Naplavka WOD

Even though I don’t do Crossfit anymore, I still think of my workout as a WOD.

Giving something a name or title assigns it with heft and meaning. When I call whatever movement I’m doing on a particular day a ‘WOD,’  it’s my acknowledgement that I’m consciously doing something good for my body that day.

Plus, it’s just fun to say WOD.

Today, my WOD took place on the naplavka on the Vltava River, very close to our flat. (I have to call our apartment a flat now, because we live in Europe. See? There’s that specificity of naming thing again!) The naplavka is a cobblestone expanse that runs along the river, sort of like an American boardwalk except there’s no sand or souvenir t-shirts.

This is how it looks most afternoons:

Dave and I usually wander down for a sit and snacks a few times a week to watch the sunset. As you can imagine, it’s pretty horrible.

And this is what the naplavka is like in the morning:

There are plenty of cyclists commuting into the city center and a handful of runners, some early-morning tourists enjoying the view of the castle, and today, I watched a man suit up in swim goggles and dive right into the Vltava for a chilly swim.

And I enjoyed my Naplavka WOD.

Naplavka WOD

15:00 minutes, AMRAP:
2X up & down the stairs
10 pushups (bench)
10/leg bench step-ups
10 triceps dips (bench)
15 squats
20 mountain climbers

These are the steps:

And this is the bench:

In the afternoon/evening, there are usually some uber-fit people playing beach volleyball on that boat, and the area to the left of the sandpit becomes a cocktail lounge/dancefloor. On the weekends, it’s a little like a wedding party!

I finished three rounds of my WOD—at a “moving-but-not-about-to-die” pace—in 15 minutes. My goal is to eventually migrate my pushups from the bench to the ground and to upgrade the step-ups to box jumps—but that’s a few months in my future. Today was my first legit WOD in about seven months (yikes!), so I’m taking my time and treating myself like a workout newbie.

This is me, feeling very pleased with myself after the WOD: