As previously mentioned, today was my first crossfit “competition.”  I put competition in quotes because it was really a partner comp set up to benefit the Jacob Hickford fund.  Jacob himself made an appearance this morning… what a brave, sweet little boy!

For charity or not, Battle of the Boxes had some pretty fierce competition.  I believe there were 27 teams total (guys and girls).  Since I had never done more than one WOD in one day (or within the span of mere hours), I knew it would be interesting to see how I felt after the first workout and going into the next.  I hoped I could count on my personal strength for endurance to give me an edge.

So my partner and I went into the first WOD with a strategy – pretty much the opposite of pacing ourselves.  Haha.  We wanted to eliminate as much transition time as possible, so for example right off the bat I did 40 kettlebell swings.  The WOD had kettlebell swings, power cleans, and box jumps, with only one partner working at a time.  Some teams did sets of 10 or 15 each and switched off, but not us.  I will say that after doing at least 35 power cleans @ 65lbs (it sounds easy until you do that many, as fast as possible), my forearms were totally numb.  Anyway, our strategy paid off – we placed 2nd for the WOD.

There was a “floater” workout – just a 1000m row.  500m each.  Fast.  Well…… we kind of sucked it up on that one haha.  We decided to do it after the first workout, and like I said before, my forearms were completely shot.  My partner (who also hates rowing) was pretty steady at just under 2 minute 500m pace.  Once I jumped on (transition time counted here, too), I flew!  I was at about 1:40 (1 minute 40 seconds) 500m pace for about the first 200m……. Then I fell apart.  My form shortened, and my speed didn’t equate to power because of my short pull.  The last part of my row was around the 1:55 pace.  Ew.  So we ended up at 3minutes 50seconds for the 1000m, which we knew wasn’t awesome.  At the end of the day, we placed 4th for this event.  Meh.

The final WOD was a doosy.  The coaches arranged it so that the heats were in order of placement (slowest teams went first, fastest in the final heat) so that we could really compete against those in our same level.  Therefore, we were in the last heat – the top 4 teams.  The WOD contained goblet squats, 115lb deadlifts, burpees, and 100m sprints (between every movement).  Watching the first two heats, I was a little worried about the deadlift and goblet squats, because a lot of the girls were having to break them up after the first round.  I mean, 115 isn’t heavy for deadlift, but I could see how it would get heavy between everything else.

Once we started the final WOD, I put my blinders on and focused on pushing through every pull without stopping.  For me (and my partner), the sprints were the easy part, just a transition to get to the movement.  What we didn’t realize, is that the sprints killed some other teams.  Almost 14 minutes later, we finished – and I looked around and realized no one else was even on the last round!  We beat everyone else by almost a minute!  1st place!

So a 2nd, 4th, and 1st place finish……. brought us to 2nd place overall.

I have to say that I had so much fun!  I really like the rush of competing, and the girls out there really pushed me hard!  I can’t wait to do it again:)

Tomorrow – I am doing Tour de Houston, a ride starting downtown.  Hopefully the weather isn’t too crappy – it was a bit wet today!  Goodnight~