Monday's Workout

I have no idea why I showed up for the 5 a.m. class this morning. Our kids spent the night at their grandparents' place last night, so I didn't have to finish my workout before little feet came scampering down the hall. I could (and should) have slept in 'til 6:30 and then dragged my ass over to the CrossFit box for the 7 o'clock session.

Habits are hard to break, I guess. After my eyes popped open at 4:20 a.m., I was on cruise control. (And M was working an overnight shift at the hospital, so she wasn't around to talk sense into me.) It wasn't until I was at the gym, warming up with sets of wall balls, that I realized I should have been in bed.

Strength Skill:

• Turkish Get-Ups

We did ladders: a set of 1 rep on each side, a set of 2 reps on each side, and a set of 3 on each side before repeating the sequence again.

Nothing too difficult, though the get-ups started wearing down my grip strength towards the end. Which, by the way, wasn't such a great thing given today's metcon.

Metcon:

"Fran" -- for time:

• 21 barbell thrusters
• 21 pull-ups
• 15 barbell thrusters
• 15 pull-ups
• 9 barbell thrusters
• 9 pull-ups

This may not appear to be much of a workout, but believe me: It's a monster. There's a reason why Fran is arguably CrossFit's signature WOD: it's deceptively simple, and insanely challenging. As my coach put it: "Fran never gets easier. It just gets faster."

I first tried Fran a few months ago, during my first week of CrossFit. Back then, I scaled it significantly, lifting a lighter load and using a band to assist me. But even with all that assistance, it took me more than eight and a half minutes to finish.

These days, I wouldn't think of using the band for pull-ups during a WOD, but part of me still blanched at the thought of trying to blaze through 45 thrusters at the RXed weight of 95 pounds. But a bigger, bossier part of me was itching to do Fran as prescribed -- even if it took me 10 minutes to finish the workout.

Thankfully, it didn't. I finished in 7:58, shaving off more than a half-minute from my previous time. Still nothing to crow about -- I'm certainly no Spealler -- but I'm happy to see some improvement!