A Date with Diane, New Ergs, Clock Malfunction

Ahhhh yes, Diane... one of the very few ladies I had yet to attempt to conquer. Monday was my first real opportunity and I'll admit I had a small amount of trepidation. Diane consists of 21-15-9 rep rounds of 225lb deadlift and handstand pushups (hspu). Deadlifts I can do, and the goal was to get all reps of them unbroken. HSPU on the other hand are not my strength - after a certain number of reps my shoulders just seem to lock up. Fortunately I have learned how to "kip" with the legs out of the bottom position, which if you time it juuuuusssst right, it makes the hspu infinitely easier.

That being said, I was never going to come close to hitting 2 minutes-ish like Pat "the Manimal" Barber (CrossFit superhero) but the benefit of doing a WOD for the first time ensures that you'll hit a PB no matter what!!

I started strongly, hitting 21 straight reps of deads then right into the hspu. The key for me is to conserve energy on these and not go to failure. I ended up getting through the 21 fairly well, then got 15 deadlifts unbroken. At that point, the wheels kinda fell off on the hspu and I had to chip away at 1-3 reps at a time. 9 more straight deadlifts, then what felt like 30 min to get the last hspu done. time:
13:23, not blazing by any means but I've come a long way since only being able to do 1 hspu about a year ago. Something to improve upon.

Other Monday training - earlier in the day I hit one of my favorite running interval workouts (I've pretty much dropped all steady state running in favor of short to long intervals). It's a combo of 3,2, and 1 minute intervals:

3 min @ 80% effort, 1min rest, 2min @ 90% effort, 1 min rest, 1min @ 95ish effort, 2 min rest. I usually do three cycles through that sequence although this past Monday I had to squeeze it in between some appointments and only got 2 cycles plus another 3 min done. I like this workout because each cycle builds on the speed of the 1 mins and pushes the intensity up each round.

Tuesday was an unintentional rest day, but a great day for the Zone... I managed to swing 6 ergs from Rowing Canada at bargain prices!! Michelle and I took them apart, bundled them into the CSCP truck and my trusty Cavalier, and shipped them down to the Zone. Now our erg fleet is up to 8 machines, with possibly 2 more to come. This is awesome and awful at the same time - we now can do more rowing as a group, and we now have no excuse NOT to do more rowing.

There is power in unified rowing and we found that out on Wednesday night when we lined up all 8 ergs for 8 repeats of 30s on, 30s off for max total metres. This was part of a WOD named after Olympic gold medallist, Andrew Byrnes, and also included working up to a 3 rep max in the front squat and push press. One of the ergs we brought in is actually the very same machine that Andrew trained on leading up to the Beijing Olympics, which is pretty cool to say the least. We also have an erg that Doug Vandor (perennial top national team lightweight rower) trained on before Beijing.

Being that some of us are in "games prep" mode for the Regionals at the end of May, we got the special treat of doing the 8x 30/30 TWICE! For the duration of the workout, I was spurred on by Steve "the beast" Solely, whose effort in training is second only to his rapier wit ;). For the second row, I had on my right the "delicate flower" herself, Krista Kitson, who was putting it ALL into those row intervals... we should have made an audio tape of the second row - sounded like the "monkey house" at the local zoo.

I managed only to drop off by 72m from the first to the second row, which wasn't too shabby, here's a summary of the day's training:

11am: Mobility work and Snatch tech
Snatch balances (3 reps) alternated with squat snatches (2 reps) from the floor: 7-8 sets from 40kg to 60kg

530pm: CFZ "andrew byrnes"
4x3 front squat - 165, 185, 205, 215
4x3 push press - 135, 155, 175, 185 (should have pushed this more, probably had 195/200 in me)
8 x 30/30 #1: 1480m total
Overall Score: 1880
8 x 30/30 #2: 1408m total

1880 was good enough for second on our leaderboard - big Jer Bear destroyed the row with a monster 1549 total m, surprise surprise. This is the same Jer who owned the 2k row at the BC sectionals with a 6:29.9 clocking... deadly.

Thursday was a chance to catch up on the wod I missed on Tuesday - the Helenator. Based off the classic crossfit workout "Helen" (3 rounds for time of 400m run, 21 kettlebell swings (55lb), 12 pullups), my version was geared to a bit more running and a few more pullups:

5 rounds for time of:
15 kettlebell swings (55lb)
200m run
15 pullups
200m run

I had intended on most people wrapping this wod up in around 14-17 minutes but most spirits were crushed with the majority of people being over 20minutes (one person at 29!!! that's savage). Tommy J had the best time on Tuesday with a bit over 15 minutes and I figured I could top that by running fast and staying really consistent with my pullups.

The rest of the class was doing snatch technique so I looked at the timing clock and when it hit 5 minutes I started my workout. It went well, all kettlebell swings unbroken, first three rounds of pullups unbroken (then 10/5 after that), and I kept a decent pace on the runs, picking it up on the parking lot and trying to keep the legs stretching on the downhill back to the gym. Unfortunately, I had set the clock earlier for 16 minutes so when it hit that time(at beginning of my 5th round) it stopped, much to my chagrin. I figured I had four rounds done at 16 min on the clock (11min total time of my workout since I started 5 min in) so can only guess that my time was around 14 minutes... but i can't on good conscience record that on the leaderboard! Oh well, bad luck, I'll have to do it again - and faster!!

All in all, the week has gone well with training so far. I'm looking to do a double tomorrow - cleans, back squats, bench press, ghd's tomorrow midday and a tough metcon tomorrow night (4 rounds for time of 5 muscle ups, 30 double unders, 20 double crunches). Rest on Saturday (or a light row) then affiliate team tryouts on Sunday... good times!

Keep fit and have fun...

Cam