The ‘just herding goats’ WOD

If you wanted to design a daily workout to make me feel sick before, during and after, this would probably be it.

The focus: 10 minutes to achieve maximum height box jump. I don’t even want to talk about this. It’s the closest I’ve come to puking and it wasn’t exertion, it was sheer fear. I’m definitely not getting better at box jumps.

Then a five round focus on Turkish get-ups. Any asymmetric exercise challenges me a lot – Turkish get-ups, adding balance components to asymmetry, also make me feel sick.

By the end of the focus I wanted to go home. I was mentally exhausted and self-loathing because I bottled the box jumps at a pathetic 20 kilo plate on a 12” box. I have managed 18” box jumps in the past so this was all about fear and I did not overcome it. Did not. That’s all there is to it – today I wasn’t mentally tough enough to override my inadequacy.

So the WOD was:

3 minutes max effort

• 3 x powercleans
• 3 x toes to bar
3 minutes rest
• 3 x GTOH
• 3 x box jumps (ha ha!)
3 minutes rest
• 3 x thrusters
• 3 x burpee bar hops

I took the bronze level – 15 kilos on the bar, knee raises and 12” box (and I did step ups, not jumps, I was box-jumped out by this point)

I wasn’t unhappy with my performance in the WOD:

7 rounds and two knee raises
6 rounds flat
5 rounds and two burpees.

I was very unhappy with the focus – not so much with my performance, I did as much as I could, and not with the outcome, because I did as much as I could. It’s just one of those WODs that show me that there are going to be days when I don’t have the exhaustion of success or the relaxation of failure – I just have the exhaustion with nothing to show for it. In other words, if you’re not a Crossfit natural, some WODs will drain your energy without feeding your spirit, and today’s focus was one of those for me.

Birthday WOD

There’s something peculiar about birthday WODs – one the one hand they’re a privilege and on the other hand … they’re horrible.

My birthday was 6th September but I couldn’t WOD until today,9th. OH kindly volunteered to join in the ‘fun’.

And what did this fun consist of?

51 air squats

• 5 burpees
• 1 deadlift
• 5 V-sits
• 1 deadlift
• 5 pull ups
• 1 deadlift

51 calorie row

With the middle section (the bit I’ve bulleted) repeating 5 times.

So … on the good side, with the 18 burpees we did in the warm up, this made up all our burpees for today (today is day 40 of the 100 day burpee challenge).

On the not-good side, a 51 calorie row at the end of a WOD is an atrocious way to celebrate a birthday!

Times as on the board, but while I lifted 65 kilos (I weigh 52k), OH lifted 80 kilos and he weighs 75, which may contribute to some of the difference in our times.

And actually, it was fun. Thanks Coach David for the programming!

Why I do Crossfit – the library WOD

Okay, so somebody once said that to be a good writer you have to read a lot.

Define ‘lot’.

In my case, it turns out to be 1500 books that wouldn’t fit into our new home. About 600 will, and about 500 had already departed over the previous year, after we started talking about downsizing. That’s … a lot of books. And that’s not the books I’ve read, it’s just the books I own. My library ticket runs to four books a week when I’m not writing!

So 1500 books needed a new home and a local charity shop sent a darling volunteer to collect them. But the books had to be bagged and carried to the car. Boot, rear seats, passenger seat … axle dragging and one bag splitting to cascade its volumes onto the drive.

Two journeys it took her to get them all to their destination. And I was definitely wishing I’d purchased more paperbacks and less bulky first editions by the end of the process, but hey … that’s why I do Crossfit!