300 - Day 73 - Sumo!

The WOD for 10/8/09:
Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
Row 250 meters
Sumo deadlift highpull 95 pounds, 21 reps
Pull-ups 15 reps

I have gotten in the habit of reviewing the older posts - the "compare to" date to see what I'm up against and to find an approximate average that I can strive to beat. In doing so, many of the workouts that I have compared, it looks like the average Crossfit athlete has improved. So for today's WOD, after reviewing the results from 05/25/2004, where the average rounds of completion was 4, I expected to see today's Crossfitters achieving 5-6 rounds on average.

After round 1, I realised I was sorely mistaken. I finished my second 250m row at the 5 minute mark. It's amazing just how quickly the Sumo deadlift high pull can crush your pull-up performance. Usually I can start my pull-ups off with sets of 15. Not today. After punishing my muscles with the SDLHP, I was only able to knock out 5 at a time. And that was kipping. I quickly realised it would be a feat to even finish 4 rounds - as while I was still fresh, I was barely ahead of schedule to do that.

However, I muscled through and finished round 4 with 19:43 on the clock - not even enough time to get my feet clipped in to start a new round of rowing. 20 minutes of punishment.
It's still amazing that nearly 3 months of this - and still, each workout is as demanding as was the first.

Crossfit is a way of life.