Linda Tried To Ruin My Trip To Vermont

Friday afternoon called together a great group of athletes for an absolutely killer workout.  Four of my guys came out (Brian, Teddy, Fred and Henery), Steve O and Reggie, and then Christy Phillips, 6th place finisher at the CrossFit Games (6th last year too by the way).  We gathered at Balance Gym to attack the benchmark WOD "Linda".

Ooooh baby, did this one turn out on the crazy end of things.  A couple of us tried to keep the weights as close to prescribed as we could, I personally went exactly 5# off each lift.  That means I was deadlifting 305#, benching 200# and squat cleaning 150#.  Also, Christy and I stuck with squat cleans, while the rest of the group did power cleans (I am actually very curious how this WOD would have looked like for me had I done power cleans, those squat cleans were what got me).  We also had to split the group up into three heats.  Henery, Fred and Teddy went in the first heat, Christy, Steve and Brian went second, and Reggie and I closed the door with a bang.  The only thing I can do in terms of speaking for others on this one is say that one guy hit the bathrooms close to the end of the WOD (I'll leave the rest to your imagination), Christy finished in an impressive 15+ minutes, but then proceeded to loose her lunch a few times after.  And I got from the others a good deal afterward, that they all were absolutely destroyed.  Yeah, and for me, well, I literally broke down.  By 60 minutes post-workout I was hunched over a small meal down in Dupont Circle, feeling like I had just completed running a marathon.  And after running 12, I am very aware of how that feels.  The next day, the soreness sunk in big time, and, I started to feel pretty sick.  Still today I am feeling very sore, an completely out of it, even my workout today felt extremely weak.  Totally crushed me.  In terms how the workout actually broke down for me, it went a little something like this: round one went completely unbroken, all reps.  Round two, not so much.  My back gave out fast on the deads and I had to split up the squat cleans into 3's.  By round five I was doing singles on both the deads and the cleans, working in 2's and 3's on the bench.  And by round seven I was stumbling between exercises, and honestly could not tell you how they were split up.  I finished in 26:28.  I wanted sub-25. 

After my salad, I dizzily hopped the metro, then the bus to BWI, flew to Albany (got there at 10:30pm), slept a few hours at Lindsey;s place, then drove up to Wilmington, Vermont for a weekend with my extended family.  It was nice to see them all, and we had some good times.  We played by a pool, and in the pool.  Cooked good food for dinner, then hung around for a few hours playing Bananagrams and Dictionary (a game where one person read a word nobody knows and everyone writes down THEIR definition of the word.  Hilarious!).  Watched a move with the guys, then woke up and made a big breakfast on Sunday morning before heading out to a great flea market.  12 hours later and I was back in MD, ready to get back to work! 

Seeing the family was a fun reminder of how important being around loved ones really is.  My immediate family never spent tons of time around them, and I could feel that lack of visitation while with them this past weekend.  People only knew about others through the grapevine, no real person to person communication, and I think that that is just no good for family.  I hope that, even though I am moving so far away from most of them, that I can dedicate myself to spending time with them whenever I have the opportunity.  I also hope to instill the importance of having a good relationship with ones family in my children.  I want my family to be the ones that my family turns to when in need, and when they want to celebrate.  I want everyone to be close.

Just some little thoughts I had while on my long drive.  Gotta love blogging!  Big nutrition post tomorrow!

Never Stop, GET FIT.

Josh Courage