Doc's birthday WOD

If you have such a mind and it is your birthday, you can make up your own WOD and submit it to Lori for approval.  I think we can all agree that we are glad Doc was only turning 22.  This was a long WOD that got cut off at 40 minutes for those of us who needed to run home and shower before heading off to work.

3/28/12 WOD #31:

• Warm up: 50 DU (150 single)
                  10 burpees (actually, we were supposed to do 25, but my pants kept trying to fall down and I just was feeling grumpy so I said "fuck it" and stopped).
                  10 squats
                  10 push ups
                  10 pull ups
                  10 back extensions
• WOD: 3 rds for time (or 40 minutes, whichever came first)
             Row 22 calories (it takes a depressingly long time to row 22 calories)
             22 wall balls
             22 box jumps
             22 back extension
             22 sit ups
             22 push ups
             22 knees-to-elbows (modified to just tucking my knees up)
             400 m run
             Completed 2 rounds and 18 calories of rowing into round 3

This was a day of wardrobe malfunctions for me.  First my pants wouldn't stay on for the burpees, then my amazing sports bra that I bought from REI YEARS ago and I just LOVE because it is the best sports bra in the world...started to fail on me. The straps are adjusted with a little velcro-style closures.  But on this day every time I jumped or ran or did anything that might be higher-impact, the left strap started coming undone. So every 3 box jumps or so I had to reattach my bra.  And on the run I had to just hold onto my strap.  So this entire work out was overlaid with irritation at everything I was wearing.  

On the plus side, my wall balls were MUCH BETTER after the agony of 12.4.  Nearly every single rep hit the 9 ft mark.  It took me a while, but that's okay because it was something of a redemption.

Open WOD 12.4

I was sitting down to write down today's WOD, but then I realized that I got so busy moving this weekend that I never recorded my most recent Open WOD!

The Open workouts are becoming harder and harder, designed to separate the elite from the hoi polloi.  Hint: I'm part of the hoi polloi.  But I very much appreciate that even these WODs that incorporate skills that I don't have yet at least start out with motions that even noobs like me can get through.  That way I wasn't actually disqualified because I can't do muscle ups.

This week's competition actually included one of the benchmark WODs of CrossFit: Karen.  Wherein you do 150 wall balls without dying.  My goal for this work out was to get through as many wall balls as possible without smashing my glasses or breaking my nose.  After watching one of the amazing coaches do her WOD and only get a few reps into the double unders, I modified my goal from "all the wall balls" to "some wall balls."  My additional goal was to keep my pants up for the work out.  This was accomplished thanks to some amazing fashion statements...specifically my standard knee high striped socks combined now with my short skort- super short, super classy, but by God it stayed around my waist!

12 minute AMRAP:

• 150 wall balls (15# medicine ball, 9' target)
• 90 double unders
• 30 muscle ups

Total: 31 wall balls.  Glasses and face intact.

The challenge in this WOD for me became technique.  I realized pretty quickly that my wall ball technique was pretty sucky.  I need to remember the following:

• Full squat = full power explosion for ball release.
• Elbows up in front rack to keep the ball close to my midline.
• Up in the air is not enough, I actually need to aim at and hit my target.
• It's ok to take a few extra seconds to breathe because if I throw the ball in the air with less than full force, it is just wasted effort.

Suffice it to say, I had a TON of no-reps during this WOD.  I was probably two minutes in and had hurtled the ball unsuccessfully at the target approximately 100 times (it felt like.  I wasn't counting.)  and I heard Chad say, "You've got 2, Andrea!  Keep going!"  By the end of 12 minutes I had hit the target a mere 31 times, but my actual attempts were probably in the 70s.  It was hard not to get frustrated with myself, the ball, and that damn 9' mark I was trying to hit.  I feel like I gave it all, but I could have done much better if my technique was better.  Something to keep in mind as I move through the WODs now: technique, technique, technique.  

On another note, I glanced in the mirror as I was changing into pants after the WOD and realized I had streaks of black down my face.  I don't know if it was from the ball, the floor mats, or my mascara, but it was some pretty serious war paint I ended up with.  Thank heaven I did look in the mirror before going out in public....

Because my shoulders were not sore enough

Wall balls are a special kind of hell.  You squat down with a heavy medicine ball in front rack, then you hurl it in a controlled manner up the wall to hit an 8 foot mark, then you catch in perfect front rack form as it hurtles back towards the earth and you drop back into a squat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.Of course if you are me your wall balls are filled with dropping the ball outright as you try to catch it, near-misses of your face, and swear words.  The good news is that I think my wall balls are actually improving somewhat.  I actually had some reps that made me feel like someone who knew what they were doing.

3/12/12 WOD #25:

• Warm up: 500 m row
                  50 double unders (ha.  I just did some jump rope until I started hitting myself in the head too much).
                  2x: 10 squats
                       10 walking lunges
                       10 push ups
                       10 grasshoppers
                       10 tuck jumps
• WOD: 21-18-15-12-9-6-3 reps for time:
             Wall Balls
             Overhead walking lunges (25# bumper plate held over the head)
             Sit ups
             Time: 24:44

I look forward to the day that I am fit enough that I don't stagger in last at every WOD.  Not that it is a race, I just think it would be refreshing to be the one clapping for a flagging team mate instead of being the one who still has three rounds to go while everyone else is finding their water bottles.  

In other news, I looked in the mirror this morning and actually saw muscle definition between my deltoids and my biceps.  I am not sure that they haven't been there all along and I only just noticed it, but it felt pretty sweet.  Also, my large thigh bruise from dropping weights on myself is coming along nicely.

First to get eaten by a zombie

Yesterday for the Open, I took myself on a quick run around the box as part of my warm up and it felt awesome.  It was a true run (rather than a jog or a stagger), the sun was shining, my adrenaline was up, and I just felt good.  Mind you, this was before the 7 minutes of burpees that I am sure made me look like I was being pummeled to the ground with an invisible two-by-four (the only analogy I can think of to described my repeated collapses to the ground and staggers to my feet).  But, man oh man, the warm up was SWEET.

Today's running...was not.  I don't know if it was the freezing temperatures this morning (28 when I left my house), or backlash from yesterday, or what, but this WOD involved running and the results for me were not pretty.  I realized halfway through my first lap that if we were being chased by zombies, I would be the first to die (or maybe second since my natural paranoia of the zombie apocalypse may have given me an early start on escaping while everyone else was wondering why that person was drooling blood and trying to gnaw on someone's arm).

2/27/12 WOD #19:

• Warm up: 400 m run
                  2x: 10 pass throughs
                       10 OHS
                       10 pull ups (today's warm up became an impromptu lesson on kipping.  I still don't get it but I feel like it might be easier with a lighter band so I can get the full motion.  Soon I will switch to green, I just felt too wimpy to try it today).
                       10 push ups
                       10 back extensions
• WOD: 3 rounds for time: 400 m run/stagger
                                         20 wall balls
                                         10 pull ups
                                        Time: 21:14

I am not going to count this as a true "milestone," but my wall balls have improved.  That is not to say that they were good (on the contrary, they sort of sucked), but that I was actually to the point that I wasn't dropping the medicine ball every time, or hitting myself in the face, or falling over.  Considering last time I did wall balls, I had to modify them to just doing the motion with a dumb bell because I came so close to breaking my glasses every time, I definitely count this as baby steps in the right direction!

Turns out I can't climb rope yet

Today's work out was another short one.  Short enough that we had to do an OT work out: rope skills.  And the answer is that I have none.  For some reason I found it impossible to "stand up" on the rope.  And even though my feet never made it more than 6 inches off the floor, my hands hurt.  Actually, bizarrely, the tip of my middle finger hurts and I have no explanation for that...

1/25/12 WOD #10:

• Warm up: 500 m row
                  10x pass throughs
                  10x press (with 15# barbell)
                  Lunge down the box and back
• WOD #10.1: Max unbroken wall balls
                       Reps: 6
• WOD #10.2: 3 rounds for reps
                       3 minutes: max kettle bell jerks (15#)
                                       400 m row
                                      (15 burpee penalty for unfinished rows)
                       3 minute rest
                       Reps: 13/8/11, no penalty

This was a work out of strategy.  We noted our time for 400 m during the warm up so we could stop doing jerks in time to bang out the row without going over 3 minutes.  Because NO ONE wants to do burpees.  Ever.  I started my jerks with 8# dumb bells but did that way too quickly so I got bumped up to the 15# kettle bells.  My second round reps were low because I was holding them wrong at the outset and the coach had to run over and adjust my hands.  Actually, my second round was apparently cursed because my rowing machine malfunctioned so I just did squats while she fixed it.  But the moral of the story for me is that I did not have to do burpees.  I came in for my 400 m just under the 3 minute mark each time that I actually did a row.  Thank God.

Wherein I almost busted my face with a medicine ball

Today I was a bit late to the work out because I cleverly left my winter coat and hat in Andrew's car last night so I was searching desperately through the closet for a warm hat in case we were running outside today.  The bad news: I didn't find a hat.  The good news: we didn't run outside thanks to the 10 minute snow storm we had last night and the resultant frostiness this morning.

1/16/12 WOD #6

• Warm-up: 1000 m row
                   Two rounds each: 10 pull-ups
                                               10 sit ups
                                               10 push ups
                                               10 squats
• WOD: five rounds for time: 12 wall balls (modified in my last round)
                                            12 toe-to-bars (modified- no toe touched the bar)
                                            Time: 16:37

I managed to finish the warm up again today.  It helps that the 6 am class usually has just 3-5 of us.  I discovered that toe-to-bars are actually harder wearing my lifting gloves (and subsequently forgot them at the box).  The wall balls were difficult in that I kept almost catching the 15# medicine ball with my face and very often ended up dropping the ball instead of dropping into a proper squat with the ball in rack position.  So in my last round she just had me squat and lift a 15# dumbbell for my reps.  This was much less technically difficult and spared my face from further near-smashing.  

I also wore my new super-tight pants that make me look like an extra from Tron.  YES.

Trying on my Tron pants in Target.
Not pictured: the Tron-pants-dance.  It's totally a thing.