Ok- so to back up to yesterday’s epic wod-
Yesterday was my first day back to work from a week’s vacation. It got off to a rocky start first thing in the morning. My body did NOT want to get out of bed let alone be awake and functioning. I was all discombobulated and a hot mess running around trying to get myself together and out the door. After having to go back in the house 4 times, I was finally off to work. Had a surprisingly great day of work that went by super fast!
My eating was 100% on point and true to every time, portion and supplement. Felt great!
All day, every time I thought about the upcoming workout that was facing me later that evening I got a wave of mild panic and butterflies in my stomach. For some reason, “Fran” is the only wod that induces this degree of pre-workout jitters. For those of you who are not aware, “Fran” is a benchmark crossfit workout, one of the originals, if not “the” original, developed by Greg Glassman before crossfit was even crossfit. It is a sprint workout that consists of 21-15-9 reps of thrusters at (95# men, 65# women) and pull ups. It doesn’t look bad on paper…shit, it even looks almost easy! But say “Fran” in front of any crossfitter, and you will bring on looks of horror, head shaking, “holy shits”, “ugh”, and “Fran’s a bitch”. “What’s your “Fran” time?” in the crossfit world is equivalent to “what do you bench?” in the world of globo gyms.
With that said, my previous PR on Fran was 6:38 Rx, which isn’t spectacular, but is “ok”. It’s been several months since I last did Fran, and since then I’ve made big gains, lost weight, got stringer, better endurance, blah blah blah….no needless to say, I was excited but extremely anxious to find out where I would fall. “Fran” is a great fire-breather test- mentally and physically. There’s no way around it, “Fran” hurts. No matter how in shape you are and how conditioned you are, it fucking hurts. What separates the fire-breathers from the average crossfitter is the ability to mentally suck it fuck up and push through the pain. Being able to ignore the pain and turn it into fire to push through to the finish is what makes the difference between a >5 min “Fran” and a sub 5min “Fran”. It’s so unbelievably easy to slow down, rest excessively, or overall just give up and say “fuck it”. But if you want to make gains, you have to suck it the fuck up and push on.
Setting up and waiting for 3-2-1 “go”, my hands were shaking and my heart was already racing- but I was ready to tackle this fucking wod. The first set of 21 thrusters and pull ups is a piece of cake and moves quickly. The sets of 15 are notoriously what hurt the most and slow you down the most. The round of 15 is where my inner voice has to become louder than the pain searing through my muscles and the burn in my lungs.
You have to have a plan of attack before starting a wod- especially a wod like “Fran”. My plan of attack came into play starting at the sets of 15. I went into it with the plan of breaking it up into a set of two. I only wanted to drop the bar once, and I was only allowing myself to rest for 2 seconds at the top of the thruster, so I could utilize the momentum down to power into the next thruster. Now, this is the plan- things don’t always or usually go as planned. The pain fights that plan and starts becoming the dominating force. When that happens I instantly make my sets smaller- but only in my mind. If I mentally can tell myself to “just do two more”, suddenly those two reps are done and I just repeat “just two more”. And I take those small victories and stack them together until the set is complete and the bar can come down. By that point, I leave myself with no more than 3 reps to complete, so I pick the bar right back up and can immediately bang out the last 2-3 reps, knowing that the end is in sight. BOOM. Set of 15 are done. I use the same mental game play on the pull ups.
The final round of 9 reps hurts like a mother-fucker, but by that time, my give a shit is gone and all I’m doing is rallying to the finish. I know that no matter how much it hurts, it will be over soon and I can rest. No rest on the last round is allowed unless I legitimately reach muscle failure, in which case, shake it out no longer than a second or two and it’s back on the bar. You don’t need to think, don’t need to breathe, don’t need to feel the pain until your chin reaches over the bar on that 9th rep.
The only time I watched the clock was after my first rounds of 21. After that, the clock meant nothing. I would be wasting precious seconds looking at the clock instead of working, and “Fran” is such a fast sprint, that seconds count. The next time I looked at the clock was when I jumped off the pull up bar and hit the deck in a pile of sweat, hyperventilation and lightheaded giddiness. I had knocked 2 minutes off of my time.
4:40.
NEVER.FUCKING.QUIT.
Go Lean... 