Talk about good timing. I’m in Upstate New York visiting family so I have to stop into Albany CrossFit while there. I emailed the gym asking when a good time to drop in was and the owner, Jason Ackerman, writes back that once a month they do something big and special for their gym and this upcoming Saturday, August 21st, they are putting together a workouts that mimics CrossFit Competition. SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!!
I originally planned to stop in on a Thursday or Friday night but after hearing about the Saturday Smackdown I rearranged my plans to be there.
Now here is where common sense and wanting to do something can get you in trouble. I was supposed to go to the Saratoga Track on Saturday with my entire family and be home at noon. The Smackdown started at 10am, a normal CrossFit class is 1 hour so I should be good. Jason started to brief the smack down and said this will take up to 2 hours, CRAP, that means it might end when I’m supposed to be home. What went through my head next was:
1. I’m awesome……I can do the 2 hours of work in an hour or less because again, I’m awesome
2. This looks like so much fun and I really really want to do it, so it’s worth risking being late plus they probably wouldn't be that irritated (yes famous last words)
For the Saturday Smackdown they scheduled everyone to do 3 mini WODs followed by a 4th Mystery Chipper WOD that everyone will start together. So we are handed a sheet of paper with the three WODs that we can do in any order, and they are:
Event A: Max Effort Ground to Overhead (10 minutes to establish 1 rep max)
Event B: 10 Stones to Shoulder, 30 Burpees for time
Event C: 21-15-9 Prowler/KettleBell Swings
Since I can do these in any order, I was trying to figure out a strategy. I didn’t want to do the max ground to overhead first because I wanted a good warm up WOD before I got to this, so my plan was to do it second. Now I’ve never done a Prowler Push before and I’ve never picked up concrete stones to shoulder. Here is how my thought process went to selecting which WOD to do first. The stones to shoulder resemble work being done on the same muscle group associated with max ground to overhead so I wouldn’t want to exhaust myself here, plus Burpees SUCK!!!! Then I looked at the Prowler Push, I know nothing about it other than the videos I’ve seen on crossfit.com where they make it look very easy….easy enough where it looks like rest. Plus before moving to Seattle I lived in Alaska for the past 12 years where moving sleds over the ground is easy. See sleds glide across the ground and it’s takes zero physical effort to do it. After calculating what’s best I decided to go with the Prowler Push and KettleBell Swings, Hell I might not even break a sweat during this WOD.
3, 2, 1……GO!!!! I Started pushing the Prowler, wow this isn’t easy. In fact it’s damn hard. I got the first push down and back done without stopping and knocked out the first 21 kettlebells quick and unbroken. BUT, now my heart is racing like crazy and I can’t feel my legs. I pushed for the second round and made it to the turn around point without stopping but when I had to turn the sled around, I took a long walk staring at it, then pushed it very slow on the way back. Got there and knocked out the 15 kettlebells unbroken. I turned and looked at the prowler and thought to myself, “I might dislike the prowler more than rowing” and that says a lot. This push went slow with a few short rests and got back knocked out the last 9 kettlebell swings unbroken and collapsed. 4:52 was my time. I was torched after this WOD, I had Fran cough and I couldn’t feel my legs. Doing this WOD before the max ground to over head was one of the worst decisions I’ve made since saying the landing from my amazing jumping ability, resembles being thrown from a bull (full story of that here http://crossfit50states.blogspot.com/2010/04/time-to-really-cowboy-up.html ). If I showed up and only did this WOD today, I would have felt like I accomplished a lot and got a good workout but now I had 3 more to go.
I have no idea how long I laid there, I finally heard Jason Yell, “30 more minutes”, Ahhhhh crap I did the first WOD in 4:52 and wasted so much time trying to recover from it, oh well time to move on and if I suck I suck. I didn’t do bad at ground to overhead, I did it by Power Clean and split jerk, I got up 215. I attempted 225 twice, I was able to power clean it into position but I was smoked and couldn’t jerk it overhead. I was really wanted 225 too because I heard Austin Malleolo scream at one of the guys that went before me that if he got 225 overhead he’d be second overall for the day. He didn’t get it up so when it was my turn that was a goal………..Oh and if you don’t know who Austtin Malleolo is, he’s one of the trainers at Albany Crossfit and he just beasted the 2010 CrossFit Games by placing 6th overall. http://games2010.crossfit.com/blog/2010/04/athlete-profile-austin-malleolo,333/ The guys an animal and you’ll regularly see videos of him working out on the crossfit main site. Ok back on track, I didn’t get 225 overhead, I feel I could have if I were fresher but that’s bad strategy on my part, oh well.
Since I was running out of time I had to move right to the Stone to shoulder and burpee workout. This wasn’t that bad once I learned the technique. I wish wish wish I had selected this WOD as my warmup WOD. Don’t get me wrong it’s still difficult but the Prowler/Kettlebell WOD kicked me in the tool shed. I finished the stone/burpee one in 5:01, not great but not bad either.
I looked at the clock and it was noon, I’m supposed to be home to head to the track butttttttttttt this was too much fun and I had a mystery WOD yet to do. I decided to risk annoying the family in order to finish the competition. Austin briefed the mystery WOD and it was as follows:
-Run 800 Meters
-1 Max Stone to Shoulder – For every pound you pick up you take one second off your overall time, so if you lift 130 that’s 130 seconds. You only get up to 2 attempts and with the limited stones and amount of people you might be waiting in line for one, so the key here is get back soonest and go for it.
-Run 600 Meters
-75 air squats
-Run Backwards 400 Meters
-50 box jumps
-30 burpees over paralettes
-Run 200 Meters
Since I have a habit of going out too fast and gasing myself on these chipper WODs I decided to follow the lead pack and feel myself out. By time we hit the last 200 meters of the 800 I felt good and ran to the front so I could be the first one to choose which Stone to lift, I did the 130 pound stone quick and too easy so I looked over at the 150 and 175 but both had long lines so instead of wasting time in the line I decided to just hit my 600 and take the 130 lift I did. I knocked out the 600 quick and was first back again to start the 75 air squats……..here is where I hit a wall. The Prowler was still a big monkey on my back and I had no legs, I was in shock I had to break up friggin air squats, I mean they are air squats……WTF. Stupid Prowler, I’ll remember this. I broke them up enough where I was first in and had 10-15 people hit the next run ahead of me. The run backwards was slow, but it was slow for everyone. Next moved to box jumps and burpees, they are what they are just something you suck up and gut through. So I did that and ran he last 200 pretty strong, finished it in 19:51 subtract my 130 lift so final time 17:41.
I wanted to stay around and have the crew tally up the scores and see how I did overall but I saw the clock and it was 12:45, awwww crap I’m going to have some pissed off family.
I guess my family thought I was going to be home at 11am so they were freaking out, my phone blew up. I had 10 missed calls, a ton of texts and they sent my brother to Albany CrossFit to try and find me, they were worried I got injured. So I got home apologized for being late, dad was annoyed, wife was annoyed, and so was everyone else buttttt between you, me and the world wide web :-) it was worth it. I had such a great time, I wish I could do it again.
more pictures at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9631352@N02/sets/72157624688341797/with/4929292467/
I really need to find a way to get paid to visit CrossFit gyms, that'd be sweet and the job for me :-)
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