YHC saw a large coyote on the way to the AO this morning. True, but irrelevant. The workout was elegant in conception but ugly in execution. Also true, and more relevant.
The basic idea was to carry the instruments of our own torture down to the pull-up complex in front of the CrossFit joint and to go hog wild. Twelve PAX grabbed a cinder block each after compulsory warm-ups and rolled out, alternating between moseying and walking while holding the cinder block above our heads. In a harbinger of things to come, it took longer to get to the pull-up complex than YHC had planned… We then made teams by doing a bar hang, with folks pairing off against one another in the order in which they dropped.
Teams then rallied at the top and bottom of the hill, with their six cinder blocks. The goal was to acquire as many of the other team’s blocks as possible. To do this, PAX bear-crawled to the opposite side, did either 10 pull-ups (top) or 20 burpees (bottom), grabbed a block, and ran back. Repeato. We did 16 minutes of this nonsense, switching sides halfway through. It was ugly. Twenty burpees were too many, and we should have quit when the CrossFit crowd started rolling in. Riggs broke a cinder block. I plausibly thought that a painted figure on the side of the CrossFit building was one of our guys puking. PAX who didn’t have gloves were rubbing their hands raw. But we did feel tough when we strolled out, cinder blocks above our heads, and the CrossFit gang jogged past doing about 14-minute miles.
The ugliness blossomed into a flower on the way back, as we foolishly stopped to do 200 irkins in Lazy Dora pairs at MotorCo. Don’t get me wrong; the irkins were beautiful, but the time management was deplorable. We didn’t make it back with our cinder blocks until 6:18. Sorry to a terrific group of guys.
I realized a silver lining on the drive home, an echo from my kid’s cross country meet the day before. My daughter had wondered what she needed to do to hit a certain time, and I told her I wasn’t sure it was possible without more training. If she were to go for it, however, I told her she’d have to take the risk and go out with the top seven—and to see if she could hold on for the rest of the race. She couldn’t hold on, as it turned out, but I still cried when I saw her come over the hill in fifth place after one-third of a mile. She went for it, and it was gutsy and beautiful. We also went for it this morning, charging out with our cinder blocks. So what if we were a couple of minutes late? I hope each one of us will have the guts to put it out there on whatever professional or personal challenge is waiting for us this week.
Still can’t figure out how Three-Peat got such a cool name. Awesome site.