Well, folks.. I'm feelin bummed right now.. I'll try to find the positive and will, of coarse, move on.. But it's frustrating when things don't go quite right.. Especially when you have worked ridiculously hard to get better at that particular thing..and you KNOW you should have done better.. But let me start from the beginning of the day..
Our first workout wasn't set to start until 2:40 today, so we had a slow start to the day.. Breakfast, stretch out in the hotel room, lay down a bit, then finally head over to the venue around noon.. Well.. The plan was to head over around noon, but I got antsy and we left more like 11.. Anyway. I watched the end of the team competition and a little of the Rx division and then decided to head over to the warm up area to start to stretch out and get ready. First up was the 'unbroken' workout, which is:
50 unbroken DU
20 STO (110#)
30 box jumps (20")
40 CTB pull-ups
50 unbroken DU
40 CTB
30 box jumps
20 STO
50 unbroken DU
..so I did some double unders, a couple shoulder-to-overheads, a box jump or two to warm up.. As an extra twist, they added a 'buy-in' to the workout, which would be a handstand hold.. Hold a handstand without allowing your hands to move outside of a marked square on the floor for as long as you can in a :90 time frame.. How long you hold that handstand is the amount of time that will be subtracted from your total workout time.. Cool, huh. At least it was for this retired gymnast.. The unbroken workout was originally supposed to be a 16 min time cap, which I had barely beat in my practice at home.. But now with the :90s handstand hold and a :30s transition into the workout..that leaves 14 min for the rest of the work.. Oh, well.. Guess I'll have to move faster!
Things started off smooth and easy with the handstand hold. I held for a minute and came down.. I didn't want to overdo it and waste my shoulder strength too much.. I kicked back up briefly and wound up with 1:10 total.. I'll take it! A minute can be a lot in a workout! Double unders went fine and we were on our way. STO felt alright in the first round, so after a set of 14/6, it was on to the box. I moved through those fairly well.. Not blazing, but steady. Got to the pull-up bar, which was pretty high up, but I could jump to it alright. I did my sets of 10 and was feeling pretty good! So far, so good, but it was feeling SO thirsty and my darn water bottle was back by the start! Darn it.. So anyway, moved on after a bit of a breather to compose myself, got in to the DU and those went fine, as well.. Now back to the bar for more CTB and this is where it starts to really hurt.. I started with a decent set of 8.. Then 6.. And then it was chipping away at the set of 40 until I was done. I was still ahead of my practice time, so though it hurt a ton and wasn't pretty.. I was doing alright. Box jumps went fine. STO felt about 100# heavier and were rough! But done.. Finally back to the last set of unbroken DU.. Did I have enough left in me? I honestly wasn't sure.. Tried to stay focused and confident, but was kind of prepared for the possibility of not making it under that new 14 min time cap. Oh..did I mention I had about a minute left at that point? So I managed to make it through those DU, ran to the finish May, and was done! Finished in 13:35, but then after subtracting my handstand hold time, came out with a decent 12:25, which was good enough for 14th place in that event. I felt completely awful after that workout.. Just wrecked.. I thought we had a really short turn around into the next workout and was worried about whether or not I'd be able to do the cleans OR the muscle ups at this point.. But luckily I was wrong and we had a while to recover and prepare for the next thing.
I went over to roll/stretch out a while and eat/drink some recovery stuff until I felt pretty normal again.. Then went back over to join Matt and watch some of the Rx division tackle the next workout. Next up for us was my good friend, the clean/MU workout.. I practiced this darn workout a few times, since it was released about 3-4 wks ago, with varying levels of success.. Some days my cleans (155#) felt great and others were tough.. Some days my MU went awesome and other times I'd have misses and struggle.. This workout had a short (for me) time cap, so I knew it would be tough to finish, but I had gotten close in practice and was hoping this would be a time that things would go well..but alas..it was not to be. I felt fine. I know folks will say that I was probably tired from the earlier workout..and maybe there was some of that.. But mostly it was just a complete lack of ability, on my part, to adapt and figure out how to make the timing of my MU work on the equipment provided. I don't blame the equipment, though it was frustrating, but others were able to manage and I should have been able to handle it better.. As much as I have worked on these? I honestly don't know what else I can do to improve.. I'm stumped.. But the workout.. Which, in case you haven't read my other posts about this little gem, is:
12/9/6
Cleans (155#)
Muscle ups
With a 9 min time cap..
I had watched the Rx girls do this workout and had noticed a high number of girls having to be lifted to the rings..and then struggling with the MU for various reasons, but when I warmed up outside, it felt fine. Well, when I walked out to my spot on the competition floor and looked up at the rings, they were much higher than I expected and I let my judge know that I, too, would need help up to the rings.. Ugh.. I did not want to have to do that, but I knew I wouldn't be able to jump up there on my own and get any kind of decent grip on the rings..so hoisted up it would have to be.. I wasn't too concerned about this, but maybe a little aware of the fact that this might change things a bit.. But I started in on my cleans and those went just as planned.. Dropped each rep, but quickly picked it back up in sets of 6/3/3.. Over to the rings.. Tell my judge I was ready to go..hoist..swing..I'm up, but can tell my swing is a bit off.. Go into my next one..make it, but timing is even worse.. I managed 3 in that set, but it was downhill from there. I don't know if it got in my head? I tried different approaches to swinging down from the MU to try to stop the swinging of the rings, which was, in turn, throwing my timing way off and making the MU much harder.. But I could not figure it out.. Bigger swing.. Smaller swing.. Quicker swing? All the same, awkward, oddly timed result.. Which meant I was reduced to doing my MU in sets of 2 or even singles.. Which meant a lot of wasted time controlling the rings, coming down, telling my judge I was ready for lift-off, etc, etc.. I'm truly trying not to be too down about this and to just move on, but it was so frustrating.. Just knowing what I'm capable of, how hard I've worked on this..and having yet another competition come up where my MU don't go as planned (regionals I experienced similar issues). So I only made it through 7 MU in my round of 9's..the worst result of any of my attempts.. Bummer. That's all I can really say. It was a bummer.. And frustrating.. Did I mention I was frustrated?..cause I was.. But moving on. Tomorrow am we run.. Should be interesting! Definitely a different thing for a lot of crossfitters.. Early am?!(6:50 start) Outside in the cold? Run more than 400m increments? Unless you have a running background, this is fairly foreign in the CrossFit world. I actually had someone ask me if I thought they would move the run inside if it rained.. Um..no?? I did not think they would have us run a 5k inside? Didn't mean to sound rude, but folks run a lot further in a lot worse than cold and rain before.. I think we will be ok! Though I'm not sure folks will be dressed appropriately.. Hopefully they will.. We will see! But that should be fun.. And then the sprints and HSPU should be good.. Hopefully I can finish strong and move forward and continue to learn and grow from these experiences. I hate that MU keep giving me trouble in competitions.. because I actually really like MU and train them a TON.. I have to figure this darn thing out, though.. Can't let things like ring heights and different swinging and such effect me so much! Top gals did just fine (for the most part.. I did see some struggling a little more than usual.. But the impact it had on them was a lot less than the impact it had on me).. So I gotta be able to make it work if I'm ever going to hang.. Not that I consider myself to be the 'top'..but I'd sure like to move a little closer!..darn it.. But for now..we move on to tomorrow..
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