Suffer to Honor

I am skipping ahead in my posts since I am woefully behind and I really want to write about this particular WOD.

Every Memorial Day around the country, Crossfitters honor the sacrifice of one Lieutenant Michael Murphy by putting themselves through some serious effort and pain.  Lt. Murphy loved this particular WOD, calling it "Body Armor."  After he was killed in action, the workout was renamed for him.  This is the official WOD from CFHQ.  This is more about Lt. Murphy.

Most of our coaches and several athletes as well were at the Regional competition over the holiday weekend, so our box did this WOD late.  We had 2 hours scheduled for this because it is a brutal and lengthy workout.

6/2/12 WOD #56 "Murph":

• Warm up: 400 m run
                  10 jumping lunges
                  10 clapping push ups
                  10 inchworms
                  10 pull ups
• WOD: Murph
             1 mile run
             100 pull ups (two red bands)
             200 push ups
             300 squats
             1 mile run
             Time: 86:11

We could (thank God) partition off our marathon of pull ups, push ups, and squats however we wished.  After all, there is no point in shaking out your arms from your pull ups when you can shake out and do some squats at the same time.  I decided the easiest way to partition everything was to break it down into 20 sets of "Cindy."  Cindy is one of the mean girls of CrossFit and she consists of 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 squats.  I know I can do all those sets unbroken so I knew that would be faster than trying to do 10, 20, 30.  

Push ups.

I won't lie: this sucked.  And it could have sucked worse.  We were also encouraged to do this with a 20# weighted flak vest.  I declined to do that because I knew darn well I would hurt quite enough, thank you, even without it.  Next year I will do the vest.  The day was quite warm, and that quickly became an issue.  I came in from my first mile and everyone else was well into their pull ups/push ups/squats...this meant the box was hot and super stuffy. I ended up using half my water bottle to splash onto my face, neck, and chest between my push ups and squats (if I did it after the squats then my hands were wet for the pull ups and that is no bueno.  Even with hurried wiping off on my shorts and application of chalk).  

Pull ups

I felt like the first half went much slower than the second half.  I needed to rest more, I overheated more, I hurt more.  The second half was easier and better. Even so I managed to do most of my sets unbroken- I had to stop mid-pull up once to kick the box out of the way cause I was hitting it, and towards the end I did stop one set of push ups to lay down on the cold cement floor.  I also had to drop to my knees for my push ups starting around the half way point (and I sacrificed several seconds to grab an abmat to pad my knees and keep me from bruising my patellas).  I am also ashamed to admit that for the first time in my CrossFit career,  I had to walk part of my run.  That last mile was a beast.  

But I finished it.  

Suffer to Honor

Max back squat and grownup push ups

Periodically our workouts are designed to test our limits in one particular movement.  One this day, we were focusing on back squats.  The workout is to work up to a weight at which you fail and then work backward from there to find your maximum possible weight.  And the only trick is you have to do this in a total of 7 reps.  You see a workout like this on the board and you wonder how on earth it will take up a sufficient amount of time in the hour.  The answer: I actually stayed late.

Part of the time was the difficulty of barbell math (ok, so the bar plus 25 plus 25 plus...how do I get to 125 again?) and swapping things out from my partner to me.  But part of it was truly that this took some serious time.

I took this warm up very seriously because I assumed the work out was going to be quick.  So I chose this day to switch from my girly push up crutch to grown up push ups.  I also did not take breaks during the warm up (which I will admit I often do.  Especially when burpees are involved).  I treated it like its own WOD and I enjoyed it.

5/16/12 WOD #50

• Warm up: 800 m run
                  4 rounds of Cindy: 5 pull ups (2 red bands)
                                               10 push ups (not girly anymore!)
                                               15 squats
• WOD: 1*1*1*1*1*1*1
             115*125*135F*130*135*140F*140

Each F stands for failure- I was unable to reach depth and drive back up at that weight.  Although if you look at my results I failed and redeemed myself twice.  Unfortunately it was all about form for me.  I used to think I was good at squats.  But since I bottomed out so much, now I am reworking my squat form and it is killing me a little bit.  Now I am not reaching depth, rocking forward to my toes, leaning forward...No good. Just no good.  So I am working now on my air squats to make sure my form is good and then apply it to the darn overhead squats and back squats etc etc.

Superman Socks Debut

I was pretty stoked for this workout primarily because I had broken down and ordered some amazing socks from thinkgeek.  Specifically: these ones. I am hoping they will make me faster and make my box jumps look pretty sweet.

Alas, they did not help me with overhead squats.

5/14/12 WOD #49:

• Warm up: 800 m run
                  2x: 10 pass throughs
                        10 OHS
                        10 snatch balance
                        10 v-ups
• WOD: 15 minute AMRAP
              15 OHS (35#)
              30 lateral jumps-over-bar (over and back)
              45 ab mat sit ups

I didn't realize this until just this very moment, but it turns out I didn't write down my result for this WOD.  I do know that it was not as good as I was hoping.  In fact, I think I was just short of two full rounds.  Maybe almost three rounds.  

My overhead squats were repeatedly not pretty.  I had to strip off a bunch of weight, I nearly threw myself backwards doing a snatch into position, I had to bail repeatedly.  My form was decidedly off.  And then the lateral jumps were surprisingly difficult!  I was pretty convinced that I was going to trip over the bar and crack my head open on a weight rack.  At least I am solid on the sit ups :)

Running and ropes

I got nearly all the way up a rope during this overtime workout.  Nearly to the top.  Not quite though.  It is super freaky swinging nearly 15 feet in the air and then looking down.  Next time I won't look down and I WILL make it to the top.

5/10/12 WOD #48:

• Warm up: 800 m run
                  21 push ups
                  21 grasshoppers
                  21 back ext
                  21 seconds chin over bar (not so much)
                  21 jumping lunges
• WOD: 3 rds for time
             800 m run
             200 flutter kicks
             Time: 22:49

I am working on my kipping pull ups and they are coming along nicely.  Hopefully sometime soon I will be doing pull ups without a band.  And my rope climb is almost to the point where I can actually say that I can climb a rope.  That means I need a new personal goal to work toward.  I think that goal is going to be: run faster.  Any WOD that involves running is abysmally slow and I would prefer for that to not be the case.

Otherwise how will I survive the zombie apocalypse?

How to make burpees suck more

Burpees suck.  Everyone hates them.  But they are a full body workout and come up pretty darn often in CrossFit.  And we mix them up sometimes!  You can make them into burpee pull ups where you jump up onto the bar at the end of each burpee.  You can do what we did for the Open and have a target you hit at the end of each burpee.  Or you can do burpees-over-box and at the end of each burpee you do a box jump, then do another burpee, then do another box jump.  That's one rep.  One rep of suck.

5/9/12 WOD #47:

• Warm up: Run 400 m
                  25 burpees
                  50 2ct mountain climbers
• WOD: 5 rds for time
             10 box over burpees (20")
             20 hollow rocks
             10 alternating one-armed push ups
             Time: 35:32

For those counting at home, that comes out to 100 burpees and 100 box jumps.  Which explains how close I came to biffing it on the box jumps- Twice!  I just caught the edge with my toe as I jumped up and landed on my knees on the box.  No injuries, no bruises, but it made me go even more slowly as I continued: gathering myself mentally and physically before each jump.  And yes, I was going slowly.  Some people were finishing their 5 rounds before I started on round 3.  Depressing.

One-armed push ups are tricksy.  I was having some serious trouble with them as I kept torquing my knee wrong while trying to position myself correctly.  So I modified them to doing them from my knees and suddenly I was doing one-armed push ups, by God!  And I have to say, that is a pretty good feeling.  ...unlike burpees.

Another day, another mile

For reasons that are unclear, I have been suffering from shin splints since the Open.  Which probably everyone is tired of hearing about because I think I moan about it every time we run for a WOD.  But in spite of this and also in spite of the fact that we are now forbidden from running around both buildings thanks to cranky neighbors, I still managed to cut down my mile time again.  For those counting, that means that instead of 4 laps around 2 buildings for your mile, it is 8 laps around one building which is harder to keep track of when you are trying not to throw up.

5/7/12 WOD #46:

• Warm up: 500 m Row
                  3 min jump rope work
                  10 pass throughs
                  10 pull ups
                  10 back ext
                  10 sit ups
• WOD #1: 1 mile run for time.  10:41 (13 seconds off!)
• WOD #2: 20 minute AMRAP
                  5 push ups
                  10 pull ups
                  20 sit ups
                  40 DU (120 singles)
                  Total: 4 rounds + 15 reps

Actually, this workout was an awesome cluster of awesomeness because not only did I shave 13 seconds off my mile (that much closer to a sub-10 minutes baby!) BUT I went down several bands on my pull ups!  I have been sitting on green for a while (the second heaviest band) but Lori saw me on my first round and declared that I was more than ready to move down a band.  The next band is purple, followed by black, followed by red.  The purple and black bands were in use so Lori grabbed two reds for me to use together (we think that is somewhere between purple and black). And although it was WAY harder to fling myself up with those bands than it was with the green, I could still do it.  Of course, I had to stop between every other pull up to shake out my arms.  But still.

Following the example of Regionals

Everyone is watching the highlights from the Regionals which are happening right now.  One of the surprising events for the athletes was dumbbell snatches: 100# for men, 70# for women.  One arm at a time, going from the ground to overhead in a smooth motion. Pretty friggin' beastly.

So we got to do it too!  Of course, the heaviest dumb bell we have is 55# so rumor has it we will be getting some new weights soon.  Prescribed weight for women was 35# and 55# for men during our workout.  I did it lighter, but I still felt like a bad ass while I was hauling that weight up in the air!

5/3/12 WOD #45

• Warm up: 500 m row
                  3 min jump rope work
                  2x: 10 OHS
                        10 Push ups
                        10 Back extension
                        10 second HS hold
• WOD: 4 minute row for distance: 768
             4 minute AMRAP 5 HSPU, 5 strict pull ups (green band): 3 rds + 6 reps
             4 minute AMRAP 20 m farmer's carry (started with 20# and switched to 35#), 20 DU: 3 rds
             4 minute AMRAP DB snatch (20#): 16 snatches each arm

For some reason, the snatches made my feet cramp up.  Ah well.