Over the weekend, we participated in a contest at our gym to determine who our representative competition team will be this year. It was our first time doing any sort of competitive WODs and we had a blast — though it definitely wasn’t a walk in the park.
The schedule for the day included 3 WOD’s, beginning with a thruster ladder, followed by a mid-morning “Helen” and finishing with “Ben’s Chipper,” a laundry list of a lot of exercises we had to “chip away” at. Since our team will be made up of both Rx and Scaled members, each of us had the choice to try for one or the other, depending on where we felt our skills were. Although Neil and I have begun tackling some WODs at Rx weights, we are by no means ready for Rx competition, so we both tried out for the scaled team.
The thruster ladder included a series of incremental lift gains (by 10 pounds), followed with 20 double-unders/60 singles jump ropes that we had 90 seconds to complete in order to continue. The weight for Rx men started at 185 pounds, and 85 lbs for the women. Needless to say our scaled weights were much lighter.
The couple that WODs together…
I managed to get to 95 lbs in my ladder, a new PR for both my clean and overhead thruster. Did you catch that? I put 95 lbs above my head! I still can’t believe that I’m nearly at 100 lbs! Neil progressed to 155 lbs, his current PR.
The finish of my new PR thruster!
After about 30 minutes of re-coop time following the first WOD, we jumped into our second WOD of the day, “Helen.” It is 3 rounds of a 400-meter run + 21 kettle-bell swings + 12 pull-ups. It’s deceptively hard. You think it’s not so bad being that it’s only 3 rounds, but each component makes the other increasingly hard over the three rounds.
Kendall, who I swear is NOT human. Her great-grandfather was an olympian! (Check out the link, it’s a cool video.)
Carrie, one of our Rx girls…
Neil finished in 11:49 and I in 12:30. My legs and feet were quickly feeling pretty smoked. Luckily we took another 30 minutes off to regroup, and got plenty of goof-off time in. After all, we are CrossFitters…
Neil with Jimmy and Esther…
Our awesome trainer Tyler.
We dubbed the final WOD “Ben’s Chipper” so we’d know who to blame for our pain later. It was tough, and also pretty complicated, but I’ll try my best to explain it. It was made up of:
20 Ring Dips
5 handstand push-ups
10 deadlifts
5 handstand push-ups
20 overhead squats
5 handstand push-ups
10 Squat Cleans
5 handstand push-ups
20 Box Jump (30 in)
THEN 3 Minutes for AMRep Snatch (Each Snatch= 3 seconds off overall time not including these 3 minutes)
Confused? Yeah, so was I. The image above shows how it all broke down in scale, with men’s and women’s Rx on the left and scaled on the right. It wasn’t actually so hard as it was just tedious. Thankfully, we ran through it with coaches, someone who served to count our reps and make sure we were headed to the right station. Here’s Erica and I coaching Kaitlan:
Nate in a deep squat, replete with pensive expression…
It felt good to be done. Our trainers tallied the results and unfortunately, Neil and I didn’t make the team. It’s hard not to be a little disappointed, but honestly, we wouldn’t want to be chosen until others felt we were really ready to compete, and after a year, we know that’s just not the case. We do plan on attending, and have already joked that we are ready and willing to be the equipment managers and document the event. I can’t wait until November!
We were all pretty wiped after the day, but managed to have a great BBQ, which I failed to take any pictures of. I did however make an awesome new recipe that I’ll have to replicate next weekend for you guys: Paleo doughnuts and frosting!
And in case you’re wondering, we’re REALLY sore and swollen. Even though my half-marathon was difficult, this was by far more physically taxing, with the exception of the toenail I lost that detached between miles 10 and 11.
What’s the hardest workout or event you’ve ever done?
