Spring Fling 2012

Official results


WOD 1: "JETHRO" (aka TYLER LOVES SNATCH)

Five minutes to a max single Snatch/Overhead Squat, rest one minute, five minutes to a max single rep of "The Bear."

I had no illusions of destroying the field on this.  My overhead squat is fairly good, but my snatch is mediocre. 

I had a lot of time to warm up for WOD 1 since I was in one of the later heats, so I did a lot of 135lb snatches. I decided to start a bit heavier than that in the competition. I think I started with 140, then went to 155. After practicing this week, I wasn't counting on snatching more than 150, but at this point I was having fun and decided to go for 160, which would tie my PR. Since the competition allowed for a lot of leeway when it came to pressing out, I got that.

At this point I still had a fair amount of time on the clock, so I thought I might as well go for 165. I got 165 (Snatch PR) with about 30 seconds left in the five-minute period.

I believe I started the Bear with 155. I'm not sure if I did any other weights before putting 180 on the bar.

I was able to do 180 with a lot of time left, so I thought "What the heck?" and put 205 on the bar.  (Spoiler alert: this is a dumb approach to take during competitions)I cleaned it, front squatted it, jerked it, back squatted it. I rested for a bit with the weight across my shoulders, and attempted a jerk. I let out a decidedly non-gangsta screech and failed the lift.

In retrospect, I should have gone a bit lighter... like, maybe 195. I am not complaining about how I did on this one, though. I was planning on only doing 150 on the snatch and 165 on the Bear, so I beat my total by 30lbs and got a new PR to boot.

With my total of 345lbs I got 14th out of 20 on WOD 1.

WOD 2.1: SHOTPUT (aka "FUUUUUUUUUCK")

I knew this would suck for me, and it did.

My two throws were very close to each other and far short of just about everyone else's. 

 thought they were 7.51 and 7.53m, but the official records use my 7.51 as the throw that counted, so I could remember wrong. If I'm not wrong, I would have placed18th, instead of the 19th spot that I was credited for since a dude from Winnipeg got 7.52.

WOD 2.2: 800 METRE RUN (aka TYLER AIN'T AS FAST AS HE THOUGHT HE WAS)

I thought I would do relatively well at this, but -- as it turns out -- pretty much all the dudes in Div 1 were fast and strong. Fuckers. They should pick one or the other.

My time of 2:55 (a PR, I might add) was only good for 17th place out of 20. That was a pretty jarring reality check for me once I learned that little piece of news. 

Still, this WOD was responsible for one of my favorite memories of the day:

Jarrett and I were in the same heat, along with Shawn and Big Nick S. Jarrett and I started out fast and I overtook him around 100 metres into the run. Still, I knew he was pretty close behind me because I could hear him. That's the worst feeling.

I should also mention that Jarrett has a nagging groin injury that helped keep him to my speed.

On the second lap of the 400m track, I avoided some puddles and, in doing so, gave up the inside track to Jarrett. He pulled up beside me and edged ahead as we were coming around the final turn. I put everything I had into catching up to him and we were neck and neck down the final stretch, each doing everything we could to beat the other.

He beat me by a nose (the official record says  his time was 2:54 but there was far less than a second between us). I was disappointed that I lost to him for the next three minutes.

Then I realized something: Jarrett was competing in Division 2. It didn't matter if he beat me.

Furthermore, I finished a lot faster than I would have if I wasn't trying to catch him, and I did finish just one second ahead of the guy in 18th place, so I have Jarrett (and his groin) to thank for that.



WOD 3: "LIVE WITH ROYCE" (aka TYLER FUCKING BLOWS IT)

Three rounds of a 400m run with a 65lb sandbag and 15 chin OVER bar pull-ups.

This event was responsible for another great moment that I will remember for a long time.  And it had absolutely nothing to do with me. 

The youngest competitor of the day, a 12-year-old kid named Mack from Yorkton's CrossFit Function, was finishing up the Div 3 version of the workout.  And, like what happened with Brad Flood's box jumps in 2010, the entire crowd was cheering him on as he finished and staggered into a hug from his mom, who was also competing. 

Here's a video of his last five pull-ups.  I saw this live and watched the video a couple of times, and I seriously get a little choked up every single time.



I would say my own personal memories of this WOD are not quite as fond.  This was the worst one for me, both in terms of how hard it hit me and how I failed to live up to my own expectations.

Going into it I actually thought I'd do okay. But, as it turns out, 65lbs is a lot of goddamn weight to carry for 400m.

What's worse is the fact that whatever I did diet-wise during the day, snacking on dried mango and a bit of beef jerky, didn't work and I started getting a cramp in my stomach on the first run. It didn't hinder me much on the first one, and probably not that much on the second, but I really felt it on the third.  On the second and third runs, I did have to take some walking breaks.  I also had some interesting conversations with myself.

By the time I got to the pull-up bar on the last round, I would guess I only had about 35 seconds left.  I pounded them out as fast as I could, but  I got a DNFF. I was two pull-ups short, which was good for 18th place.

Another thing that hurt was the pull-ups. The standard was that we had to get our chin through the vertical plane of the bar, so it could be seen on the other side (at least, that's how my judge interpreted it).

Frankly, I think this was a mistake to include this standard.

Chin over bar a hard enough thing to do without hurting yourself, and the CrossFit Regina pull-up apparatus ("Royce") is not completely stable. It wiggles and shakes a little when there are people swinging on it.  So, when you've got a bunch of other CrossFit psychos furiously banging out pull ups, it's easy to take a bar to the throat when you're attempting to satisfy a finicky judge.

I got called for a bunch of no-reps in the first round, at least five and maybe as many as seven. So on rounds two and three I made sure to get as much as my face over that bar as possible. As a result, there a couple of times I really slammed my throat on the bar, and one time I grazed my chin on it.

It actually bothered me quite a bit later on in the day, and I had trouble swallowing for hours afterward.

It's really my only problem with the entire event, but I would recommend to Aaron and Robin that they program either regular pull-ups or chest-to-bar instead of chin-over-bar in future events. Personally, that's the last time I'm going to do the chin-over-bar version, no matter what the WOD calls for.

Beyond my minor quibble with the pull-up standard, I thought this was a good, tough event that really tested a competitor's heart and fitness, which is all you can ask of a CrossFit WOD.

WOD 4: CLASSIC CROSSFIT (aka TYLER'S LAST CHANCE)

One minute at each of the following stations:

Wall ball

24" box jump

70lb bell swings

Double unders

Speed burpees

Going into this WOD, I was sitting in dead last in Div 1. I actually predicted this on the CFR website earlier in the week, but I gotta admit I was really hoping to at least beat a couple of guys.  I know I preach "If you wanna be a big dog, you gotta run with the big dogs" but it's still pretty hard on my fragile ego to be running at the absolute back of the pack. 

However, before WOD 4 I was in last place by three points, which meant I had to get at least 17th out of 20, and hope the dude in 19 got last if I wanted to beat even one guy.

My strategy on WOD 4 hinged on doing well on the double unders and hoping that there were some dudes who couldn't do them very good at all. I figured everyone would be pretty close on the box jumps, WB, and burpees.

Because I remember how bad the 70lb bell swings were in the final WOD from my first competition in Saskatoon, my plan was to rest that entire minute and enter the DU minute as fresh as possible. I figured, I could kill myself to get 15 swings, or I could rest and get another 20-30 reps in DUs. As it turned out, since my judge Trevor (of CrossFit Function) was yelling at me (he's actually a super nice guy), I did pick up the bell and do 10 swings, but I stopped well before the minute was done.

The DUs didn't go quite as well as I wanted, but I did manage to get an even 50 in them. I had time for some more but I kept tripping up on the rope.  

It was pretty amazing to see Nolan, who placed first in this event and second overall, do a minute straight of double unders.  This came after he did a minute straight (NO breaks) of wall balls, and another minute straight of box jumps.  He took a brief breather on the bell swings, but he probably still got at least 20  of them.

If Nolan weren't such an incredibly great guy, I would totally resent how awesome he is at CrossFit.  He is my CrossFit hero.

In the end, I got 13th place on WOD 4 with a score of 123.

My math actually had me at 126, which would have been good for 10th in the WOD, but I could be remembering my round totals wrong. I only saw the tally sheet briefly when Trevor had me sign it, and I WAS pretty destroyed by the WOD at the moment. (I should note that even if I WAS victim of erroneous math on the final WOD and the shot put -- and I very likely wasn't and am just remembering wrong -- it wouldn't have resulted in me finishing any higher than I did overall, since I was 11 points away from the next guy).

At the end of the day, I ended up in 19th place overall.

This was an extremely well-organized and well-designed competition and, despite my bitching and moaning about my own lack of success during the day, these events always remind me why I dig CrossFit so much.

Congrats to Robin and Aaron and all the volunteers and judges for making the day go so smoothly.   I look forward to another bottom three finish next year.