Fran

Yes, Fran again!  When I read that we were doing Fran my brain went into overdrive.  I'm so close to doing it RX'd but I know that I'm not ready yet.  My last attempt was just over 9 minutes and after talking to Coach Nick I cemented what I already knew; I need to get my time down before I step it up to the next level.  In saying that, we have some different bands which are even thinner than our orange ones so I chose to go the red band today.

Due to my schedule I normally go to the gym on a Thursday afternoon but today I chose to head into the 5 am class because I knew that I would spend the whole day stewing on the workout.  Now that we are heading into summer the 5 am class isn't too bad and it's nice to get the WOD over and done with for the day.  The bonus is the classes are a little smaller and therefore we have better access to equipment.  Plus the added bonus today was that it was 'Smoothie Day'.  Every now and then we have a day when some of the staff make up smoothies as a bit of a fundraiser and it's great in the mornings as it becomes my breakfast.

I went into today incredibly nervous.  Benchmark workouts, and Fran in particular, do that to me.  I put so much pressure on myself to improve but I should approach it like it is just another WOD.  I think, too, the fact that I have done this one a few times before I know just how much it is going to hurt and, in general, I'm finding it hard to get over the mental hurdles at the moment.  And it hurt.  LOTS! For a change, the thrusters didn't hurt as much as the pull ups, my shoulders and forearms were cactus and I was no repped for not getting my chin over the bar.  I was cut off at 10 minutes with 2 reps to go and Nick added those 2 seconds onto my time.  I can't deny it, I'm disappointed.  I made very little change to my scaling, not enough to warrant an extra minute to my score.  I'm disappointed in stopping to rest when I could have possibly kept going, I didn't feel like I could keep going at the time but my mind always gives out well before my body does.

The thing is it IS just another workout.  There is no reason to beat myself up over it ... I gave it everything I had today, tomorrow could be different with a different result.  I do think my biggest problem is that I waste so much energy due to nerves that I have nothing to give in the WOD.  The positives for me today was that my thrusters felt okay and I attempted a harder scaling for my pullups.  I also realise that while I desperately want to do RX'd it is more important for me to work on my work capacity at the moment.

Date	Time	Thruster Weight (kg)	Pull up Option
19/09/2012	4:20 (reps 15, 12, 9)	15	Blue Band
21/12/2012	8:50	17.5	Green Band
27/05/2013	7:20	15	Orange Band
13/01/2014	8:13	22.5	Orange Band
22/07/2014	9:03	27.5	Orange Band
6/11/2014	10:02	27.5	Red Band