12-04-23: Running, rope climbs, and more running!

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Monday, April 23rd, 2012

In my head, I look like Herschel Walker when I run...

In reality, I get passed by this guy...

Camille Leblanc-Bazinet is just here to drive traffic to this site. Thanks Cami!

Rope climbs. NOT active rest between runs!

Seriously, find me the muscles that aren't working here. (CrossFit Games)

One reason I'm not super depressed at my hatred of long distances (for the record, a mile is NOT a long distance. I'm just an inefficient whiner, and don't think I don't know it!)

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WoD:

• 1 Mile run
• 10 Rope climbs (1 rope climb = 2 1/2 climbs = 5 pull-ups = 10 ring rows)
• 1 Mile run

Yup, running still sucks. Especially two doses of it, one after burning out on rope climbs (and subs), in the rain. Ugh. What a shitty Monday morning. I love it. ;)

First run was bad enough. I stopped to walk a little at the 800m turn-around point, but tried to stay strong the rest of the way back. Its definitely my breathing slowing me down. I just get to the point of feeling like I'm suffocating if I don't stop to walk for a few paces. Not sure yet if that's a "run more" kind of problem or a "learn to breathe better/more efficiently" kind of gig.

Came in from the run pretty chuffed out, but hit the knotted rope and made it to the top. I know I was pretty tight going up and coming down, concerned about what effect my wet sneakers were having on gripping the rope. I swapped in the subs here and there, doing two sets of ring rows and one set of pull-ups, but realized pretty quickly that those were even more work than the freaking rope! Only problem with that was that I couldn't really recover my breath all that well between climbs, and I did NOT want to hit the rope so fatigued I just ended up falling off Jesus' front porch (thanks Vin for the awesome visual!). Steady as she goes...

I headed out the door, several minutes behind the rest of the class, telling Vin I was just going to do the offered 800m substitute for the full mile. A few minutes later, I passed what should have been my turnaround point, not realizing my mistake. By the time I did, the rest of the athletes were in sight coming back towards me... and I didn't want to turn around just randomly. That would look like giving up! So, resigned to my fate, I decided to do the full mile. Granted, more of it was done walking this time, but I tried to finish the last 200m as strong as I could, picking up the pace and really trying to make a race (with myself) out of it.

Yup, running still sucks.

Total time: 36:56