Plan:

• Fletcher Warmup
• 4x1K / 5′ rest
  • Pace: <1:42
  • Rate: 30
• 2K cool down

This morning I paid a visit to the good folks at Crossfit Del Mar.  $20 for a day pass and I had my choice of any of the well used and nicely maintained Model Ds to choose from.  The people were nice and the crashing of weights certainly provided a good distraction.  I could tell this place was well run by just how good the form was on all the folks in the class doing a cool power clean/jerk combo.  They must be serious about coaching proper form on these lifts.

The workout was tough.  I was out last night for dinner with a customer.  It ended early, but still a gigantic steak and couple of glasses of wine probably didn’t help.

The warm up felt sluggish and hard.

The main event was interesting.  I felt awful in the first rep.  I went out hard an I was looking at sub 1:40 pace about halfway through, but I felt like I needed to ease up.  I bled off a bit of pace and cruised to the finish.  I was still more than a second ahead of target for the rep, but I felt significantly more damaged than I did last week after rep number 1.

For rep 2, I chatted with myself and reminded me that the target was 1:42, and that’s OK.  I big improvement over a week.  So, this time I settled more quickly and played around a bit with rate keeping the pace dancing between 1:40 and 1:41.  I was looking at 1:41 with about 20 strokes to go, and I pushed the finish a bit.  Aww crap, I finished it faster than rep #1.  I felt honor bound to try for a negative split session.  Actually, I felt a little better after rep #2 than rep #1.  And 5 minute rests are luxuriously long.

So, into rep 3.  I knew I wanted something faster than 1:40.7, but I was reluctant to push it too hard.  I basically cruised along around 1:41 and goosed the last 20 strokes. 1:40.4

Now the finale.  I busted out of the gate pushing 1:38s.  That lasted about 10 strokes.  I drifted to 1:39s.  By the time I was 30 strokes in, I was in survival mode.  I was not going to let the rep go, but I was in deep trouble,  I dropped back to 1:41s for nearly 500m and the avg pace climbed up to 1:40.5 or so.  With about 30 strokes left, I started pushing really hard and I saw the avg start dropping.  With 10 left, I saw the avg dip below 1:40, and kept pushing.  I finished with 2 strokes at 1:35.

So, a 1:40.4 avg pace for the workout.  That’s 0.6 faster than when I did this workout before the 2014 crash-bs and with a lot less drama, and that year I went 6:37.6.

I did a 2K cool down and headed back to my hotel walking a bit taller.

Here is the HR profile for the workout.  Lower HR than I expected to see.

Tomorrow:   3×20 plus peak power at anaerobic crossfit in Newport Beach.