Today was an opportunity to benchmark yourself against your performance from six months ago.
For many of you, it may have been a simple numeric score with an Rx or scale noted. For others, such as your obsessive author, more copious notes were taken by which to measure one’s progress or regress. As it stands, at 7:30 this morning I had both.
Yes, you read that correctly, I progressed and regressed simultaneously. What else would you expect from a guy who is so dramatic (a reference to a recent Facebook critique).
Actually, I had written extensively about my two springtime attempts at this workout. In the first, I bombed badly with a score of 63. When I suffered through a second pass a few days later, I was able to correct a few things and get the score to 106. So I went into this morning’s repeat performance with a goal to beat my old benchmark of 106.
I read all my notes to revisit my strategy, to review what worked and what did not, the last time around. There were two key elements, pace myself on Burpees. Pace myself to get points on the board and pace myself to not exhaust myself prematurely during this 18 minute ride.
Last time I set a goal of getting the first 40 Burpess in under 5 minutes. I had succeeded, accomplishing them in 4:48. This morning the Burpee was not my friend. It took me over six minutes to finish the first round of Burpees. I was one third into the WOD with only 40 points. I was exhausted as I began the first round of Snatches. I plowed through those and got back to Burpees.
I was now down to sets of 5, catch my breath, repeat. I was just about to gasp a sigh of relief on number 18, thinking I was shooting for 20, when I realized I had to complete 30. Inside I was crying like a little boy, but I just knocked off another two sets of five. I finished with under two minutes left. I had to load more weight on the bar. By the time I addressed the barbell, I had less than a minute and a half on the clock. With fifteen seconds to go, I was at 106. I managed to get two more lifts in, to exceed my last 13.1 by two points.
So I had regressed horribly on Burpees, in score, in execution and in the toll they took on my body. I felt awful. But I progressed on the Snatch. I am still as ugly as can be, but I was a bit stronger, such that I could make up lost ground and beat my last attempt. I am pleased that I beat my old time. I can’t tell you any more than that because Coach Tia will take me out to the woodshed and beat me (because she scolds me about negative self-talk). How in the world did I chose a CrossFit Box where I am surrounded my shrinks at every turn? Oh, please don’t think I’m paranoid too?
I have to say that yesterday was as humbling and frustrating as last time I did this workout. The benefit of yesterday was that I finished earlier with the two rounds of burpees and first round of snatches so I had PLENTY of time to stare at the 75ib bar and fail multiple times which lead me to get more and more frustrated with myself. After I took some time to collect myself and come back I was determined to snatch that 75ibs. I was going to go down in weight and then increase back up but Dan put the kabosh on that and had me get right back on the bar. After a few more attempts and encouragement I got the bar up proving that I need to get out of my own way and get back to technique….
Julia, there are so many factors at play when we do these WODs. Generally speaking, everyone who has been doing CrossFit for any period of time has gained strength, stamina and flexibility. Yet, on any given day, things are smokin’ or they’re stinkin’.
I was amazed, not by how poorly I performed burpees, but by how poorly I felt performing them, I just felt gassed after the first twenty. I felt like I was slogging through wet snow, except I was sweating profusely.