Rx Crossfitters: "Say Hello To My Little Friend – NE 70th Street!"
For the non-Crossfit folks, the term "Rx" is an aspirational term – at least for me. It means that you do the workout of the day (aka "WOD") as prescribed in terms of the exercise itself and the weight, which will differ for men and women. I have yet to "Rx" a workout but Marc has just started to and I'm really proud of him sticking with Crossfit even when he has felt less than stellar a day or two after a WOD. In reality, it is going to be hard for me to "Rx" but as long as I give every WOD my best effort that I have in me on any given day, I'm good. So if you can't "Rx" a workout, you do a modified workout.
For example, I have a limitation that precludes me from doing pull-ups. I do a substitution called v-ups, which works similar muscles, and I double the amount of v-ups in my workout. If a workout calls for 25 pull-ups, I'll do 50 v-ups. Most of the people at Crossfit do some kind of modified workout, whether it is because of a permanent limitation, a temporary one or just a lack of strength issue.
Earlier this week, I did a moderately steep hill workout. It's kind of hard to define "moderately steep" but Coach Kim told me not to do my "favorite hill" on NE 70th Street. This is the hill that kicks my rear because of how steep it is over the course of a ½ mile – roughly about a 15% grade. So I opted to do the moderately steep workout right near my house, which brought me back and forth in front of a favorite local place called Latona Pub. Patrick, one of the bartenders who also gives me crap because he is a Red Sox fan, must have thought I was REALLY crazy because I ran up and down the hill 5 times, which means I went by the pub TEN times.
That effort was relatively easy compared to my NE 70th run, but I felt good after in terms of pacing and recovery between intervals. When I walked into Crossfit the next morning, a fellow Crossfitter asked me if I was running "around and around" the block near the local elementary school the day before. I answered yes and explained what I was trying to do in my running training. She was very complimentary about my speed and I explained the relative difficulty between that hill and NE 70th.
Well Coach Melissa overheard this discussion and her eyes lit up. It was a cross between absolute glee and sadism. She immediately wanted to know when I was going to do NE 70th again because she wanted to work on her cardio endurance for the next round of the Crossfit games. I thought to myself, "Uh oh – she is going to kick my rear all over the hill". Melissa and I made a date for this morning since I was working from home this week and I just figured that I would give it my best.
Melissa was very complimentary and said that she was just going to follow me, and that this was "my workout to lead". Wow – no pressure, huh? And then I get some texts from her saying that she enjoyed Cinco de Mayo a bit too much the night before and that another Crossfitter (Meagan – very fit herself) wanted to join in the fun. Fun? These people are nuts! I do 70th to torture myself so race day doesn't feel so bad, and contrary to the title, that hill ain't my little friend!
I'll just also add that I am a tad older than these two ladies so I am thinking that I just need to hold on and see what happens. We meet up and I warn them that we are doing an easy warm-up and cool-down run after the hill intervals. It's just too much of a shock to the muscles not to. They agreed and for a change, I had to throttle my partners-in-crime back on the warm-up pace. Normally I am the one who needs to be brought back. LOL.
Warm-up done and hills component set to begin. I remind them it is get as far as you can in 5 minutes, easy down, then 4 minutes, etc. all the way down to 30 seconds. We start the 5 minute climb and Melissa just goes off. I am able to stay close behind for awhile but then there is this "flat stretch" at about an 8% grade and she powers away. I keep at it and actually come up a ½ block short of the top of the hill, which is actually a ½ block improvement from my previous effort 2+ weeks ago! Melissa made it to the top in 5 minutes, even with not being able to see where the top was until the last 1/3 of the climb (yes, it is that steep of a hill that you cannot see the top for a long time). Meagan came close to the top as well.
We then did the rest of the climbs and I'll just say that Melissa and Meagan totally rocked the workout. They both finished super strong and dug in deep on those last little stretches. We did the cool-down and one of the gals decided to walk part of the stretch and we kind of shuffled along to a crawl. But we finished and everyone was pleased with their efforts, as they should have been. Melissa and Meagan definitely thought the workout was a good one, and something tells me that their competitive spirits will bring them out for another go on "NE 70th"soon.
When I downloaded everything, I noticed that I improved on 5 out of the 6 hill intervals from just over 2 weeks ago. Maybe the company on the hill helped with motivation! Now my goal is to actually get to the top of the hill, which is a ½ mile from the start, in 5 minutes or less. I'm getting closer!
And yep, the post-interval workout lunch at Latona Pub was well worth the effort. J