Adventures in CrossFitting

I have cabin fever. Strange, I know, considering that it is August and am able to spend plenty of time outside; however, my occasional pop-ins at the Fort over the past two months have not seemed to be enough lately. (They are a tease if anything. It's like hanging a cookie in front of a diabetic.) For one, I feel like I keep doing the same workouts and movements over and over again - just in different order. Sure, my push ups are getting a lot stronger, as are my burpees, pull ups (which I would continue to work on religiously, even if I was at the Fort on a regular basis), sit ups, air squats, jumping pull ups, etc. I'm not complaining about this, on the contrary. I'm very happy with some of the progress I've made on these basic movements because CrossFit is essentially built around these movements. But something has happened, something I never ever ever thought would happen in all my CrossFitting days: I am bored.

Yes, I said it: I am bored. So when it was raining the other day and I realized I wouldn't be able to beat myself up outside, I was at a loss of what to do. Yeah, I could do more burpees, but wait - I did burpees on Monday and on Wednesday; I could do sit ups, push ups, squats, supermans and pull ups but I did those every day this week too as a part of either my workout or my warm up; I wasn't about to go running (even if it hadn't been raining), or use my homemade wall ball in the house (I'm just guessing that would not go over too well). So... What to do? How about a field trip to globo? *Hangs head* Okay...

When I arrived, I paid the day fee and began meandering around the gym checking to see what kind of equipment they had. I wandered around for about ten minutes before I found the glut/ham machine hidden amongst rows of other useless machines; I also found an interesting version of a dip/chin up machine. I used both of these machines as well as did push ups and air squats during my warm up and then began wandering around again, trying to decide what to do and ignoring the slew of high school boys and other guys who were in the gym who occasionally gave me the odd glance.

Finally, I decided that I would work on my push press because they had done these the other day at the Fort; however, instead of brawling over the bar with various teenage boys, I decided to use dumbbells. This decision was also inspired by the fact that they did dumbbell push press at the Games this year in the Stadium WOD. I had heard that they were supposed to be more difficult because the weight is no longer necessarily evenly distributed on either side and the dumbbells made it more difficult to stabilize your core. Regardless, I decided that I would do five sets of five and then move on to a short metcon.

Side note: To be honest, I felt kind of silly while I was doing the push press with the dumbbells. Not only did I feel like I was being watched (I was unfortunately the only female in the entire facility), but I was worried about my form and so I was trying to watch myself in the mirror. Granted, I wasn't kissing my biceps after each rep, but I kind of felt like a meathead even watching myself in the mirror.

Once I completed the push presses (I stopped right after 80 lbs - my hand was hurting and I bitched out), I began wandering around again, contemplating what kind of metcon I wanted to do. Originally I had hoped that they would have a rowing machine so that I could do the 500 meter row, 21 burpees, 400 meter run WOD; however, I was out of luck. They had no rowing machine, and I was about two steps from substituting sumo deadlift high pulls before I realized I had no idea how many reps I should do or what weight I should use. In the end, I decided that I should quit meandering around and just figure out what the hell I should do. I was tired of being there and tired of feeling like a weirdo; however, I figured since I felt as such, that I should also confirm my either imaginary or actual oddness in the minds of the teenage boys around me. So I did 21-15-9, burpees and box jumps.

The metcon was nothing spectacular by any means but it sucked in its own right, and when I was finished, I got out of there as quickly as possible. I had an icky feeling. It wasn't pleasant. Moreover, the whole experience, made me kind of sad for two reasons: 1.) It made me miss the Fort even more; 2.) Those globo regulars have no idea what they're missing.