Suffer on Saturday at CF North: May 2005 Archives

Yesterday our friend Julie went to CrossFit North with me and Tom to check out the whole thing for herself. We carpooled together on my last contract job at Microsoft, and I’m sure I spent many miles talking about the gym. Julie is really strong to start with, though she feels she’s out of shape, and I think she’d be especially good at the O-lifting workouts we do. Several other first-timers showed up yesterday also—several kids and teenagers with middle-aged dads. Then there were some super-strong young guys who I don’t see too often at the gym, but I knew they’d smoke the rest of us in whatever the events turned out to be. Altogether there were between 16 and 20 people participating. Dave divided us into four teams of four to five people and we did relay sprints with exercises: sprint to the end of the gym, do the exercise, sprint back, and continue until five people had gone. (Teams of four had to have someone go twice.) The exercises at the end of the sprints were: round 1, 20 squats; round 2, 10 push-ups; round 3, 15 kettlebell high-pulls; round 4, 15 sit-ups; round 5, 5 pull-ups (jumping from a bench to the bar if you couldn’t do unassisted pull-ups); round 6, 5 more pull-ups (just because, Dave said, he likes pull-ups); and finally round 7 (after I asked half jokingly, “Is that all?”), a combination round of 20 squats, 10 push-ups, 5 pull-ups. Julie did well and was a very good sport, having no problem with going twice when it was her turn to do that. She did all her push-ups on hands and toes, refusing to switch to knee push-ups. Afterward she tried the harness-and-pulley rings for an assisted muscle-up—the harness takes half your weight—and she did her first one smoothly and instinctively, without needing to be told to keep her elbows in and so on. Today she left me a phone message saying she was in “excruciating pain,” but she sounded in good spirits and said she’s planning to go back with her husband. I'm looking forward to seeing them both there.