Despite hitting the sheets at 9 p.m., I slept fitfully, sniffling and coughing all night. You know how some people take sickness in stride, suffering silently and never complaining? Well, that's not me. I'm a disaster when I'm sick -- cranky, whiny, disgusting, and utterly unreasonable.
Proof? A reasonable person would have stayed in bed to recover instead of getting up at 4 in the morning to get ready for a pre-dawn workout. But I already missed a class last week, and there was no way I was going to miss another. I grabbed my water bottle, keys, and a wad of Kleenex before heading off.
Strength Skill:
- Front Squats (3 sets of 3, 2 sets of 1)
I was not pleased, however, about having to hock loogies into paper towels between each set. (Told you I'm disgusting.)
Metcon:
"Christine" - 3 rounds for time:
- 500-meter row
- 12 deadlifts (bodyweight)
- 21 box jumps
I was wrong.
After the WOD began, a couple of us noticed that our erg displays hadn't been set to the proper mode, and weren't displaying the distances we were rowing. Tim helped one of my classmates adjust his display, and then he came to work on mine -- but accidentally re-set it to zero. Oh, shit. The 150 or so meters I'd just rowed were gone. "What should I do?" I whined. (Told you I'm whiny.) "Should I stop at 350?"
"Just keep going 'til it hits 500," Tim replied. "See if you can still PR."
Yeah, right. When just about everyone else had finished their first 500 meters and hopped off their ergs, I was still cranking on that damned flywheel.
But strangely enough, this simply made me want to go faster. If I was going to have to linger on the damned erg, I knew I was going to have to kill the deadlift and box jumps. So as soon as I wobbled off the rower, I hustled through all the deadlifts and box jumps, and was a little surprised to be the first to jump back on the erg for round two.
There's something to be said about the competitive aspects of CrossFit. I love the community, and we are all extremely supportive of each other's efforts at the gym. There are plenty of workouts that I don't think I could have completed without the cheers and encouragement of my friends and classmates. But at the same time, I recognize now that I like the stick just as much as I like the carrot. I push myself harder when I'm trying (in vain) to catch up with the Terminator or when -- like today -- I'm shoved back a step and told to try to PR anyway.
Result: 11:54. I didn't PR. (Last time around, I finished Christine in 11:32.) But there's always a next time, right?
[UPDATE: M just did Christine in the garage before heading off for work. "That was harder than I thought it was going to be," she said. Amen.]
