Hopper Wod #3

Again, I'm worried that the upcoming WOD will be something I can't do, that it will destroy me. Turns out it'll be a couplet of rowing 500m and then 44 double unders once through.

Awesome.

I can do both of these things, and since my PR is 42 DU's it's actually possible for me to really nail this. So I warm up with DU's, and it's still kind of hit or miss. I can get 20 in a row, or I can't get one. But as I keep doing them, I get more and more consistent. I don't really warm up on the rower, I figure I'm familiar with it enough so that I can just hop on and take off. I also tell myself that the last thing I need to do in the WOD is panick, that if I stay calm my DU's will come and it'll be a lot faster.

Since I'm near the bottom of the pack, I don't have much time to warm up and before I know it it's time to shine. I meet my judge and she tells me to only strap one foot into the rower, and to trust her since she rowed competitively. I do as she suggested, and in 3, 2, 1 the WOD starts.

I start rowing, and immediately my quads are telling me to stop. Obviously I tell them to shut up, but unfortunately I don't tell my judge the same when she keeps trying to give me pointers. I know that my rowing technique is off, but competition is not the time or place to tweak my stroke. Her "tips" are a little hard to tune out, so I think it slows me down to a 1:48 time. I get off and grab the rope.

Surprisingly, it's a very surreal experience. I kind of feel like floating, and the DU's feel very smooth. However I do hit a snag every once in a while. I calmly step over the rope each time, and start over. I think I had to restart maybe three times. All in all my time is 2:53, 51st over all and by far my best performance of the day. Finally there was something, double unders, that I could do that some other competitors could not. There were seven competitors who couldn't finish this wod in the 5 minute time limit, and although I know how frustrating that can be I also know for a fact that DU's are simply a product of how much time you've spent working on them. It's not a strength thing, it's all technique and practice.

I feel pretty decent about my performace. I know that if this WOD had showed up last year I wouldn't have been able to finish it, so I take heart in the gains that I've made over the course of the past year.