10/4 - DNF!

Today was a rough day for me at Crossfit…  I just felt tired when I got there even after a day off.  My shoulders were still sore and then I saw my (least) favorite combination on the board – a 21-15-9 couplet (always so hard).  We’ll get to that though… 

Warm-up 
Shoulder mobility
In pairs – one person bear crawls the width of the room twice while the other does air squats – repeat 3x each

Coach Tim was a bit late getting to class and Coach Match who started us in the warm-up let us choose how many burpees he’d get for being late – the deal was 5 for every minute.  Tim arrived at exactly 5pm however we’d actually started at 4:57 because everyone was there and ready to go so he (and Jack) each got 15 burpees.  After we finished going through the shoulder mobility and Coach Match handed over the class to Tim we were all a bit worried that we’d be doing burpees to warm-up as well but we didn’t… thankfully!
Match got a ton (exaggeration clearly) of rings as new equipment for the box and just like the KB’s when the additional ones arrived we were of course going to make good use of them immediately.  I knew this as soon as I walked in and saw all the straps hanging down from the pull-up bars. 

Gymnastic strength 
Tabata plank with feet in rings

Ring Planks (back corner) - Source

This felt fairly easy at first, not much harder anyway than normal planks however that quickly changed.  The thing was though that my shoulders were hurting more than my abs.  Don’t get me wrong, I knew my abs were working but my shoulders killed.  I really need to figure out how to get them stronger (they should be catching up already) but still they ache all the time.  Definitely need to figure this one out.
I did however (sore shoulders and cranky abs and all) manage to get through all the rounds with good form and not collapsing – the last one was so hard though.

WOD
21-15-9
Deadlifts (80/100kg)
Ring dips
DNF!

This one got me.  It’s the first WOD that I’ve never actually finished.  I mean there have been WODs where I didn’t finish before the cut-off time but I always worked right until that point but this one I barely broke a sweat on (and that says a lot).  I went Rx on the deadlifts initially even though they felt hard.  It was still 20kg off of my 1RM so although heavy they were still easily doable – or so I thought.  I did the first 6 then 5’s the rest of the way and somewhere in the first set of 5 I felt a ‘twing’ in my lower back and knew immediately that I’d tweaked something but figured that I could work through it and that it wasn’t that bad.  As soon as it happened though I dropped the weight on the bar – the 10kg plates came off and I was down to 60kg.  Should have been easy right?  Wrong.  I finished off the set of 21 and got on to the rings.

I used the orange band on the rings and even then they were hard.  I did the first 7 before resting and then 4-5-4-1 (I wanted the last set of 5 but it just didn’t happen).  The hard part for me was trying to not swing after jumping up and getting my knees into the band.  Angie was right beside me on this one and kept pushing me to keep at it which was awesome though.  Done 21, back to the bar.  Not looking forward to it at all.  I was hoping for three sets of 5, boy was I wrong.

I got through the first set of 5, it was tough but I managed even as my back was hurting a bit.  On the second 5 I was only a few reps in when I once again felt the ‘twing’ in the same spot and this time it hurt much more.  I was done.  I walked away from the bar, away from the class and laid down on the floor.  This was hard for me.  I am competitive (especially with myself), I don’t give up and most of all I always push through the pain.  For the number of years I played team sports I always hid any pain because I never wanted to be taken off the field/court so I always played through it and it always seemed to work.  The only times I can remember coming off where when I broke my finger playing flag football (it was pointing in another direction so I knew it was serious) and when I gave myself whiplash laying out in ultimate (was sore for days after that).  So ya, for me to stop was something big.  You can call me silly for not stopping after the first ‘twing’ but I think I’m more impressed that I did stop after the second.

What was probably even harder for me than stopping was responding to all the questions afterwards about if I was okay.  I hurt, a lot but I didn’t want to make a big deal of it.  I actually just wanted to get over it and keep going onto something else but it doesn’t work like that.  My body was telling me something and that was to slow down, to rest.  I did a lot of relaxing and stretching and trying to work it out.  Bren was awesome in that she just knew that I was hurting (as I think a few people did because they do know me and how hard it is for me to ‘quit’) and told me not to move and that she was putting my weights away (thanks Bren, as always you’re awesome and always looking out for me).

I stretched, ointmented (with Match’s crazy potion), I stretched, I voltarened, I heated and I slept.  I woke up this morning feeling quite stiff and achy on the one side but only now that I’m sitting at work does it fully hurt again.  I have an appointment for massage/ needling at lunch time which hopefully helps to fix me up as I’m determined to push hard through the Pink Day WOD at The Cell tomorrow.  

Visiting Crossfitters 

I'm quite the bad 'host' as Liz and Anna were over from the East Coast and came to my box for a WOD.  I didn't even realize they were there until the start of the class as we were warming up.  I managed to get a quick - 'hey Liz, I'm Jac' comment out hoping that she'd pick up on who I was (I follow her blog and she's a(nother) cute Canadian who moved over to Australia on her own - similar stories)... anyway, that was about the extent of it.  Because I was laid out on the floor in a bit of (quiet) agony from my back I didn't really get to chat with either of them afterwards and next thing I knew they were gone.  So sad. So bad on my part.  I'm sorry Liz, hopefully you're loving my little home town and drop me a line if you're around this weekend for the beach(es)!

WLC Day Whatever…

Still completely loving the food exchange with Bren and Angie.  I swear I’m actually gaining weight because of it.  They make me such tasty food each week and are constantly pushing me to up my game just to keep up.  It’s fantastic and it makes the sense of community feel that much tighter.  Thanks as always girls.

The food consumption is going well (as it does during the week) as is the water consumption (easy).  This weekend I know I’ll slip again but I’m okay with that – beers with friends is so much more satisfying than 3 points on my score.  I’m not saying that I’ll totally binge (that happened once Kirst!) but I know I won’t be perfect and that too is okay.