Sucking Wind Sucked

Saturday's workout:

“Sucking Wind”

30 Burpees

40 Wall Balls

400m Run

50 Double Unders

500m Row

 

Benchmark workouts are deceivingly hard.  They never look like much on paper and they are usually over in a matter of minutes ... but what tough minutes they are!  The rules of this little workout was that the exercises can be done in any order but they had to be done in the entirety before moving to the next one and because of that there is a little bit of strategy at play.  The other limiting factor is there are not enough rowers for each person and therefore you have to time it so you aren't left hanging waiting for one to be available and chewing up precious time.

 

My strategy was to start with the wall balls, being vertically challenged I struggle with these as the mark is so high.  In the warm up I tried the 4 kg medicine ball and just made the line and considering I had to do 40 of them I thought it would be best to use the 3 kg one instead.  The rules of wall balls is that they have to touch the wall at or go over the mark (I think it's 10'), if you don't achieve that it is considered a no-rep.  Needless to say, I do more reps than most because I either get the height but it doesn't hit the wall or I don't quite reach the mark. I think I nearly cried in these as I felt I took so long.

 

I did burpees next as I just wanted them out of the way.  I have gotten to the point that I don't mind burpees and my scaling for this one was knee burpees.  I really have to work to get my chest to the ground, particularly when tired.

 

I decided to do the row next.  Rowing shatters me which is why I didn't do it first but I didn't want to leave it until last either.  We have had a few WODs where we row first and then go onto other things and I find it so hard as my legs and upper body are shagged. I just tried to keep a steady pace and was grateful for the coaches talking to me through this one ... actually I'm grateful for the coaches and team mates talking me through all of the exercises.

 

 

I moved onto the run next.  I was officially stuffed by this point and had to walk a couple of times just to get my breathe.  I was disappointed in myself for that.

 

 

Last, but not least, was the double unders.  I did 50 attempts and I don't think I managed to do a single one.  I'm flat out landing these on a good day but when it was at that point where my body wouldn't do what my brain was telling it to.  I ended with a time of 13:44 - one of the slowest of the day.

 

 

I finished the WOD a little disappointed with how things went down.  I wanted to do 4 kg on the wall balls, I walked during the run leg and I didn't achieve any double-unders. I just want to get better and there are days where I feel like I'm going backward not forward BUT at the end of the day I finished the workout, there was no DNF (did not finish) next to my name or I could have chosen to not show up at all plus the beauty of benchmark workouts is that I can do it again in the future and see how I'm improving.