Month: July 2013

Surprise Kick In The ____ Workout

Sandbag Run

 

Some workouts are obvious.  Carrying a sandbag for distance and time, that’s gonna suck.  Thrusters, they are going to suck.  Then there are workouts like we did today.  Seemed just like 15 minutes of fun:

Sprint 100 meters every minute for 15 minutes.

That’s it.  We did some OHS before hand, but pretty easy day.  By round 3 I could barely catch my breath, by round 8 I was doubled over, gasping, drooling and closing in on puking.  I was able to hold off the puke, but my right hammy will never be the same after finishing.

Total sneak attack WOD today!

Swimming At the Games

I love that the Games incorporates swimming into the intro session.  This year seems like it will be better for most folks than the open water swim, but those wet hands for a bar muscle up scare me.

That being said…I totally need a pull up rig at the end of my pool.  Squat rack at one end and pull up rig at the other, that’s what’s been missing!

AbMat Ass, Butt or Rash

seaside_seaisland_georgia

I spent last week down in Sea Island, Georgia (http://www.seaisland.com/).  It was awesome, the resort was fabulous, and I got to play a round of golf at the Sea Side course at Sea Island (http://www.seaisland.com/golf/best-golf-courses) which according to their propaganda is the #4 ranked course in the country.  Now, I golf about once a year, so after I chopped my way around, we can assume that ranking came down at least a few.

In addition to golf, the resort had an amazing gym.  I had my doubts when the bellhop explained to me that they set it up so that if an NFL player came to visit, they could get a good workout.  I thought “yea right”.  Turns out, he was pretty right.  Ton’s of machines, but also a really nice area with free weights including bars and dumbbells and some room to work.  I was able to get in two days of solid work right there.  But that was not good enough for me.  I needed to get in some CrossFit tourism.  Enter CrossFit Grit.

CrossFit Grit Sea Island Georgia

 

First the good.  I made it over to the 4:30 wod, and there were a few folks hanging around the box.  Each one of them came over individually and introduced themselves.  Asked where I was from, what brought me there, etc.  They seemed to all take a very sincere interest in getting to know me.  I was really impressed.  CrossFit Las Vegas was super friendly, but this was over the top.  I could tell this was going to be a good drop in, at least from the people perspective.

The warm up was a little different than I was used to, totally on your own, although the instructor (I think he name was Nate, but that may have been the guy I spoke to on the phone, but I’m gonna call him Nate now) had to deciphered their warm up codes and demo for me… and then we did some front squats (5×2 at 80% one rep max) which was also on our own.  Nate was a little more hands off than I’m used to.  HyperFit usually does some demo work and instruction, but it was just front squats, so it was fine.  Nate did jump in and help quite a bit with another guy who needed some more hands on instruction, so that all worked out just fine.

Now the wod:

AbMat Ass AbMat Butt AbMat Rash
10 Rounds for time
15 AbMat Sit Ups
9 Air Squats
6 Hand Release Push Ups
Then:
400m “Cash Out”

So all good, aside from a little trepidation at the 400m in 90+ degrees and 108% humidity.  I finished in about 16 minutes.  3rd place in class (there were 3 people in class).  Everything was going just fine on drive back to the hotel.  Then I jumped in the shower.  It honestly felt like I was getting stung by 800 bees when the water hit my butt.

I jumped out of the shower, looked in the mirror, and saw two silver dollar sized patches of road rash back there.  The skin was all gone.  It hurt like hell. I wasn’t really sure what to do, but I assumed it needed to be clean, and washing it with soap was about as awesome as it sounds.

The next day I was giving a series of presentations, and therefore I was in my fancy clothes.  I had a car taking me to the airport right from the meetings, and I had set up a change of clothes, which I navigated in the back seat.  When I pulled off my dress shirt I could see that I had this weird stain on the back shirt tail.  I quickly realized that I had bled through my drawers to my shirt.  It was a semi circle 6 to 8″ in size.  And my reward for discovering it, was a flight from Jacksonville to Atlanta, then another one from Atlanta to Detroit.  So uncomfortable.  Those airplane seats never felt so thin.

Here I am 5 days later.  I have two matching scabs, each about the size of a half dollar.  Sitting in my desk chair is terribly uncomfortable.  This AbMat Ass, or AbMat Butt or AbMat Rash or what ever you want to call it, is not the type of souvenir I had planned on bringing home.

I’m really not sure how I’m supposed to prevent this from happening.  I was told a good cheat is to slide the mat down your butt so that you are sitting on the mat.  Not the right way to do an AbMat, but might help.  I also read doing the AbMats on a yoga mat would work, which I’m trying to figure out how to navigate that in the long run.  Just keep a yoag mat handy at all times?

And yes, I wrote most of this standing up ;)

Tough Mudder

Michigan Tough Mudder

 

I ran the Michigan Tough Mudder event on June 30th.  It was awesome.  While we didn’t break any course records for time, I was definitely near the top of the “Mud Consumed per Obstacle” charts.

For anyone not familiar with Tough Mudder, here’s a brief intro:

I felt this was my first true test of my year of CrossFit training, and I have to say, it seems to have paid off.  I had only two issues.  First, the running.  The back half of the course was long, and had long distances between many of the obstacles.  I had never ran more than 2 miles or so in one day.  basically Murph is the longest I ever run.  And 12 miles is just f-ing far.  So I ended up doing a mix of run/jog/walk for the second half.

The second issue, and the bigger one, was all mental.  Every one of these obstacles is more than doable, but my brain kept getting in the way.  I would freak myself out, sometimes for good reason, other times not so much.  On the Boa Constrictor obstacle, as you near the bottom, you are forced to get your mouth and nose under the water, and I was not ready for that shock.  My mind went into “you are drowning” mode, and I had to back up a foot or two (in the tube) to collect myself before I could shut my brain off long enough to muscle down into the water.  And the reward for that, was having to do it going up the other side.  That was rough on my brain.

The Funky Monkey also got me.  The bars near the platform were very slick from all the mud and water from previous people’s attempts.  So as soon as I got going, my brain said “there’s no way you can do this”, and I had that in my head as I started across.  I think I made it about a third of the way, and after those first few bars, they were no longer slick, as not that many people made it that far, but my brain kept telling me “you’re gonna drop after this one”.  I needed to get myself to shut the F up and just attack this thing.  This is the only obstacle I wish I had back, and is a big part of my motivation to get out there and do this whole damn thing again.

These mental challenges were something I had thought about going in, and was hoping to make some gains here.  And I think the Tough Mudder really paid off.  I definitely feel stronger for having done this.  Learning CrossFit at HyperFit definitely has helped my mental toughness…doing Kettlebell Thrusters is no joke, but it’s nothing like this type of an event.  It’s also strangely addicting.  The day after Tough Mudder, I signed up for GoRuck Light.  Who’s with me???