Eat My Dust Oprah

Friday, March 23, 2012

Tonight is the last night of the CrossFit Games Arena!  Monday is the Hash Run!

Mobility:
Rack Mobility, 2 minutes each arm
Hip Mobility with Band, 2 minutes each leg

Classic Warmup:
2 Rounds of 10-15 reps of the following movements.  Feel free to increase the load and variation on the second round (ie, practice chest to bar pullups on round 2!)

Overhead Squats
GHD situps
Hip Extensions
Pullups
Dips
Sampson Stretch

CrossFit Games Open Sectional Workout 12.5

Complete as many reps as possible in 7 minutes following the rep scheme below:

3 Barbell Thrusters
3 Chest to bar Pull-ups
6 Barbell Thrusters
6 Chest to bar Pull-ups
9 Barbell Thrusters
9 Chest to bar Pull-ups
12 Barbell Thrusters
12 Chest to bar Pull-ups
15 Barbell Thrusters
15 Chest to bar Pull-ups
18 Barbell Thrusters
18 Chest to bar Pull-ups
21 Barbell Thrusters
21 Chest to bar Pull-ups…
This is a timed workout. If you complete the round of 21, go on to 24. If you complete 24, go on to 27, etc.

Additional Notes

This workout begins from the standing position with the barbell on the floor and the Athlete standing tall. Using a ball, box or other object to check for proper depth is not allowed. Every rep counts in this workout. You will enter your score as the total number of reps.  Please be sure to watch the entire workout instruction video for full details wmv/mov or read the PDF.

Cool Down:
Jog 400 meters
Reverse Plank, 20 seconds
Plow, 60 seconds
Reverse Plank, 20 seconds
Jog 400 meters

So, as you may have seen from Wednesday’s post, Jesse Shapiro ran the marathon last weekend.  I wanted to dedicate a post to his experience because he did something incredible, something that not many people can say they have done.  He had, in my opinion, a perfect marathon race.  Less than 1% of all Americans will ever complete a marathon.  A fraction of that 1% will ever be able to say they had a perfect race.  From my experience, the two things that can cause a marathon to turn south are 1) muscular fatigue or 2) energy crash.  He had neither.  He never had any pain, never had any muscular failure, never had any energy crash or hit “the wall”, in fact he never even stopped to walk.  He ran 26.2 miles, straight. 

He is also one of the funniest people I know.  Enter Jesse:

I started going to track night in the fall of last year and began mulling the idea of, perhaps, maybe, running the marathon a little bit later.  But I began training in earnest at the beginning of this year. Basically Frank said if I went to the box 4 times a week, hit track night both nights and did a longer run on the weekend, I should be good to go.

So that’s what I did. I immediately started noticing how going to track night helped my WOD’s in the box, and vice versa. And in terms of the long runs, when your heart feels like punching itself out of your chest multiple times a week, running 10 miles at a leisurely pace isn’t too bad. Especially with my POSE improving dramatically.

Learning POSE literally changed my life. I used to like running but it consistently hurt my knees and shins. After learning POSE I have had zero problems from running (knocking on wood right now).

One of my favorite parts of training were the raised eyebrows when I told friends and co-workers I wasn’t actually running that much to train for the marathon. “You must be running 30-40 miles a week”. “No”, I’d respond, “More like 6-10”.  I told people this was my personal test of Crossfit as a sport – to see if it could really walk the walk…  and it did.

My goal was to run 10 minute miles and beat Oprah Winfreys 1994 time at the Marine Corp Marathon of 4:29:20. The longest I had run before the marathon was 13 miles. I knew I had 13 miles no problem – after that it was the unknown. So before the race I told myself the first 13 miles were the warm-up, and the real race began at mile 13. Breezed through the first 13 no problem – felt good. Come mile 13, I put in my headphones, put the “Rocky Theme Song” on repeat, and possibly screamed out “AAAADRIAN!!!!” a number of times. You never know.

I started feeling really tired between mile 20-22, but shit, It’s a marathon, you’re supposed to feel tired. Once I made it to mile 24 I calculated If I kept running at my current pace I would beat Oprah….. barely. So i found a second wind, inspired by Oprah Winfrey’s ghost running right next to me, smiling, and telling me “what a great job we were doing.”

I bolted. I ran the last 2.2 miles at a 7:30/8:00 minute pace and came in at 4:26:18.
Eat my dust Oprah.

Crossfit really works. Running this marathon proved to me that our sport makes us better in a lot of other sports… and how many other sports can say that?  Also, having an actual event to train for really made me up my game. Guess who’s not getting drunk Friday night when I’ve got to run 10 miles Saturday morning. Me.

So what’s next? I just bought a Specialized Allez Sport. TRIATHLON HERE I COME! AAAAADRIAN!!!

Hugs,

Jesse
aka J-Shap
aka Jukebox

PS. Go to Track night. Coach Frank and POSE are the shit.