Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda...

Today's WOD was posted as a 10K run.  Even if I was capable of running a 10K in a reasonable amount of time, I wouldn't have the time to do this before work.  So I rolled the dice on coming into Crossfit, hoping Kevin would allow me to do yesterday's WOD:

WOD - For time:

135 pound Front squat, 10 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 9 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 8 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 7 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 6 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 5 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 4 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 3 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 2 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 1 rep
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent

Fun looking WOD!  I wasn't anticipating much resistance from Kevin, and I was excited to see one of my CF buddies Reda already doing that WOD as I walked in the door.  Kevin said it was no problem to do it, so I went ahead and got set up.  I was very confident I could RX the weight, as I did the 100 back squat WOD a few weeks back, and did that one in the high-bar position. Sara says that makes it basically the same exercise as a front squat, as you employ your quads a lot more than your posterior chain with the high-bar.

But anyway Kevin said the rope climb, which we scaled to four jumping pulls on the rings (touching chest each rep) would take a lot out of me between squat sets, so I reluctantly heeded his suggestion to do 115 lbs instead.  I knew I would be more than comfortable with 135, but I never want to pretend I know more than the trainer, as this is never true.  Though while I'm confident about very little in Crossfit, I'm confident that I can squat heavy, and I've proven that I can do a lot of reps at 50% of my PR 1-Rep Max weight. I don't fault Kevin for not knowing that, as Sara has much more of a handle on my history with these types of WODs. Needless to say I put the 115 on the bar and got ready to hit it.  There were around five other people who showed up...as I told Kevin, nothing silences a Crossfit box more than a 10K run...Kevin programmed a sick WOD for the other people with double-unders, sumo deadlift high-pulls and chinups.  "Good luck to them" I thought...though I probably needed that WOD more, I was now even happier to be doing yesterday's. We did a warmup that included shoulder dislocates, ring rows, and back extensions.  After that we were ready to hit it...

3...2...1...Go!  I got a great pace going right off the bat.  With the descending rep scheme I didn't hold back much on the squat sets, all of which were unbroken.  The ring pulls weren't bad, but by the fifth set I saw what Kevin meant, even though I still felt I could easily have handled that 135.  I heard Kevin calling out the time and I really felt I had a good shot at putting up a sub-10-minute time for the first time since Fran.  But this would not come to pass, as I hesitated one too many times, and damnit did I really need that drink of water going into the 8th set?

WOD Time: 10:10

I'm nobody to complain when I put up a 10-minute time for any WOD.  But it's further evidence that moving forward I'll be able to hold my own with RX'ed weight on WODs with squats.  I would have been happy putting up 12+ mins but lifting 135, but better safe than sorry I guess, and I got a decent sweat going to kick off the week.  Mission accomplished. :)