I went to Valdosta, Georgia to visit my very good friend Tracy and her family. Of course my husband being the freak he is said that I had to visit a Crossfit gym while I was there for a few days. Sure I was going to do it anyway because both JT (Tracey’s Husband) and Kayla (their daughter) train at Crossfit Valdosta and secretly I love doing Crossfit too so I’d even go on my weekend of hanging out, wine drinking and gossiping with Tracy :-)
I arrived Friday morning and had some time to kill during the day. It was about noon and I wanted to burn off some energy so I decided to go for a run. I told Tracy I was about to go running and she called me absolutely crazy and that nobody goes running in Georgia during June at noon. I might actually explode into dust. I laughed it off and went anyway……….HOLY CRAP IT WAS HOT. I used to run . . . a lot! I ran 6 days a week. I’ve ran 5K and 10K races. I ran a half marathon and was training for a 110 mile team relay and hoping to do a full marathon. Needless to say, I love running but I made it about 1 mile and had to stop. . . yes 1 mile! Then I noticed that there were no people on the street. Being from Seattle you are used to seeing people biking, walking, running everywhere. I was literally the only person on the street. When I got back to the house everyone was just laughing giving me a lot of I told you so’s. They thought it was so funny that when they introduced me to other people they opened it with “this is our friend Erin from Seattle can you believe she tried to run outside at noon, hahahahahaha”.
I made plans with Kayla and JT to visit their box, www.crossfitvaldosta.com, on Saturday. Saturday is when their gym does the Hero WOD’s and longer, intense Crossfit wods. The owner of the gym, Trebor Marple, gave Kayla and JT a warning about bringing me to the Saturday WOD and emphasized this is a longer hard wod, are you sure she’s up for it. This freaked them out wondering if they were up for it. They have been in Crossfit for a year and never did a Saturday workout before. They were now questioning if they were ready for a Saturday WOD. JT was sweating the whole time worrying how wrecked he’d get from the wod.
So Saturday finally comes around and we’re doing:
"The Seven"
Seven rounds for time of:
7 Handstand push-ups
135 pound Thruster, 7 reps
7 Knees to elbows
245 pound Deadlift, 7 reps
7 Burpees
7 Kettlebell swings, 2 pood
7 Pull-ups
They started the timer with a cap of 35 minutes. I didn’t think I’d need it but it was nice to know it was there because workouts always look so much more fun and easy on the board. So we’re in the workout and after round 3 I felt my hands start to rip, normally if they get bad at my gym I’ll stop and modify my pull-ups for pushups because once their torn Im pretty worthless. I didn’t want to look like a pansy so I just kept plugging on feeling my hands get worse and worse. Plus, Trebor, the owner of the gym was working out with us and from what I know, had been severely injured when he was hit by a car while training for a triathalon and crossfit helped him recover, he’s a beast. Here is his a link to his bio http://www.crossfitvaldosta.typepad.com/trebor_marple/ . I couldn’t very well bitch about my little ripped hands while this dude is killing the wod right next to me. The time limit was coming near and JT, Kayla and I were still going, we mentally high fived each other because the workout was almost out of time. I was finishing up my thrusters as the time neared so instead of moving to knees to elbows I skipped to the deadlift because I didn’t want to just quit but I didn’t think my hands could endure any more, then I went onto the burpees and kettle bell swings. I had another three rounds to go when the timer ran out and then Trebor yells “Don’t stop, don’t worry about the time limit just keep going” ……….WHAT THE WHAT! I was trying to hide the pain on my face as my hands ripped open more and more and now to finish the round I had to do my knees to elbows and pull-ups back to back. I threw on gloves but that didn’t work. I ripped those off. One of the guys who had finished grabbed some tape and tried to tape up my hands but between the blood and sweat, that easily fell off. They were nice enough to let me finish my knees to elbows on the rings instead of the bars to help with the sliding. I was finally on my last round of pull-ups and as Kayla was standing there cheering me on a piece of my hand skin fell off and floated ever so gently passed her face to the floor. I was literally holding back tears. Everyone in the gym was very cool as they finished they hung around and were cheering us on, I have no idea how they all knew my name but I kept hearing them yell “push it Erin, go go” So no stopping now, push through the pain.
Finally I finished. I’m so happy I moved on but I knew I wouldn’t be able to do a pull-up or anything on the bar for a couple of weeks. My hands were ripped up really bad.
I had a great trip visiting friends. The box was awesome, Trebor and Kate were great, Trebor was a rockstar and a great coach. After he finished his WOD he grabbed his gear and started doing reps next to the group to try and push them through the end.
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