Wednesday's Workout: Three-Quarters Nicole

A fun one today.

Strength Skill:

• Weighted Ring Dips (5-5-3-3-3)

The right side of my neck felt pinched this morning, but after grinding out a few ring dips, the tightness went away. I didn't go super-heavy today, but in my final set, I managed to eke out a few reps with a 44-pound kettlebell dangling from my weight belt. My goal is to get to 60 pounds by the end of this cycle.

Metcon:

AMRAP in 15 minutes of:

• Run 400 meters
• Max rep pull-ups

As soon as you drop off the bar, you have to run another 400 meters before coming back to do more pull-ups. To derive your score, add up the total number of pull-ups completed. In other words, this is a shorter (15-minute instead of 20-minute) version of "Nicole."

I love pull-ups, but running's not my strong suit, so I decided to employ a bit of strategy. When well-rested, I can usually string together close to three dozen pull-ups in a row, so my plan was to treat the running as active recovery, and to save my all-out effort for the pull-ups. It seemed to work; by conserving energy during the run, I was able to stay on the bar longer, and complete more reps in each set. Plus, I ended up running less, too -- I did the 400-meter run just 4 times.

Results:

• First round: 32 pull-ups
• Second round: 20 pull-ups
• Third round: 15 pull-ups
• Fourth round: 11 pull-ups

Total: 78 pull-ups as RXed.

Still, there's room for improvement. The Terminator beat me by two reps at the very end, when I dropped off the bar with just a few seconds to go in the workout. My cyborg friend was losing his grip, too, but managed to adjust his hold on the bar and rip out a few more pull-ups before time was called. I should've hung on, but didn't.

Next time...