Days 24 and 25: Sadistic bastards

Day 24: Petra, Scott and I were there with one newbie. 50 wall balls, 10 muscle ups (sub 3 jumping pull ups and 3 ring dips per muscle up, one band)40 wall ball, 8 muscle ups, 30 wall balls, 6 muscle ups, 20 wall balls, 4 muscle ups, 10 wall balls, 2 muscle ups. 32:15

We only have 25# and 14# balls, so we went with 25# for the boys (Dawson and Petra went 14#). My friend from school, Dawson, came and worked out with us. He appeared to have fun, almost too much fun, as he pulled ahead of the crowd drastically by the end of the first round. Rob's internal monologue: "Shit. Well, he is 20, and he only has a 14# ball." Dawson continues to pull away for one more round, and my internal monologue becomes more frantic. "I hate him! I... hate....him....soooooooo much. Ich hasse ihn!" I begin to focus on my wall balls instead of Dawson, and Start thinking that Scotty might be a better target (god knows I am not going to beat Petra). I channel my inner Matt, yank my shirt off -don't faint, girls- and begin grunting. Dawson suddenly forgets that he is younger, stronger and better looking (his hair is a mess at this point, while it is usually a remarkable engineering feat), and falls behind. My ego, large and in charge as ever, kicks in and I start pulling, pushing squatting and rubbing sand out of my eyes (we need some fancier wall balls one of these days) with reckless abandon. I finish a little ahead of Scott, further ahead of Dawson, and woefully behind my wife. I lie on the ground and think about how much Mikko Salo can say what he wants about post-workout behavior, and hope that he is freezing his ass off in Finland. I then go outside and spit up as a large group of boxers walks by, staring at me half amused, half horrified. These are the people who beat each other to soup up in the ring, and stare down at us on the crossfit side of the gym, clearly thinking we're nuts. We pay them the same compliment in return.

Day 25: The folks who program for the crossfit main site -remember, the challenge was to do the main site until our departure in June- are sick, twisted bastards. So today was what is known as a chipper. The basic concept is to do one workout after another, fatiguing yourself at each before moving on.

The workout: 30 Handstand push ups, 40 Pull ups, 50 kettlebell swings, 1.5 pood (hehe, he pood), 60 sit ups, and 70 burpees. 1.5 pood is about 53 pounds, or much like 7 gallons of water at the end of a small handle. 32:36

Scotty and Petra somehow convinced me to come in at 6:00AM after an evening workout last night. What is wrong with them? After a good deal of dawdling, I finally agreed to start working out. I tried a very cool band-assisted handstand push up rig, and it made 30 hspus possible for me. Scott and played leap frog for most of the game, but on the burpees we did our impression of a zombie movie. Scott played the scared teenager, and I played the undead. Scotty jumped into the ring and tore off ten lightning fast burpees, while I settled into a slow, steady pace, not stopping for more than a couple of seconds until burpee number 60. I made sure to clap loudly every time. Scott would sprint off, look as if he would die for about half a minute, and then sprint off again. We followed the George Romero zombie chase scene script to the letter, but in the end, the zombie failed to catch his quarry. I did, however, graze his hair as he slammed the door on me. He got me by two burpees. Watch it, Scotty. Zombies always come back until you cut their head off with an axe; I'll see you tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and the next....