Dave Has Us by the Balls…Again.

Rich completed 14.5 with Jason Khalipa (also easy on the eyes), Graham Holmberg, Samantha Brigs, and Annie Thorisdottir (a fellow ginger).  They all made it look so easy!  Rich finished first in 8:26, and Samantha was right behind him in 8:31. And then, as I watched the slow poke of the fab five finish last, Annie, I thought to myself, “She finished in 11:04. That’s awesome but I’m prett-tee sure that’s around my Fran time.”  Or maybe it’s 8 something.

 

 

Right away I started strategizing for 14.5.  If it took Annie 11 minutes, I should probably triple that, add three minutes, and maybe an additional two in case Pukie shows up. So that means I’ll finish somewhere around 35 minutes.  I’ll try to break my thrusters up.  I’d like to do sets of 7, 6, 5, 4, 4, 3, 3. I’m usually able to find a good rhythm with burpees and I pace myself. Maybe I can make up time with burpees because I know that bar is going to get heavy and my sets plan may get lost.

 

 

Saturday morning rolls around and, as usual, I watch two groups of people do the WOD to get myself ready.  I was nervous from the moment I woke up. I peed exactly eight times from the time I woke up (7:15) until the time I put my hands on the bar (10:40ish). I knew I had a big WOD in front of me and had goals for this one: stay under 30 minutes, keep on track with my sets. But I knew in the back of my head that 65# was going to get heavy quick.

 

My group had Josh, Dan, and Jenn. They are all great athletes and I knew they were going to do great.

 

Just before the WOD started, I tried something new. I stood above the bar and pictured myself finished, lying on the ground trying to recover. I was trying to imagine what it would feel like to be finished and accomplishing a WOD I knew would be brutal. I was, hopefully, less than 30 minutes away from that. I held on to the thought, and listened to the clock beep as it counted down …

 

 

The first round (21) went as planned, three sets of seven on the thrusters, up down with the burpees. This is going to be a grinder.

 

The second round (18) didn’t go as planned. I finished the first set of six thrusters and then dropped the bar at rep 11.  I kicked myself out of my head and told myself not to worry about it, I’m still doing good at this point. I finished the thrusters and dropped to the floor for the burpees. When I stood up to jump across the bar for the first jump on this set of burpees, my legs felt shaky. I knew I’d have to really focus to keep myself paced.

 

The third round (15) was the hardest. It was all I could do to knock out five thrusters and stay on track with my sets. I dropped the bar after the fifth one and gave myself a few seconds to breathe. In those few seconds, I lost track of my count, bent down a little, and then had to stop myself. I was about to do a burpee! Get it together!

 

I picked the bar back up and it felt like someone threw extra weight on it. I’m not going to lie, it crossed my mind to quit. I was already feeling fatigued and I wasn’t even at the halfway point in the reps yet. I thought to myself “I could bail out right now and save myself from death, because I’m certain that’s about to happen. I am going to die.  Ok, maybe I won’t die, but I may see Pukie.”

 

I secretly hoped for a sudden natural disaster, equipment failure, or spontaneous combustion to take me out of my misery. I had to dig deep and push back against the “I can’t” that was trying to make its way into my head. Then I told myself, “You’ve come so far. You’ve completed all of the Open WODs, some of them twice, and you’re almost at the half way point of this WOD. You won’t puke. Nope, today’s not the day, get out of your head, pick the bar back up, and try to get at least three reps here.”  I got four reps.

 

The burpees were awful. I think I did okay pacing myself with them, but they still sucked.  I started stepping up with every other one in the round of 12. It seemed to take more time but my body needed that half a second break.

 

By the time I got to the fifth round (9), I noticed Dan and Jenn were finished (great job!) and were starting to cheer me on, along with other people who had just finished or there watching. It really feels good to have that motivation.

 

The sixth round (6) was difficult. I broke them into two sets of three, but the bar felt more like 95# at this point. I wanted to shout out all of my favorite cuss words but small children were within earshot. So I had to whisper them. By the way, when you look at your bar and whisper “Eat shit and die. Fuck!” 1) it loses all power behind it, and 2) your bar is a thing and can’t hear you.

 

The last round (3) was fantastic! I had a bunch of people around me giving me motivation and I knocked out all three thrusters.  I did a burpee and then actually got a NO REP! What the what?!! Four burpees later…DONE.

 

 

I finished in 26:10. Just like Annie, I was the slow poke of my group 🙂 That’s about the only thing (other than red hair) that I’ll have in common with her.

 

I did the “bacon sizzle” on the floor immediately after (rolling on the floor, back to front, front to back) and tried to catch my breath. There was a strange feeling of pleasure from the burning in my quads. I’ve never felt this winded.  I’ve also never felt this good! I just finished all five Open WODs! No, I never came in first place at our box or even second, third, fourth …. but I finished! I didn’t quit and I put everything I had into each WOD. And it’s over, hallelujah, sweet baby Jesus, it’s over!

 

Yes, it sucked. But I don’t think it was the worst Open WOD. In my opinion 14.4 was worse.  Even though I got a crappy score for 14.2 (a six), 14.4 was worse.

 

These past five weeks have been challenging and fun. It doesn’t matter where I fall in the rankings worldwide, region, or even my box. Every Open WOD pushed me harder than I ever could have imagined with just a handful of movements that tested the limits of my body, physically and mentally. I finished what I started. I learned new things. All of that is a cause for celebration.

 

14.1 taught me double unders. Before this WOD, I had never gotten one and when I got it for the first time I felt like I was on top of the world!

 

14.2 included a high-skill movement, chest to bars, that I never got to attempt because the evil overhead squat crushed me. However, it taught me that I need to work on my overhead squat, and I’ve been putting in extra time under the bar.

 

14.3 taught me not to run a 10K before the WOD. It also tested my strength by making me power through an ascending ladder of deadlift weights.

 

14.4 taught me how easily a WOD can go to shit when you let it get in your head. It also showed me how I handled fatigue. With 50 T2B almost straight out of the gate, that movement was sure to make or break the entire WOD — and it broke me.

 

14.5 tested my ability to pace. I let doubt creep into my head but pushed it out almost immediately.  Getting in my head ruined 14.4 and I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

 

I didn’t plan on writing about each Open WOD. I completed 14.1 and sent my recap to Stephanie just to share my double under excitement, do a little venting.  I had no idea she would want to take my “average” story and post it.  But she asked, and I said yes.  Then she asked if I would continue to write about my experience with the Open WODs.

 

My first thought was “No. Why would I want to tell all of the Internet how bad I suck at CrossFit sometimes?  I don’t stand out, I’m average and sometimes I’m the slowest. The Open WODs are going to get hard. I’m not perfect at all the things and I’m not where I think I should be by now. The best thing about me is that I’m slowly getting better and I keep trying.”

 

And then it hit me. That’s what CrossFit is: try hard, get angry if you need to, get better at some things, and try again.

 

I tell people all the time “CrossFit is for you, anyone can do it. If I can do it, you can too.”  Yet, people will come back with “I want to get in shape before I do it.” What kind of sense does that make?  Or, “It looks too intense.” To those people, I say, “I see where you’re coming from, but just come out once and let us show you that you can do this.”  The beauty of CrossFit is that it starts with basic, scaled down movements and progresses as YOU progress. The common misconception is that we’ll immediately expect you to throw around heavy weights. Not true. We scale. I scale! I’ve been at this for 15 months and still scale.

 

So I decided “Yes, I’ll write about my Open WODs.”  I decided to put it all out there, the good and bad. I hope one person reads my stories and it clicks, “Hey, I should give this a try. They aren’t fire breathing animals” and tries it out.  Because honestly, in the grand scheme of things, 95% of us are average compared to the elite athletes you see at the games. Yeah, there are people who do great and almost always find their names at the top of the whiteboard, but they still struggle and have things they need to improve on.

 

To those of you who competed next to me over the last five weeks, you all did fantastic and I’m so proud to have battled next to you. To those I got to judge, it was absolutely amazing to watch you all exceed in things you have never done before and surprise yourself by doing better than you thought possible on your second attempts.

 

Some of the movements thrown at us over the last few weeks take months and sometimes years of practice for us to master. So if you don’t have a certain movement, show up a few minutes early for class and practice. A few extra reps here and there will pay off big time in the long run. I’ve already started doing this with the overhead squat.

 

Is it weird that I’m already a little bummed that we won’t have an Open WOD to look forward to next weekend? 🙂