Fight Gone Bad

Tonight, my group "graduated" from Elements at CrossFit.  Our final rite of passage was Fight Gone Bad, which is said to be one of the toughest CrossFit workouts.  The workout was designed to challenge some famous mixed martial artist (don't ask, the name meant nothing to me).  At the end of it, he was asked what he thought.  His response was "fight gone bad."

Fight Gone Bad goes as follows: one minute rowing, one minute wall balls, one minute sumo dead lift high pull, one minute box jumps, one minute push presses, one minute rest.  Repeat 3x.  As many reps as you can.  Your score is the number of reps you get in total, except that for rowing you count calories instead of reps.  (Videos of most moves available here.)

Those 17 minutes are brutal.  I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that the version we did was scaled down.  The women did 33 pounds on the sumo dead lift high pulls and push presses instead of the usual 55; the men did less than the 75 pounds that's standard.  The ball was also lighter than usual, I believe.  While we're being honest, a lot of my wall balls fell short of the prescribed height, and I mostly did step ups in place of box jumps.  The box is high, though.  Or, I'm pretty short.  Either way, it hits about two inches above my knees.  I'll get there.  I just need some practice.

I got through 259 reps, for whatever they were worth. 

I don't have any deep thoughts to share on this.  About an hour after we wrapped up, my throat was still on fire.  My arms are still somewhat jelly-ish now.  It was kind of awesome.

On that note, I'm going to call it a night soon.  Sweet dreams.

-Gym Belle-

Meet Fran

I'm now 5/6 of the way through the Elements class at CrossFit.  After going through another set of basic moves to work on our form tonight, we did our workout: Fran.

Fran is 21 thrusters, 21 pull-ups, 15 thrusters, 15 pull-ups, 9 thrusters, 9 pull-ups.  As fast as you can.  (If you click on the thrusters link, you'll see a video demo on the CrossFit main site.) 14 thrusters in, I thought I was going to lose my afternoon snack.  Fortunately, that feeling passed, and once you're through the first round, you're nearly halfway done.  Woohoo.

I don't know what the bar weighed, so I can't tell you how much I was thrusting.  I can tell you it was enough.  Since I can't quite knock off 45 pullups just yet, I used a giant rubber band to construct a makeshift gravitron (the green one, if that means something to you). 

Fran was hard.  When I do a fixed number of reps, particularly of a difficult exercise, I count backwards.  It's a mind trick; by starting at the end, there's no way I can give up and not finish.  It doesn't actually make sense, but it works for me the same way that setting my clock five minutes fast in the morning gets me out of bed.

Tonight, when I counted down the sets, it was audible.  That's how I know I was struggling.  Grunty guys (sorry, but it's usually guys) are one of my biggest gym pet peeves, so I generally try to stay quiet.  Sometimes, though, a little noise is unavoidable.  That's how I know Fran pushed me.

I lucked out the other day with my 11ish mile run; it didn't make me sore.  I'm not so sure I'll be able to say the same for Fran.  I'll keep you posted.

-Gym Belle-

Shoe-t

Yesterday I set out to run 11 miles.  I ran with a friend, so I wasn't sure of the milage until I got home to map my run.  As it turns out, I covered 12.5.  Towards the end, I walked a few times, but I'm fairly confident that I actually ran 11 of the miles. 

To be honest, after about 9 miles, when my friend and I split up, I didn't feel so hot.  I had a cramp that would not go away and my arches were starting to ache.  I didn't think I had blisters, but it turned out that I did.  A few minutes after I got home, I lost feeling in the fingers on my right hand.  My left fingers felt tingly.  I went to Google my numbness to see if this was a normal side effect, but couldn't really type.  It was not my finest moment.

After I showered and the numbness (apparently normal) had subsided, I decided it was time to give up on my new sneakers.  If it had been a question of breaking them in, they should have been fine by then.  They just weren't right for my arches for whatever reason.  I packed up my old sneakers and my new sneakers and went to Super Runners.  They laughed at me for bringing the shoes, but I wanted to be sure I was getting the current version of the good pair and not something similar to the bad ones.  I got these.  So far, I've just walked in them, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Unfortunately, after about 25 miles, the sneakers formerly known as "my new sneakers" don't look so new, so I don't think I'll have much luck returning them to City Sports.  I guess it can't hurt to have an extra pair.

-Gym Belle-