string some reps at the beginning, but soon I was resorting to quick singles. Neil was able to string all five of his reps whenever he did a set. It was very clear which member of our team was fresher.
While Neil was finishing off the last of our 40 pull-ups, I was across the way over by the rings. I almost always do handstand push-ups against the wall by the pull-up rig, but Neil asked that we do them over against the wall we use for wall ascents. Why? Neil is a tall dude. The wall by the pull-up rig had a lip on it that doesn't interfere with most people's handstand push-ups, but Neil told me that his feet hit the lip when he did them. There was no lip on the other wall, so he preferred to do them over there.
Neil dropped from the pull-up bar after completing rep #40 and I immediately kicked upside-down on to the wall. For a nanosecond. You won't believe this, but I was really, really sweaty at this stage of the workout. When I planted my hands on the floor, my right one slid away from my body and I came crashing down on my head. I was never so thankful to need ab-mats as I was at that moment. I stood up, walked away, dried off my hands, and told myself two things:
- I needed to be careful about keeping my hands from sliding the next time I got upside-down.
- I needed to stay up on the wall as long as possible. I didn't want to have to kick up several times and risk repeating what I had just done.
My right hand slid a tiny bit the second time I kicked up, but I was able to stay under control. My handstand push-ups were ugly, but I was locking out at the top of each rep, even if I didn't stay in that position very long. I kept dropping back on to my head right after each lock out. If I wasn't concerned about my sweaty hands and the slick floor I was placing them on, I would have dropped off of the wall between reps and started over. That was not an option for me in this situation. I was determined to stay upside down until all 10 reps were complete. And I made it happen.
When I came off of the wall, the first thing I did was replace the sweat-drenched top ab-mat with the dry ab-mat that had been underneath it. It would have been really lousy of me if I made Neil drop his head on to that gross ab-mat. The second thing I did was let Neil know I had done all 10 of my reps. We had been doing 5 reps at a time, but I wanted to get all 10 of mine done while I was upside-down and feeling relatively steady.
As Neil got ready for his handstand push-ups, I walked back to the pull-up rig. I wanted to be ready to go when he was done with the handstand push-ups. If I could do 10 in a row, there was no doubt in my mind that Neil could duplicate that feat. I was wrong though. Neil did five reps before coming down. Then he started to experience the same issues with the floor that I had. His hands were sliding as he was trying to balance against the floor. He had one attempt where he had to return right side up without a rep. On his next successful attempt, he got 3 reps before coming down. Then he missed a few more times. I called over to him to see if he wanted me to do the last 2 handstand push-ups, but he said he had them. He took care of those remaining reps in his next set, but when he came back down, he looked tired like me.
I did 5 quick singles as Neil tried to recover, but he wasn't ready to go yet when I finished my first set. So I told him that I would do 5 more. After that second set of 5, Neil was ready to jump back in. The two of us alternated sets of 5 pull-ups the rest of the way.
Neil led things off for us on the burpee box jump overs. I was dreading having to do more of these, but it was possible that I'd be doing less than 30 of them. That's because the clock was closing in on the time cap. I was trying to do some math in my head while Neil did burpees to figure out whether we'd get back to the med ball cleans, but I didn't have a lot of confidence in my estimates. It was time to just put my head down, give it all I had, and hope that we completed the burpee box jump overs before 30 minutes was up. Each time Neil jumped on the box during his 5th rep, I stood ready to go. As soon as his feet hit the floor on the other side, my chest hit the deck. I had to make up for the delay I caused on our first pass through of the burpee box jump overs. During that visit, Neil was the faster teammate on the burpee box jump overs. This time around, I was the speedier member of our duo. Because I was the second to go at this station, I would be wrapping up our 60 reps. As I looked at the clock, I could tell we were going to make it.
I was excited that we made it back to the med ball cleans, but neither of us had much left to give when we got there. Neil strung together 5 reps. It was now my turn and I was going to hang on to that med ball for as long as I could. And that turned out to be 1 rep. My legs were shot and I couldn't make the transition from the top of the med ball clean back down to the floor. I had to drop the ball between reps. I made it through 5 reps before giving it back to Neil. He hurried through 4 more reps before time was called. Final time: 32:46 (30:00 time cap plus one second for the 66 med ball cleans and 100 double unders that were not completed).
It is a given that I will need to wipe up whatever lake of sweat I've left behind at the end of a workout, but Giulz informed all of us that we needed to wipe down the areas that we worked in. It was so warm that everyone had reached Dave levels of perspiration. As we wiped down the floor, our ab-mats, and our med ball, I asked Neil, "when's it gonna be cold again?" I was tired of working out in muggy conditions. If Frosty Falls was instituting fall hours when it came to selling ice cream, then I didn't think it was too much to ask for a nice breeze during a WOD.
Wednesday preview: Could a math trick I learned during the Crossfit Open help me lower my Randy time?
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