6/18 - 'Karen'

Some days I just wish I didn’t look at the WOD before heading to the box.  Yesterday was one of those days.  ‘Karen’.  ‘Karen’ is a bitch – not as bad when she’s not followed by DU’s and muscle-ups as in the open the past two years but still enough to make you not look forward to her at all.

Strength/ Skill

5 Rds

10 Chest to bar Pull Ups

Max L-Sit

Used the red band for the first 4 sets of c2b pull-ups then Coach Scotty yelled at me (nicely) to not kip with the band so finished up with both red and orange bands.  It was almost comical at the beginning (easy) then a struggle towards the end (so hard).  The L-sits were done hanging from the bar.  I think on average I was around 20 seconds for each.  It was fun partnering up with George for this one though I think us giving each other time increments on the L-sits didn’t actually help much – we both aimed for 20 seconds rather than going to failure – that being said my arms/ hands weren’t having much more anyway.  It was a good 20 minute warm-up heading into…

WOD ‘Karen’

150 Wall Balls 20/14lb

9:23 PR (14lb to 9’ line)

I have only done ‘Karen’ in the open WODs.  The first year (2011) I didn’t finish the wall balls in the 12 minute time cap.  This year I finished the wall balls (aka ‘Karen’) in 10:55 (the tie-breaker as noted on the games website score).  My summary from 13.3 noted that I did a set of 10 reps then sets of 5 for the rest with Coach Tara judging/ cheering me on.  It was nice to have a reminder of that going in.

Last night I just went with what felt good – even as the air squats in the warm-up reminded me of how sore my hamstrings were from ‘Diane’.  I started off just getting into the rhythm and found it feeling solid – I easily hit 15 reps and while I thought of going for 20 (especially as the boys on either side of me hadn’t yet stopped I knew it was still a long way to the finish and took a little break).  I didn’t want to get into sets of 5 until I had to so I picked up the ball again and did 10, it felt okay and I tried to stick with this number.  I remember at 45 reps in noting how hard it was starting to feel and how I wasn’t even yet halfway (the hard part is when you hit 75 and make that halfway realization).  Thankfully I never even noted 75, I was struggling to maintain sets of 10 and did through to 95 reps.  I wanted to hold on to the number but just couldn’t – that being said I also didn’t want to drop down to sets of 5 either as 10 (11) sets of 5 is still a lot to wrap your mind around. I decided on 8-7 pattern.  Which I followed through til the end.  The last few rounds were a struggle in forcing myself to both pick up the ball and go and also keep going even when I wanted to stop/ my form was getting a little wonky.

It was fun working beside Brendan – he helped me to minimize my rest times either because he was getting back to the ball/ still working or because Coach Scotty came around and was counting him down to get back at it and I used this cue as well.  My splits were fairly consistent.  I rememeber hitting 25 reps in the first minute then 50 at the 3 minute mark (approximately) and then 100 at 6 minutes in (approximately).  Finishing just over 9 minutes was fairly decent in my mind, a solid 1:30 faster than my previous PR.  I will definitely take it.

And for anyone questioning why I showed up for ‘Karen’ when I hate her so… it’s for a few reasons – trying not to cherry pick WODs and also because I’m fairly certain we’ll see wallballs in the Primal Throwdown and I knew I could use the practice.  The extra dose of confidence it gave me definitely helped.