Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Dreams are Good...Reality is Better...The Arnold Classic...Part 1

Have you ever wanted something so bad you can only seeing it happening in Dreams. I have dreamt of moments where I competed with great athletes in ultimate conditions. I have seen the great in the dreams and the defeat. I have imagined ever possible situation and outcome. I have dreams that occur just as the wind blows.....they come and go so fast that they are only that to me....Dreams. This weekend was supposed to be a dream come true. To stand and show why I train. To compete and manage to show I belong. I had visions of standing tall with hands held high.

Sometimes a Dream remains a dream when reality hits.....

The weekend started with seeing every major sponsored Crossfitter standing within 20ft of me....Chelssie nudging me to talk to them and me standing back in a daze. Finally I got the nerve to talk to Tommy Hackenbruck and Mikko Salo. They were going to be doing a WOD, Mary, first thing in the morning. It was one that I had no intention of doing because FRAN was coming up and I wanted to be on my game. Mary is 5 HSPU - 10 Pistols - 15 Pull ups. Mikko suggested I do Mary to do, as he would say, "a burner of a WOD." So, I threw everything out the window and said sure. Her comes Mary!

Mary came and went and so did any hope of seeing my Dream come true. Mikko Salo, Tommy Hackenbruck, and Kevin Montoya all did Mary with me. I was hoping to keep close and not look like a fool. Fortunately I did not look like a fool, in fact i stood out. Surprisingly I was able to stay ahead of Kevin and Tommy and hang with Mikko.....in fact i even led the whole way. The problem was that we had no judges. They told us to keep track of our Rds. Is that possible in a 20 Min AMRAP? NO!!! No one was able to keep track....all I know is I beat everyone....Mikko was the only question mark....did I??....I will never know with no real proof. I do know that I held my own and may have......maybe.....beat Mikko. In the Games this year i can try again. The guess is I got between 17 1/2 Rds and 19 1/2 Rds. Again we will never know.

I decided to take off the rest of Friday due to the lack of movement in my upper body and my thighs being shot from the pistols. I was hoping I would be ready for Fran first thing in the morning......I wasn't!

FRAN started with high hopes and as I jumped on the pull up bar they were immediately dashed. I had nothing left and knew it. I ended up with a 3:06 Fran time.....55 sec off my PR. Not at all what I was hoping.....and definitely not what I had dreamed it would be.

After Fran i was bummed. I new I had made a mistake when I did Mary, yet I was so happy i did. I stood toe to toe with the best but could not stand toe to toe with Fran today. They announced what was next...

We were to be put in teams and perform a par the the 2010 Crossfit Games Final. Each member of the team did 1 WOD as a 7 Min AMRAP. I did the 1st WOD because it had the least amount of pulling....which was almost impossible for me to do at this point:

7 Min AMRAP:

30 Hand Release Push ups
1 12ft Wall Climb
21 OHS 95#

2 Rds

I could not make it over the wall for another Rd. My grip was gone and I stood there suffering to climb the wall. It was a crowd pleaser as they kept watching me fall from halfway up the wall.

The last WOD of the day was a Team Grace....bad part was 1 of my team members had never don a 135# Clean and Jerk before:

90 Clean and Jerk 135# with 2 Bars

I did over half the reps and we finished at 4 Min even. You could have 2 people working at the same time while one person rested. This actually helped to loosen my arms and lats up.

Sunday morning came and I was in worse pain then the day before. I could barely lift my hands up and was struggling to grasp that I potentially had 3 WODs to do today. I knew it could not get any worse...........at least I hoped.........

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