Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Reis Baron - Athlete


OK so lets chat for a second about this.  There's a web site on this planet that actually refers to me as an athlete. Fine so it says that about anyone who ponies up the 10 bucks to register, but we need to contemplate how historical it is for me to enter ANYTHING as an athlete.  Not since little league could it remotely have been said without it being some sort of joke.

Well here I am world!! I'm Reis Baron and I'm registered for the 2011 Crossfit Games.  Do I expect to end up in Carson at the Home Depot Center this summer?  Not at all...but at the encouragement of Crossfit NYC I'll be representing my affiliate team each week for the next couple of months, as I'm judged on weekly workouts and my times are submitted for regional rankings.   Each week the top three results for each affiliate counts towards our score in the "Affiliate Cup".  The top affiliates nationwide will compete at the Games.

So today's WOD was the first competition workout.  I must've refreshed the Games website 50 times before finally going to bed after midnight.  I woke up at my usual time of 4:00 to discover that it was just about as bad as you could imagine.

CrossFit Games Open 11.1
Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 10 minutes of:
30 Double-unders
15 Power snatches

The Power snatch loads are as follows:
Men and Masters Men 45-49, 50-54: 75lbs/35kg
Women and Masters Women 45-54: 55lbs/25kg
Masters Men 55-59, 60+: 65lbs/30kg
Masters Women 55-59, 60+: 45lbs/20kg
Doubleunders and snatches.  It's like Crossfiit HQ had a meeting and said "Oh...Reis is competing?! Well, let's make sure this one is extra shitty with a side of 'fuck you'."  But hey, who was I to complain?  After all I'm an athlete, right?

Sara paired up with me, which at first and afterward was a great idea, but during the workout it would prove to shave me down to the remnants of my soul.  I subbed tuck jumps for double-unders and since we were able to sub clean & jerks for the snatches I sensed that I would switch to those pretty early in the game.  As it turned out I didn't realize how right I was...

3...2...1...GO!  I was off and, uh, jumping!  Man are those damn jumps tough.  I could feel my quads slamming into the ground with every rep.  When time came to pick up the bar I knew I would only crank out a couple of snatches before switching, and on rep 3 I did exactly that.  13 clean & jerks later, with Sara's encouragement, I was off to round 2.  Somehow I finished that round, doing 5 jumps at a time and only a couple of clean & jerks at a time.  It was the 3rd round where it started to get real interesting.  I remember at some point Sara announced that there were 4 minutes left and I was in sheer agony, literally capable of crying at any second knowing that we were only 60% done.  I was in so much pain and there was so much to go.  Sara all but pulled every rep out of me in the 3rd round.  It was insane.  I was completely cooked, and somehow I found these pockets of energy and kept jumping, and getting ahold of the bar.  Before I knew it three round were done and I somehow cranked out 11 more jumps.  With 3 seconds left I hit the ground, completely finished and spent beyond any level of exhaustion I've experienced at Crossfit yet.  It was fucking BRUTAL.  Worst.  WOD.  EVER.

ever.

See you tomorrow... :)

2 comments:

  1. Hey Reis.

    I am becoming more and more convinced (the more stories like yours I hear) that each of us have a kickass athlete just waiting to be unleashed. Sounds like CrossFit is simultaneously kicking your ass and uncovering a hidden passion. :)

    It's been too long, my friend. So glad to hear you're doing so well. I love how life and time changes and alters who we become. If I'd been asked if I could ever consider myself an athlete back in 1990 I would've doubled over laughing too hard at the thought. But now... now it feels good.

    Looking forward to hearing more from you. :)

    Cheers,
    _a

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  2. Amy! Wow such a pleasure to hear from you after all these years...I think last I saw you was like 15 years ago. So crazy how people's paths twist and turn like this. Thanks for touching base!

    Yeah Crossfit, and fitness in general, is quite new but absolutely an obsession. I'm really loving it...even though (as is typical on Fridays) I can barely walk today :)

    I've been living in Jersey with my wife and 4-year old son Jacob. I work in NYC doing IT work for a fun company...life is good as they say.

    How bout you? Hit me up at reisbarongmail

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