The CrossFit Open workout 13.1 was:
17 minutes AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) of:
40 burpees
30 snatches @75
30 burpees
30 snatches @135
20 burpees
30 snatches @165
10 burpees
As many snatches as possible @210
Going into this workout I was pretty excited. I had been training for the CrossFit Open for almost a full year. I knew burpees were just a pacing thing, and I had significantly improved my snatch strength over the last year by sticking the the CrossFit Invictus competition programming.
When the clock started so did the burpees…
To complete a full burpee you had to have your chest and stomach flat on the ground, get to your feet anyway you wanted, then jump to touch an object 6 inches above your outstretched fingers.
My strategy during the burpees was to not get too winded. Good strategy, right…
The first 40 burpees weren’t bad, and I moved onto the 30 snatches at 75 pounds.
I broke up the snatches into 3 sets of 10.
The weight was light enough that most of the 75 pound snatches looked like muscle snatches where I hardly bent my knees at the top of the movement.
Moving back to the burpees I felt like I was in pretty good shape. My body was starting to feel a little like lead, but it wasn’t bad… Yet.
The set of 30 burpees I (again) paced nice and slow. Down, up, jump, down, up, jump…
I knew the next set of snatches (at 135 pounds) were going to make or break the whole workout for me.
I finished the 30 burpees and walked to the snatch barbell, loaded the weight to 135 pounds (we had to change the weight ourselves), then began.
The first few reps felt heavy. Oh no. I did 3 reps, then… dropped the bar. I was going to stick to my plan of 3 reps at a time for as long as I could.
By the time I hit 12 reps I wasn’t sure how much longer I should hold the 3 rep pace. By 18 reps I decided I couldn’t keep up the pace, dropped the bar, and went to single reps. The bar felt heavy. I was still moving pretty quick, but I was doing 1 rep, dropping the bar, 1 rep, dropping the bar. This pattern continued until I finally got to rep 30. It felt like forever, and at that point my body felt drained.
But only 20 burpees up next…
I started the 20 burpees and (for some reason) thought I needed to pick up my pace to make sure I had a good tie breaker time. What I didn’t realize was that the tie breaker time was taken at the end of each set of snatches (not burpees). So I was racing for nothing. But not knowing that, I raced to finish the 20 burpees.
When I finished the burpees, I was tanked! But I had to keep moving.
As I stacked the 165 pounds on the barbell I kept hoping the weights would just slide on easily because I wasn’t sure if I had the strength or mental capacity to deal with a “sticky bumper plate.” I took a few seconds to catch my breath, and started to snatch.
I got 1! Wow the weight felt heavy! WAY too heavy! Or way heavier than it should have felt. Those 20 burpees put me over the edge. My form/technique was gone. It was complete survival mode. Pull the bar off the floor, jump the bar as high as possible, then do any kind of ugly press out that I had left in my tank to lock the bar out overhead. It was not pretty!
In the last couple of minutes I struggled through completing 6 snatches at 165 pounds. It was less than I wanted, but I was blown up from rushing through the burpees.
The workout was much harder than I expected. I felt like my cardio wasn’t ready for a workout like this, which is something I should have prepared for. I immediately put a 3 day a week, steady state cardio program in place. That workout shouldn’t have hurt as bad as it did.
At the time, learning that my cardio wasn’t up to par was an awful feeling, but we have to look at every failure as a learning experience. I asked myself, “how can I get better…”
Next up CrossFit Open workout 13.2…
