Melicious and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Workout

When we have a grouchy day at our house, we often turn to a favorite book from my childhood to celebrate the awfulness of the day: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

If you’ve never had the pleasure, you need to get yourself a copy as soon as possible. It tells the story of Alexander and, well… the worst day ever. He’s blamed for crap he didn’t do, his lunch sucks, he ends up with totally lame sneakers. It all makes him want to run away to Australia.

Inspired by Alexander’s willingness to share the details of his craptastic day, I will soon whine unabashedly about my workout this morning.

First, here’s the workout in its (somewhat) objective form:

Warmup
3:00 jump rope
crazy old-school hip rotation things
a quad stretch that felt like a fillet knife under the muscle

Skills
10 rounds:
1 power clean + 1 jerk + 1 step-up each leg, 20″ – rest :30
2 external shoulder rotation (down 3, up 1), 8 bl. DBs – rest :30

WOD
AMRAP in 10 minutes:
8 knees-to-elbows
100m sprint
8 jump lunges (total)
200m sprint

And now…

My Friday WOD (told in the style of Alexander)
I went to sleep on time last night but when the alarm went off I still didn’t want to get out of bed and my PMS hormones are raging and I didn’t eat enough yesterday so I woke up hungry and irritable. During the warmup at the gym I kept tripping on the rope on just regular old single jumps and when I tried to do double-unders, I whipped my ankles and arms with the rope and then when we did the quadriceps stretch I couldn’t really do it and I couldn’t even say “I can’t do it” because then I would have to do do punishment burpees and I could just tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad workout.

When it was time to do the cleans, I took off my sneakers to I would have better contact with the floor, but when I tried to step up on the box, my feet slipped and it made me scared so I had to put my shoes back on. I hate feeling scared. And I hate wearing running shoes for cleans.

When I practiced my cleans, I worked up to my usual 55lbs. and easily jerked it overhead, but then when I tried to step up on the 20″ box with the barbell across my shoulders, I couldn’t do it… at all… and I knew it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad workout.

I felt like a wimp for only using 8lb. dumbbells on the external shoulder rotations and I kept forgetting to keep an eye on the clock for the :30 rest and all of the boys got to lift really heavy weight and step up on the 36″ box and they made it look like fun even though it was hard while I plinked around with my “girls” barbell and worried about falling off the box and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad workout.

I can’t do knees-to-elbows and my palms hurt. The chalk didn’t help with the sweat on my hands. The air outside was like a sauna and I lost my balance on the jumping lunges and I almost collided with the boys on their sprints and I definitely, most assuredly got lapped by the fast sprinters and my legs were sore and tight from sprinting on Wednesday and I knew it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad workout.

When Tristy called ‘time’ I had finished four rounds but when she posted our times to the website it only said three and I knew it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad workout.

Some workouts are like that. Even in Australia.