5K Day

WOD: 5K followed by 30 KTE, 30 GH extensions, 30 sit ups

Today was another mind check for me, albeit a much easier task to complete. If you read the posts on Friday and Monday, you have a clue as to how important your mental game is when coming up to your own personal wall. I have a real fear of long distance running -- does 3.2 miles count as long distance? -- so my stomach was in knots by the time I arrived at the gym this morning. I've never even desired to attempt a long run after getting out of ROTC, and I'm definitely not one of these people whose bucket list has any sort of running feat anywhere on it. Alas, someone else programmed this to be the WOD, so I had to do it.

It had been pouring down rain and dark as I drive the kids to school. On the one hand, I thought, "Great! We'll just have to do something else -- GEE DARN." Then I had a terrible realization: if we weren't able to run the 5K, we would most likely have to row it on the rowing machine. "NOOOO!!!" screamed my knees. "We took all we could, Captain -- we cannot take any more!" Luckily the weather broke just long enough to get the run out of the way, and then the bottom dropped out when we came back to the gym to finish up.

The weather was ideal for running this morning: 65 degrees, a light drizzle, and a light breeze. That made a huge difference for me. Running in hot weather really kills me, so I felt lucky to be doing this in the fall. Traffic had subsided, I had a great playlist on the iPod, and all the external factors were checked off.

I wish I had made it further than I did before I stopped jogging to walk. I probably made it at least a mile before I stopped. Had I been running next to someone, this would still have happened but perhaps just a little later. My coach talked about several different strategies for approaching a longer run, as in goals to set for yourself before you start. For some, the goal was to improve their time; for others, it was simply to complete the run at all, and still others had goals somewhere between these two extremes. For me, I was rather intimidated by the term "5K" and the concept of how far that was. My walking/jogging is normally done on a treadmill, so I really didn't know what to expect, and I wanted to be realistic. My goal was to run as much as possible, walk only when necessary, and walk fast with active arms when I did have to walk. And also to finish without puking. :)

One of the things you learn to utilize early on in CrossFit is planned rest. This is a situation where you have to stop what you're doing and recover a little bit before you can get moving again. However, rather than just waiting around to feel better, your muscles to quit aching, your pulse to slow down too much, etc., you tell yourself how long you will rest, count down in your head, and then get moving. Basically, you have a contingency plan that keeps you from hurting yourself or allows you to rest but doesn't allow you to quit or lose momentum. I utilized planned rest on this run. The last mile I really took in intervals. I tried to run longer than I was allowing myself to rest, and before the last "home stretch," I made a point to walk, breathe deeply and slowly to really oxygenate my muscles, put the iPod on a Nickleback song, and bring it on home. This strategy worked really well! Lastly, my coach ran the last 200m with me, challenging me to keep on her heels and then really lengthen my stride and increase my speed at the end. It was such a great feeling to finally be done!

The crazy cool thing is that I didn't even feel tired at the end of the run. I had some of those cramps in my abdomen that come when you haven't run in a long time, but other than that, the rest of my body felt like it could've kept going. My leg muscles were warm and revved up, not cramping, and I wasn't so winded or nauseated that I couldn't speak. Dare I say -- I actually enjoyed this run today?!? Had I been in a little bit better situation with my breathing/cardio, I really think I could've run the whole thing and not needed to walk. Perhaps that will be my goal for the next time we do this WOD.

Once we got back to the box, we cranked out the additional exercises, not keeping track of time or anything. They were easy enough, but after 15 reps on the GHD, I could tell my hamstrings were really tight and needed to be stretched. All in all, a great day. And I even rewarded myself with a protein smoothie from Smoothie Ds.

Posted time: 34:33


-- Mobilelly Yours, GGG