The Crossfit Open: A Beginners Journey into the Unknown 18.5

The Crossfit Open has been an absolute blast so far, and when it came to the final announcement Dave Castro decided to mix things up again and put it to a public vote. 10 pm comes around and the three potential workouts up for vote are announced via Facebook live, with the worst voting system ever…basically, you voted with a Facebook comment, so it was hard to keep an eye on what was going on. The three workouts that could be picked were…

WORKOUT 18.5 = 12.5 = 11.6

Complete as many reps as possible in 7 minutes of:
3 thrusters
3 chest-to-bar pull-ups
6 thrusters
6 chest-to-bar pull-ups
9 thrusters
9 chest-to-bar pull-ups
12 thrusters
12 chest-to-bar pull-ups
15 thrusters
15 chest-to-bar pull-ups
18 thrusters
18 chest-to-bar pull-ups

This is a timed workout. If you complete the round of 18, go on to 21. If you complete 21, go on to 24, etc.

Men use 100 lb.
Women use 65 lb.

WORKOUT 18.5 = 13.5

Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 4 minutes of:
15 thrusters
15 chest-to-bar pull-ups

If 90 reps (3 rounds) are completed in under 4 minutes, time extends to 8 minutes.

If 180 reps (6 rounds) are completed in under 8 minutes, time extends to 12 minutes.

If 270 reps (9 rounds) are completed in under 12 minutes, time extends to 16 minutes.

Etc.

Men use 100 lb.
Women use 65 lb.

WORKOUT 18.5 = 15.2 = 14.2

Every 3 minutes for as long as possible, complete:
From 0:00-3:00
   2 rounds of:
   10 overhead squats
   10 chest-to-bar pull-ups
From 3:00-6:00
   2 rounds of:
   12 overhead squats
   12 chest-to-bar pull-ups
From 6:00-9:00
   2 rounds of:
   14 overhead squats
   14 chest-to-bar pull-ups
Etc. until you fail to complete both rounds

M 95 lb.  F 65 lb.

THE CHOSEN ONE

Looking at the three workouts announced I knew I wanted it to be 11.6, this was purely for selfish reasons as I felt it would challenge me but I would have some capabilities to complete the workout respectably. When the workout was announced as 11.6 it felt like a perfect end to my first Open, 18.5 ended up as:

RX

SCALED

It will be no surprise to anyone who has followed my journey that I don’t yet have chest to bar pull-ups, so for my final workout of the 2018 Crossfit Open I was going to scale it, and add another movement to my goal list for the next twelve months.

When it came to actually completing the workout, there was an amazing night planned at our box, Crossfit Huntsman. It was 90’s fancy dress, after many conversations and no actually planning it came down to the wire and George did a last minute trip to Topshop to pick up our outfits, as you can see from below I think we did pretty well. My outfit was based on Saved by the Bell if you couldn’t already tell.

Arriving at the box to see some of the absolutely epic outfits that had been put together, we had Macho Man Randy Savage, Britney Spears, The Scousers and many more…

George was going RX and we had parallel lanes, also next to my buddy Ricky too, it felt almost electric. Another friend Lucinda had popped by to check out the box as she is moving boxes in the near future and I managed to convince her to be my judge.

THE WORKOUT

I actually quite enjoy Thrusters, and this is a problem…as the clock went off I went out way too fast, and it felt amazing…for a bit! And then it hit and by god did it hit hard, I was gassed! Taking the rest as an opportunity to do my best at winding George up and pushing her harder, as Lucinda called it rightly that I’d gone out on a sprint and ended up on a walk! Seven minutes hasn’t felt that long before, but I kept going, pushing on and giving it my all! Learning a valuable lesson in pacing during the process! 

My final score was:

The Crossfit Open 2018 has been a massive learning process and I feel like I’ve grown through it, I will be writing a big post about what it has truly meant to me so keep an eye out for that one, until then I’m going to go rest for a little bit…

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