Sunday Workout

The CrossFit North gym added a Sunday morning class at the humane time of 10:00. I had lunch plans with two friends today at 1:00 so I knew I’d feel good if I worked out first. Tom came along. There were three of us working out with a new (to us) coach, Allison, a strong young woman who beat almost everybody on the last Suffer on Saturday event. I’d never met her before that. Today’s workout was three rounds for time of: Row 500 meters 40 V-ups 30 deadlifts (I used 42 pounds added to a 20-kg bar) 20 kettlebell swings (16 kg for me) 10 ring dips It was brutal to work your way down to the lower number of reps, 10 ring dips, then start the next round at a higher number! Just psychological I guess. Somehow I managed to finish a few seconds ahead of Tom and Thomas, to my surprise, in 26:39. I think that’s the first time I came in first at anything. I stay conscious of minimizing rests during workouts these days and it pays off. Not that I didn’t take any breaks! But I allowed myself like two breaths as a break in most cases instead of waiting until I felt a noticeable sense of recovery to restart. The exception was when I did 10 reps of the deadlift as fast as I could, lowering the bar and instantly lifting it again (instead of dropping it and re-picking it up), and got a little lightheaded. I waited a while that time, though I had no sense of how long. Next time I feel that way I’ll watch the clock and see how many seconds it takes me to get started again. After we finished, Allison did the workout herself and smoked us all in about 24 minutes. Awesome! And she used the 24-kg kettlebell that the guys had used. If I’d used that one it would have probably added 30 seconds to my time. With the 16-kg kettlebell I didn’t have to rest but completed the 20 reps each time nonstop. That probably wouldn’t have happened with the heavier weight. While sticking around for Allison's workout, Tom and I practiced some partial rope climbs. Our arms were shot and it's hard to get a grip with the feet when you can't concentrate. It just takes practice. I want to be decent at rope climbing, not just able to do it once in a while, so I'm going to try a lot of partials.