AbMat Ass, Butt or Rash

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.

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:

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 ;)