Well, we all knew it was coming ... let's talk some CrossFit! If you read my fundamentals post, you got a brief run down about the CrossFit Open. (If you didn't, you can read it here.)
This is my fifth year competing in the Open. Each year, the season rolls around, and I never feel like I have done enough to prepare, even though I have trained the whole year. A struggle of mine is trusting I put in the work and believing I can push through the threshold in the workout when I want to stop. I'm working on this mental strength and it's slowly coming!
This year I had the same mentality and was determined I would do the workouts "one and done" (as in, only do them once compared to doing them multiple times), but I have set a pretty steep goal for myself to finish in the top 100 in the Mid-Atlantic region.
At CrossFit Harrisonburg, we run heats on Friday night at 6:00 p.m. and Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. for the five weeks. With my recent weekly schedule, by Friday night I am usually just going through the motions at the gym due to my early mornings all week, so I had determined I would be doing the Open workouts on Saturday morning with Friday being a rest day or active recovery day.
Last Saturday morning I felt good and ready. I had a solid breakfast, got in a good warm up, stretched and was ready to tackle 17.1.
What is 17.1, you ask? Well the workout to be completed was the following:
SXLLM
For time
20:00 time cap
10 dumbbell snatches 35#
15 burpee box jump overs 20"
20 dumbbell snatches 35#
15 burpee box jump overs 20"
30 dumbbell snatches 35#
15 burpee box jump overs 20"
40 dumbbell snatches 35#
15 burpee box jump overs 20"
50 dumbbell snatches 35#
15 burpee box jump overs 20"
I started out HOT, felt good through the round of 10, 20 and 30 dumbbells and then just like that, hit a wall. BAM! My burpees slowed down and my round of 40 dumbbell snatches took the longest of all the rounds, yes even longer than the 50! Once I got to the round of 50, I closed my eyes and just went, finishing with a score of 16:04. I was not disappointed, and even at that moment, I had no intention of redoing the workout. We had until Monday to enter our scores (well Wednesday with the extension and website issues CrossFit seemed to be experiencing). I was pretty mentally OK with that score but knew it would not help me toward my goal of the top 100.
On Sunday, four people at our gym decided to redo the workout and ALL of them improved by a minute or more, so at that point I knew a redo was going to happen for me as well! My body was not in pain on Sunday but my hamstrings and back were definitely reminding me they existed. The more I analyzed my workout, the more I questioned if I really did push hard enough.
On Monday, I went in with a plan (thanks to my wonderful training partners) and was determined to finish under 15:00 (aiming for a 1+ minute improvement). My plan was the following:
10/15 : Finish by 2:00
20/15 : Finish by 4:00
30/15 : Finish by 7:00
40/15 : Finish by 10:30
50/15 : Finish by 15:00
Knowing I was going to be splitting all of my dumbbell snatches in sets of 10, Maria, Ryan and Taylor counted down 5 seconds (7 seconds once I got to the round of 40) every time I put down the dumbbell. When they said "ONE," it was time to pick it back up and push through 10 more!
Knowing that the whole crew believed I could do it and were cheering me on the whole time kept me motivated. When I hit the final set of burpees I heard, "You can finish sub 14:00!" Although, the burpees may have been slow, I felt like I was moving and was very determined to make that happen!
I am thankful I had the "back room homies" to convince me to repeat the workout with the pure belief I could do better because it was enough to improve my score by 2:06 and finish with a time of 13:48.
In my head, I reminded myself the whole workout: "Don't let this group down, they believe in you, push through it and CRUSH your score." Sometimes talking to myself erases some of the hurt I feel in the middle of a workout.
Thank you to my awesome pals and fam for supporting me through 17.1. Cheers to your awesomeness!
So if you haven't tried CrossFit, yet when are you coming?
Good Luck to those tackling 17.2 today.
Have an amazing day!
#ohhappyday, T