It Doesn’t Bode Well When Your WOD Includes The Word ‘Gasser’

Full disclosure: This blog post is chockful of quasi-yucky descriptions of scabs and pain and such. Enjoy!

I stayed up a little too late last night playing Boggle on my iPhone. My pal Stacey started our tradition of playing Boggle at lunch in the corporate overlords’ kitchen, and I’ve been using my phone to hone my skills. Yesterday I missed my bus stop, so engrossed was I in trying to top my previous high score.

Which is a long way to go to say the following: I don’t think I got enough sleep last night. BUT it was solid, and I woke up before my alarm to tackle a workout that included… (cue forboding music)… The GASSER.

Warmup
400m run
one billion walking lunges w/ variations

Skills
3 sets:
8 powell raises (3 count down, 1 count up) – rest :30
:30 AMRAP abmat situps – rest :30
8 russian swings, 25kg (!) – rest 2:00

WOD
6 rounds:
50yd sprint / walk back
1 gasser – rest :90
(gasser = 50yd sprint X 3)
My time: 13:45

No lie: I think we did a billion walking lunges this morning… arms overhead, hands behind the head, with a rotation, backwards. Because of always making left turns in roller derby, my left leg is way stronger than my right leg, so when I lunge forward with my right foot, I have trouble getting my left knee all the way down to the ground. I was determined to do it this morning and clonk! it smashed into the macadam. My right knee was then jealous of my left knee’s nifty scrape (How come ol’ Lefty gets to have all the fun?!) and immediately did a kamikaze dive to the pavement. Matching kneecap raspberries… pretty!

I already had a quite painful raspberry on my tailbone (even prettier!) from all those situps I did on Saturday, so the abmat situps this morning were unpleasant, but I bit my lip (which has  tiny scab from a sun blister… ew) and kept it to myself. Mostly.

For the Russian swings, Tristy encouraged us to go heavier than usual, so for the first time EVER, I did swings with the 24kg kettlebell. It was Hard. And Heavy. And mildly Scary. But I did them, so yay. And there were no klutzy actions or scrapes involved. Whew!

The torture of the gasser was revealed to us in the parking lot. We would sprint from the first cone to the second, 50 yards away, then walk back. As soon as we hit that first cone again, we had to turn FAST and start sprinting again, running back and forth between the cones three times before a rest of 90 seconds. One hundred fifty yards isn’t far, but the turning part meant we had to kinda put on the brakes to turn around, then accelerate again every 50 yards.

Um, yeah. It was hard. And I’m kinda slow. The word “lumbering” comes to mind.

Between rounds, there was some conversation about why the walking rest was in the middle of the sprints. Why not just do four 50yrd sprints? I made up my own story about why: maybe it was to simulate sneaking up on a target! Think about it… you sprint from your starting point to an observation point, closer to your target but still a safe hiding place… then, when the coast is clear, you run with all your might to the target to drop a dime on the bad guys.

When the novelty of running back and forth in the parking lot started to wear off, I made a beeline for my imagination…

On round three, I pretended I was spying on a POW camp so I could rescue my brothers- and sisters-in-arms.

On round four, I pretended I was running away from Interpol, who were trying to capture me after I nicked a pretty sweet diamond tiara (while wearing a black catsuit, of course).

On round five, I went all sporty-spice and pretended I was running for a touchdown in the Super Bowl.

On round six, I was too CrossFit drunk to pretend I was anything but a tired CrossFitter, ridiculously pleased to be on the last round.

I finished 10 seconds behind the boys – but I figured that (1) they didn’t have to carry a set of boobies with them the entire time and (2) they weren’t running the missions that I was. Thirteen minutes and 45 seconds isn’t bad when you think about how I saved my platoon, acquired a very nice piece of jewelry, and scored the winning TD in the Super Bowl.