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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

"Even if you fall on your face, you're still moving forward." Victor Kiam

Spartan Shape-Up, Day 279:

Sprints of Death day, BlogLand! uuughhh.

If you've been reading along, you are probably well aware of how much I hate/dread sprint day. Because it's hard. Because they kick my ass. Because "progress" is so small. Because I want to DIE after each round of 40 seconds.
.... but I keep at it, in no small part thanks to the supportive company I've had. I have only had to suffer through Sprints of Death once, by myself. Since then, I've had a cheering section to monitor my safety in the dark, hand my safety pins when I'm losing my pants, and run along side me to kick in my competitive drive. I'm very lucky. :-)

That said, we've renamed Sprints of Death to Schadenfreude Tuesdays. (In case you are unfamiliar: scha-den-freu-de (n). Satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune.)
It is a reflection of our shared suffering. There is some comfort to be had in knowing that Sprints sucked that much... but that my friends are also feeling equally as owned by the sprints, and suffering too. When we sit and stretch and drink our protein shakes after our sprints, we laugh at each others painful winces and grimaces, as angry quads wave hello, or tight hamstrings make their presence known. While we take turns whining and rolling on the foam roller, we swap tales of how we felt the day after sprints, etc. It's good times. My legs feel like jelly, or I couldn't walk the next day... but NEITHER. COULD. YOU.  It makes it all a little more bearable. LOL. Schadenfreude!

Overall, sprints went really well for me this week. I improved my times pretty significantly across the board. I'm thrilled. I don't know how much of this is translating over to the rest of my game, but at least I'm making progress here. Sprint times looked like this:
Lap 1: 39.29 (Compared to Last Week: 39.89 or 1st time: 40.3)
Lap 2: 40.07 (Compared to Last Week: 41.84 or 1st time: 41.2)
Lap 3: 44.01 (Compared to Last Week: 44.22 or 1st time: 46.1)
Lap 4: 45.58 (Compared to Last Week: 45.31 or 1st time: 46.4)

The time differences may not seem like a lot... but tenths of a second are huge here. You have no idea how long those tenths of a second are, until you've done sprints. I promise. Plus, the thing I'm most proud of is that my bottom times (the last two sprints) are so much better. I've had bottom times of 48 and 50 seconds. It seems that particularly the last few weeks, I've been able to really keep them more consistent - meaning the time difference between my first sprint and the last one is smaller. I'm taking this to mean that my muscles are getting better at this, and are not wiped out of Oomph so quickly.

AND, just for a little extra bonus fun at the end of our Sprint WOD, I flipped a big giant tire (which happened to be filled with water!!!) 4 times, by myself. Felt like a beast. I wonder how much that bad boy weighs? Hmm...

With that little victory for today, I shall take my leave, BlogLand. I'm crazy tired, and CrossFit will come early tomorrow morning.



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