The 2021 Crossfit Games Open is over. Five weeks of competition to see what our Crossfit selves were made of. Week one was burpees, week two snatches, week three presses, box jumps and toes-to-bar pullups, and week four was wall-balls, double-unders and muscle-ups, and week five was thrusters and chest-to-bar pullups. You can see the workouts here.
I had no idea really what I was getting into, because I had no plans to compete, but CFES said, “yes you are”, so yes I did.
The main thing I took away from the Open was to plan carefully. For me that meant being realistic about what I could accomplish, and set my pacing myself accordingly. Mostly that worked; for four of the workouts I met my goals. The exception was week four, the wall-balls. I really thought I could do 150. I gtt 98. You can see my results here. As it so happens for week three I forgot to post my score of 153, so I didn’t get an official ranking. But I’m somewhere in the bottom 5%.
It was tough. Every Wednesday I would check to see what the workout would be. By Thursday I was starting to feel worried, Friday nervous, and Saturday morning come workout time I had a bad case of nerves. It would get to the point where I was losing too much energy worrying and it was a relief to get going.
The 75# snatches, the 95# push presses, and the 90# thrusters were all right at the edge of my abilities. In fact most the workouts I was doing things I hadn’t done much of. In fact I had never actually done toes-to-bar, or chest-to-bar. I had to figure those out in one day.
The pacing was critical, and I had some great support from judges and the people watching. That’s a big part of the experience — there is someone there to coach, count, help with timing, and people are watching and cheering. The nerves, the noise, the physical stress all get combined with a kind of internal quiet into one impression.
The final workout was my best. The previous four weeks had helped me get disciplined, and I felt like I knew what I was doing. What I found interesting is how different I experience time in a hard workout. Seven minutes? It felt like an hour. My focus increases, extraneous thoughts are gone, I am calmer. At first I can think about the next three moves; after a while it’s one move, then eventually parts of moves. Just get one more set of three, just get one more set, then it’s just get your hands on the bar. Pull. Move the legs. Pull. Now do that set of moves one more time. And a loud voice is saying go! One more!
It comes down to resolve. Pain? It’s just another experience. After the final workout, I felt like my heart was pounding so fast I would faint. I had to lay down and close my eyes. I have a new word for it: gym spin. Like bed spins, only without the alcohol. I was able to get up after a few minutes, but it took a while for me to really recover my wits (such as they are, anyhow).
One thing I didn’t experience is the kind of explosive energy I see in the better athletes. I’ll have the work on that. Next year for sure.
That’s it for now. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!
