CrossFit Open 17.2

When I saw the announcement for Open 17.2 I knew exactly what my score would be for this workout. I suspect that if you scroll through the leaderboard, there will be a huge cluster of athletes with the score of seventy-eight (78). That is because scaled athletes who do not have one bar muscle-up will cap here. In the case of this old man, doing the scaled workout, I suspected I would struggle to get a legitimate jumping chest-to-bar pull-up.

During our warm-up/prep time, I had measured the bar height, and stacked a box and plates to get the correct height to meet the standards. I struggled to get the proper jump height, but with 7-8 minutes to get up, it was possible for me to get a rep or two.

Between space considerations, and the number of available dumbbells, we ran two heats. Since I WOD at noontime, many athletes need to scramble to get back to work, so I opted to do the second heat, since work is not an issue for me.

When the second heat began, I knocked out the lunges, sit-ups, and DB Cleans. In the third round, as I went to move to the rig to perform my Jumping C2B Pull-up, I discovered that athletes in the first round had dismantled by station, with all my risers being removed.

With the clock running, I scrambled to gather a 12 inch plyo box, and assorted bumper plates under he rig. By now, all the single-bar stations were occupied, and all that was left was a end cross-member with a double bar. A perfect scenario for smashing my face in, if I were to actually get chest to bar.

That debacle probably cost me 90 seconds to 2 minutes of time, scrambling to get a sub-optimal station set up for my C2B. Don’t be mistaken, it may not have affected my score. Though I was able to get some unplanned rest between moves, the disruption did rattle me. If I resumed the WOD by cranking out rep after rep, I would say this fiasco negatively impacted me, and I’d probably be opting to do it again. But since I was unable a single good movement in five minutes, I doubt it.

An amusing sidenote. A CrossFit newbie was judging me. After many failed attempts, he cheered me on yelling, “You’re doing great! Only six more reps to go!” I stood on the box and looked at him, and said, “You do realize that I haven’t done one good rep don’t you?” He looked at me amazed, and replied, “Really?”. “Yeah, really!” I said back to him, as the clock ticked away the final seconds.

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