"You Might Have to Scream at Me"

I missed Crossfit last week, so I was pretty dang stoked about going this morning.  As it turned out, my previous new-guy partner and I were the only ones there for the 0800 class, so we got to be a team again.

The warmup included double-unders (or as I like to call them, "ego-busters"), and I did not manage to get more than three consecutive.  It is seriously irritating me to the point where I'm just going to break down and buy a speed rope so I can practice at home.  It also included kettlebell swings, which I'd been doing at 20lbs for a warmup, but today I went for 25lbs.  They felt pretty good, so next time I'll try 30lbs and see how that goes.  There were pushups and squats, too, and it was one of those days where I wondered at what point the warmup would feel like a warmup instead of just a pre-workout-workout...

Today's WOD:

800m row
deadlift hold

150 situps
plank hold

50 burpees
overhead plate hold

So basically what that means is that there are three stations, and at the first station one person rows on the erg while the second person holds the weight in the deadlift position.  If/when person #2 drops the weight, they switch off so that person #2 is rowing and person #1 is holding.  At station two, one person holds plank for as long as they can while the other does situps, and when person #1 drops out of plank they switch, until 150 pushups are reached.  For the final station (as you might have guessed) one person does burpees while the other holds the plate above their head.

Now, this was one of those WODs that made me think, "Oh that's not so bad."  Yeah, one of these days I'm going to learn to fear that phrase popping up in my brain...

J wanted to discuss strategy before we got started, so we decided that to start out we'd try to hit 400m and switch off.  He volunteered to row first, and joked that if I dropped the bar he'd just have to scream at me.

And so we started.  And hot damn, that bar was friggin' heavy.  It seems so simple to just hold a bar, but it really, really isn't.

My legs are wrecked from a) rock climbing b) wiping out on my bike and c) my general klutziness...

 I kept having to use my thighs to lurch it back upwards so I could re-establish a good grip, but most of the time it was just sort of barely dangling off my fingertips.  Finally it got to the point where I knew I couldn't hold it much longer, and I called out,

"You might have to scream at me pretty soon..."

But no sooner had I finished my (truthful) quip than J yelled, "400!" and I was able to drop it and start rowing.

Now, I am pretty okay at rowing- I know the proper form and I know to dig deep, but even doing the best that I could, J had to switch when I still had 150m to go, which meant that I had to hold the stupid bar again- and it was much harder after I'd been rowing.  In fact I was pretty sure I was going to drop it when J yelled that he was done, and I was able to act like dropping it was totally voluntary.

On to situps, which I did first while J held plank.  He started to make, "Let's switch!" noises about 20 in, but I convinced him to hang in there until 25.  I hung in there until 50, then we switched again at 69, 90, 101, 120, and 140 (I think... I definitely know I did the last ten, but I can't be positive on the numbers between that and 69)

And then, trembling, we moved to the last station, where J valiantly volunteered to do burpees first.  I picked up the plate (which was not that heavy), got it over my head, and wailed, "This shouldn't be so hard!" which made Aubrey laugh.  But I swear, that 35lb (I think it was 35 lbs) plate felt like it weighed about 80 lbs.  We swapped off after J did 10 burpees, and the rest of it is sort of a misery blur until the end...

I actually looked at my shins for this drawing, and did my best to match up the bruises with their real-life counterparts...

 But then it was the end, and I was so, so glad.