O’Tannenbaum, O’Tannenbaum
Normally, if I see a partner or team WOD posted on Facebook, my body spontaneously seizes up into something like rigor mortis until I decide to give it a miss and live to fight another day. As soon as that decision is made, the rigor mortis goes away. It is a miracle. What can I say?
Usually I am the weakest link in a team WOD and I kind of feel sorry for the people who get stuck with me on their team. Gimme a few powercleans, thrusters, deadlifts and even a shoulder press these days, and I’m in beast mode. Burpees, running, double-unders, box-jumps not so much. Last Saturday’s post-Christmas team WOD seemed more like my kind of thing: weights, a lot of fun people going and it would be good to catch up and see how everybody is enjoying their Christmas.
Coach Ref planned one of his interesting warm-ups (he’s the coach with the warm-ups that are often scarier than the WODs) which involved, among other things about 30 people running backwards at one point. Did I really want to stay for the WOD? Well, I was there,might as well. If there were too many people to form equal teams, I’d bow out gracefully and sneak back into my kitchen for a mid-morning eggnog. No chance. Ricardo and Niels were kind enough to take me on their team. Thanks, guys!
There weren’t enough Christmas trees to go around, so some teams had to do the tree carry with a heavy kettlebell. Ricardo and Niels would have none of that.
“Have you got gloves with you?” I asked, thinking of my manicure…The moment those words left my mouth, I realized that it was a goofy “mom” thing to say and of course using gloves to carry the Christmas tree isn’t, as they say, “the done thing in Crossfit circles”. I kept quiet after that.
Nobody was happy with the sack race, but it had to be done so I took the lion’s share of sack race duty. The young’uns had the Christmas tree carry under control (although I did 1.5 rounds of Christmas tree too!) and I ran back and forth across the parking lot a number of times with the barbell (30 kg!) and the bumper plate . I absolutely did my best. Something went terribly wrong with keeping track of our rounds though. I know that I forgot to make a few hash marks, so seriously, I’m sure we made more than 22 rounds guys, but how many more, is anybody’s guess.
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The Wind Cries…Mary
Yesterday morning I was back in the box after a week’s hiatus. My favorite relative, Auntie Flo came to visit and well, no, I don’t Crossfit when Auntie Flo is in town. You have to draw a line somewhere.
Of course I didn’t check Facebook to see what Coach Marc had in store for us, best not to sneak preview after a number of days off, head on into the unknown and the unknowable, that’s the ticket.
When the coach draws a smiley and the word FUN! next to the warming up, you start getting suspicious. This one involved all of us standing in two lines, facing one another with a kettlebell at our feet. The idea is to toss a medicine ball back and forth to try to knock over your opposite’s kettlebell. If you don’t knock it over, you get to do burpees. I stink at this. Judith, my opposite does not. I was well warmed up for the WOD.
Which turned out to be Mary…
But first we needed to do some skill work on our pistol squats
I immediately started miemeling (it was hormones) about grabbing a low bench instead of the 20” box because at 5’2” , I don’t have far to squat before my butt hits the edge of the box and the low bench is more of a challenge. I was told (very nicely) to chill out and listen. So I did. Coach had a new twist to the pistol squat progression in store for us. The standing box pistol squat. Yes. It is as tough as it sounds.
(Some cool stuff in this link– check it out)
Along came Marii-eeeee
WOD: Mary
20 min Amrap of:
5 HSPU
10 Pistols Alternating
15 Pull-ups
For So I opted for the A push-ups which I couldn’t do in September. For the record, I can do a few handstand pushups, but not consistently enough for this WOD. I went with the touch and go variation on the pistol squats and believe it or not, hanging pull-ups. Yes, they are coming along nicely.
8 Rounds + 9, not Rx, but pretty damn good.
When I woke up today, my hands were frozen like Barbie’s, my thighs felt like concrete, and getting out of the turtle position took some doing, but I got vertical eventually. Coffee is a wonder-drink, so now I’m able to sit, type and think all at the same time! I’m scrubbing today’s run and rescheduling for tomorrow. A nice, gentle walk with the big dawg is about all I can handle at the moment.
(Yes, Jimi Hendrix’s original is better, but the videos were crappy. Gary is better than John Mayer.)
“Freebird” is 9 Minutes and 6 Seconds Long
So I’ve been training pretty hard at the Box as well as running three days a week the past two months. A few weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night with muscle pain, shuffled out of bed to get a big Advil, which kicked in almost immediately and I promptly fell into a very deep sleep. I woke up at 11 the next day, a Box day and decided that it wasn’t merely chance that I’d missed the morning WODs. Maybe I needed an extra rest day. I definitely needed an extra rest day. Since then I’ve been training two days a week at the Box and running with my 5K app on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I’m not waking up in the middle of the night with pain anymore and my attitude at the Box has improved. I no longer climb the friggin’ stairs thinking “What fresh hell awaits?”. These days I’m thinking, “Let’s see what I can do today.”
Last week I could manage a sustained running pace for 6 minutes. Today I walked 5 minutes, ran 10, walked 5, ran 10, walked 5 to cool down. I was listening to my Southern Rock playlist and “Freebird” came up when I started my second run. That sucker is 9 minutes and 6 seconds long! By the time the fabulous guitar solo was played out, I was feeling ready to go another 9 minutes but seriously grateful when my app dinged that it was time to cool down. No sense risking a charleyhorse out in the middle of nowhere. I sang along to “Willin” walking home. No birds died.
This training formula works for me. I’ve been making gains:
People I haven’t seen in a while have commented on my weight-loss.
Last week I did Sallys with a barbell!
I’ve done 10 double-unders in a row!
Our coach remarked that he could see I’d been working on the running goat! This made my year.
Nuckin' Futz 
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