300 - Day 80

So I ended up taking some more days off - still more sick than I thought and Fran didn't help the situation at all. Either way, the way I see it, its better to take a few days off to recuperate so that you can work at full intensity than it is to work a few days at less-than-your-best.

So I took my time off and waited for a good day to return. I thought today's workout sounded good - I even almost recommended it as a nice easy workout for someone at the office who is wanting to get into Crossfit - but keeps hesitating, being a little intimidated.

It's probably a good thing it slipped my mind. The WOD:
Five rounds for time of:
135 pound Hang squat clean, 15 reps
30 Push-ups

It didn't sound bad - but I should realise by now that those are the worst ones.

This was a brutal, brutal workout. I tried to do it as Rx'd - but after round 3, I knew I wouldn't be able to grip the bar long enough to complete another HSC - my forearms were that destroyed. So I lowered the weight to 115 and continued. To give you an idea, here are my times for each round:

Round 1 - 4:56
Round 2 - 12:18
Round 3 - 23:00
Round 4 - 31:00 (didn't stop the clock while I changed weights)
Round 5 - 37:50

With push-ups being a strong suit for me - I finished all my sets unbroken - you can tell how much work I need at the hang squat clean. I just didn't expect this to be as demanding as it was.

As I post this now (2 days later) my shoulders are BURNING still. I needed to ask my wife for a massage earlier - and even that was excruciating. My forearms are still sore and even my legs, which are my most powerful muscles are quite sore.

When I finished this workout, my pulse rate was about 160 - borderline on the cardio zone for my age - which just goes to show how demanding Crossfit is - nearing 40 minutes of cardio work with full-body heavy weight exercises.

If this workout comes up again any time soon, I'll definitely consider modifying the weight at the beginning of the workout until I can do this exercise less broken. I took both yesterday and today off because of the soreness - no symptoms of rhabdo yet though! Today though, I did do some running and monkeying around at the playground with the kids. Something to get the heart rate going anyway.