When the day came, I arrived about 30 minutes before my heat was to start to warm up. Not only did I get a judge, I got one of the coaches. I knew that she would judge me well. Before starting, we went over the proper way to do the wall walks, and she gave advice to me and others in Heat 1 about pushing our feet into the wall on the way down to prevent them from touching the floor before our hands touched the tape. If the feet touched the floor before the hands got to the tape, it would be a costly no rep.
There were very few spectators for Heat 1, which is typical. Folks tend to drift in when its closer to the heat they’ve signed up for. The time came to start, and I got down to business.
My 5 wall walks in the first round were fine. I wasn’t super fast, but I didn’t really take breaks between each rep and before long it was time for the doubles. Now, I absolutely refuse to check this on the video, but I was counting my jumps. When my judge told me I was on rep 40, I thought I was on rep 30. But, to be fair, it’s possible that I’m the one that lost count. At any rate, I got through my 50 double unders unbroken and headed to the 65 pound snatch bar.
I considered trying to do sets of two or three, which I knew would be faster, but I was feeling under the weather. And, as I mentioned before, 65 is a pretty heavy snatch for me. Rather than risk a missed rep, I took my time and did singles. When I struggled to complete a rep, as I did after rep 10, I rested a little bit more to make sure I wouldn’t fail a rep. I got through all 15 with a tie break time of 4 minutes and 6 seconds, leaving me just under 2 minutes to get 5 more wall walks and 50 double unders.
I thought I had a chance until I started my first wall walk.
That first set was tough, but doable. After the double unders and snatches, the second set was insanely difficult.
I got through the first rep and had to take a rest, though I tried to keep it short. When I went back up, my shoulders were pure fire and I wasn’t sure how they were still moving, but they were. Third and fourth reps went similarly. On the fifth rep, I almost lost it. I got my hands to within 6 or so inches of the tape line near the wall that I had to touch before returning to the floor and I stalled out. My arms refused the command to move. I froze for a moment, then one arm moved, but in the wrong direction! I tried to tighten my core and I just forced those arms to get my hands to touch that tape and then held myself oh-so-tightly as I made my way down, touching hands to tape and then collapsing to the ground for all of one second before I levered myself up to jump rope.
I only had about 15 seconds to do my jumps, and I tripped on the first attempt. Then I got through 7 reps before the 6 minutes was up. Not as many as I’d wanted, but I’d had no idea those wall walks would be so much harder on the second round. I was surprised to find that I was the only woman in my heat who had gotten to the second round – never underestimate the stopping power of the double under.
I stuck around for a couple more heats to watch. I have to admit that I felt better about my performance when I watched another athlete do much better than me on the snatches fail to get any wall walks in the second round. That person reminded me of a past version of myself in some ways; I used to be able to rep out 65 pound snatches much better than I currently can, and the wall walks would have been much more challenging before I spent more years working on my core strength. Then I slipped out, wanting to go home and rest in the hopes of getting over the weather again.
I very well may be moving before next year’s Open. I might not be able to attend CrossFit regularly anymore in my new location. But I still want to do the Open next year. Whether that means doing it in my home as best I can or driving a long way to a box, I plan to do it.