So I made it through another WOD and was able to finish it. Heavily scaled down, slow, but finished!
Yesterday’s WOD was really tough (seems like they all are!):
Warm Up
These warm-ups crack me up. Literally. By the time they’re done I’m huffing and puffing and thinking there’s no way I can do a WOD afterwards. But somehow it’s working out okay so far.
Here’s what the warm up entailed:
- 200m dash (it was supposed to be a warm-up run but it was pouring rain out there and the challenge was “to see who could make it back the least wet”)
- from one end of the ‘box’ (i.e., gym) – 3 air squats followed by a short bear crawl of about 10 feet, repeat to other side of box
- from one end of box – standing broad jump followed by 3 air squats, repeat to other side
- The instructions on barbell squats and burpees was a bit taxing, particularly the burpees, where we were asked to keep our feet (toes and heels) together and then kick them up from the plank position to our hands and then stand and see how spread apart they were. The farther apart the less flexibility/mobility one has. Mine were far apart…
WOD
For time:
- 50 GHD SitUps – scaled for me to use the AbMat – basically a small lumbar curve pad
- 50 Thrusters – scaled for me to use the 15lb bar along with 20lbs of weight for total of 35lbs
- 50 Ring Rows – first 25 were straight-up righteous….then I had to resort to pulling my knees up and aiding with my feet some
- 50 Front Squats – same 35lb as for the Thrusters
- 50 Burpees
This WOD was really tough. Can you imagine doing 50 of these bitches, along with all the other stuff?
I finished in a little over 25 minutes. The coach was phenomenal – really kept an eye on me and made sure I didn’t cause major damage to myself or others. I came in dead last, no surprise, and if it weren’t for the coach and a couple of the other participants urging me on with those burpees I might not have finished. When I finally eeked out that last burpee, I literally don’t think I could have done another one. I was spent. One lady there who apparently was also doing burpees along with me came up to me after and, with a fist bump, told me she “was happy to have a burpee partner at the end.” I kind of like burpees, just not after all that other shit. It’s just torture.
In case you don’t know what a burpee is, here is what it’s supposed to look like:
In truth, mine were heavily scaled by the aid of gravity – I fell down each time, and stumbled back up into a standing position. None of that push-up and jump back stuff.
With the WOD finished, it took about a half hour for me to fully recover. I hung around a bit and watched the next session start and then, when I could function again I came home and started to feel great – energized! Felt great all last night too, and slept like a baby. And then at 5am on the nose I woke up to a very uncomfortable throbbing pain in my right knee. Hard to describe. It was sharp and painful. I was freaked – thought my fledgling start in physical exercise, only 2 weeks in, was going to prematurely come to an end. But, *I think*, I just fell asleep on it weird. After a few minutes of thinking to myself, “Fuck. I’m screwed. I’m damaged goods!”, I rolled over to lay flat on my back and straightened out my leg and it started to feel better. An hour later it was fine.
Throughout the day it felt fine, but by late afternoon I started to occasinally notice a ‘twinge’ (for lack of a better word) once in a while. But I think it’ll be okay. It just ain’t normal soreness, I know that. My original plan for CrossFit was to do it twice a week and ease into it with the hope that, eventually after a couple of months, my body would be able to recover quickly enough to do it 3 times per week. Well let me tell you – there is no easing into it. Between the baseline/intro that had me spinning dizzy, to the WODs so far, it’s been very tough but for whatever reason I love the challenge. And after doing the WOD on Saturday I felt fine on Monday – very little soreness, so I went for some more punishment. And other than this knee thing I don’t have much soreness today so I can definitely see that recovery is happening faster than it did the first week, and much faster than I had expected.
I’m torn (mentally, hopefully not literally in my knee) – should I go tomorrow or wait until Thursday… I can’t risk blowing out this knee. I’m 99% sure it was caused by taking too wide a stance on the front squats. I felt slight pain in my thighs/quads the last 10 or 20 reps. And I didn’t feel it in my knee then.
Oh well, I’ll decide after a night’s sleep.