Friday's Workout

Call me a masochist, but when the alarm goes off at 4:20 in the morning, I'm already buzzing in anticipation of the early-bird class at CrossFit Palo Alto. It's not 'til I arrive in the parking lot that a little bit of rationality fear creeps in.

Strength Skill:

• Weighted Pull-Ups (2 sets of 3, 3 sets of 1)

Horrible. I've lost about 15 pounds off my PR. I'm either getting weaker or heavier. Or both. Plus, I almost strangled myself with the weight vest. All in all, my pull-ups were kind of a disaster this morning.

Metcon:

For time:

• 500-meter row
• 21 sumo deadlift high-pulls
• 500-meter row
• 21 push jerks
• 500-meter row
• 21 barbell thrusters

The RXed weight for men is 95 pounds (65 for women), so I loaded up the bar without pausing to consider that we'd be finishing with thrusters. More on that later.

The rowing was surprisingly un-terrible today. No one's going to mistake me for having blazing speed on the erg, but at the very least, I was able to keep a consistent pace and reasonable stroke rate.

The lifts, though, were tougher than I expected. When I got to the sumo deadlift high pulls, I felt like I was still on the rower. With SDHPs, the full-body pulling movement is very similar to rowing -- down to the hand positioning and sequencing -- only it was heavier and much less smooth with a weighted barbell. 

I found the push jerks to be slightly better, and was able to crank out more than a dozen in a row before having to drop the bar. (I still need to work on consistently and fully locking-out at the top, though).

In the end, it was the thrusters that did me in. I went in thinking that 95-pound thrusters were totally doable. It's no worse than the first round of Fran, right? But after over 10 minutes of explosive hip-driving movements, I was spent. I reeled off a half-dozen reps at the start before dumping the bar, and then I managed another four in a row, but then had to eke out the rest in dribs and drabs -- three here, two there. My form was disastrous: I was jumping off the ground to heave the bar up, and landing on my toes. By the end, my brain was fried; I lost count twice, and had to dust off my crappy math skills to calculate how many thrusters were left in the set. So while I think I did 21, I honestly wouldn't be shocked if I actually did 19 or 23.

Even as I sit here now, I can't remember my time. 14:30, maybe? 14:20? 14:50? Whatever it was, it felt like forever.

T.G.I.F.

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