Chasing The Rabbit

WOD:

1600m run
30 goblet squats
1200m run
25 goblet squats
800m run
20 goblet squats
400m run
15 goblet squats

This was actually our WOD from Wednesday, but I was out of town with my daughter. I met a CrossFit couple up at the box and the wife and I did the workout and her hubby kept time for us and was our cheerleader. I love working out with this couple. They are both as sweet as the day is long, and they make an incredible team. They truly seem to enjoy being in each other's company and bring out the best in each other. When I see them together, the term "best friends" really does come to mind. The icing on the cake for me, though, is how hard they workout. She is this cute, petite little lady who is quite glamorous when she's all made up, but put some weight on a bar and she turns into a machine! I love it! She really gets me charged up. I really love working out with other women who have a little testosterone flowing through them. Her husband is this nice, friendly guy who completely takes you off guard with how much weight he can move or how fast he is. What a great team!

Thursdays are generally rest days at the box. There was really no one else there but us. Someone else came in later to work on skills, but she was mainly doing her own thing. This workout, while not being the hardest in the world, was a real grinder. It was definitely one of those where you needed to have at least one other person out there working with you. When we started off, my workout buddy and I were literally shoulder-to-shoulder for the first leg of the workout (1600m or one mile run). We finished our squats more or less at the same time, but she pulled ahead of me for the run. I knew she would, and that was fine. I was having the worst cramps in my abs. This wasn't like getting a stitch in your side. This was like muscle cramps from muscles that haven't been used in waaay too long. I was trying all my tricks of trying not to hunch over, looking forward instead of down, taking large, open-mouthed breaths of air to oxygenate, etc., but those abs were just crampy right in the middle of my body just under my ribs. Was it more of a diaphragm thing? Certainly could've been. Definitely in the right area. Who knows. I had to stop and walk several times, more times than I wanted to. But there were also times when I forced myself to run, and not just trot up and down, but try to open my stride and focus on forward movement and not up and down movement.

The whole time I was running today I was fretting about how much worse the Army Ten Miler is going to be in October, wondering why in the name of all things sane I signed up for that!?!!! Then my mind wandered to how hard it would be to do a WOD like this in the neighborhood I'm moving to this summer. I will have no choice for 6-12 months than to CF by myself in my garage, and the subdivision is very hilly. I've been trying to really get all I can out of my last months here at CF Centex, because you don't realize what a sweet set-up you've got until you haven't got it anymore.

At any rate, watching my buddy as she hopped along in front of me was motivation to keep moving. She wasn't so far ahead of me that I couldn't have caught her if I had really pushed hard, balls to the walls. I appreciated again today something that I think about often, and that is the value of having someone to chase, almost like the greyhounds chasing the mechanical rabbit at a dog race. Whether or not I catch up to or pass someone is not the point. For me, the point is to have someone to follow, thinking if they can do this I know I sure can, and not wanting them to get so far ahead of me that they lap me. Had she not been there today, I would've had no way to gage my pace and would've slowly winded down instead of trying to keep up a steady pace and put this miserable WOD behind me. Now that I think about it, I'd rather be the chaser than the chasee!

Posted time: 29:49