A Long, Lonely Defeat

Woke sleepily to the 4:15am alarm. Had breakfast then headed up Dunbar street to work. A lovely Vancouver morning.

A very full morning of coaching for me. The group classes faced a tough WOD today. So tough in fact that only Brick RX’d it. Great job dude!

No time for my WOD until after the noon class. Sadly, I broke my camera on the weekend and could not videotape the abject despair of this WOD.

12-9-6
Deadlift @315#
Bar Muscle Ups

Before my back injury this CrossFit WOD took me a very slow 20 minutes between the challenging deadlift and the bar MU. As part of my back rehab I have stopped using alternating grip. Grip strength greatly limits what I can lift and reduces the risk on my back. My hands struggled to hold 315# and I had to go one rep at a time.

In the warm up my bar mu were feeling much stronger but after struggling through 12 heavy deadlifts my hands felt dead and it was much harder to get over the bar. Slow as I was going my hands took longer and longer to recover. Despair battled determination until round 3. I was 1 hour, 16 minutes and 45 seconds into my struggle with only 2 deadlifts of round 3 completed. I had missed my last 2 attempts, my fingers refusing to hold the bar anymore. My back was beginning to make quiet complaints. And by this time I was starving as I hadn’t eaten in 4 hours.

Much as I hate to give up, I tapped out. What a depressing performance!

It did not help at all that The Touch later came in and completed it in 9:30.

There are moments of glory in CrossFit and behind those great days lie many of these unseen, uncelebrated struggles.

Had a bit of time to get work done before the evening classes. Struggles in the gym were not the only challenges for me today, business too is often a struggle and there arose another challenge for me to resolve. Some days just try to beat you down.

Happy when the day ended and Big Cat drove me home. Retired to bed my whole body aching from today’s WOD. Despite being tired it was hard to sleep due to the soreness.

Breakfast
Kangaroo & coleslaw, berries & coconut milk, cranberry juice