Dear Brain,
The workout is over, please stop dreaming of burpees. Seriously, it's done.
For anyone who doesn't know, the first workout of the Crossfit Games Open was burpees. For 7 minutes. I have never thought so much about burpee technique. This morning while I dozed before my alarm I was still dreaming about the stupid things, and today I tried to do one in the warmup and had to actually talk myself into it.
People were complaining that the first workout was too boring or simple etc. etc. I actually thought it was perfect. Everyone can do a burpee, so everyone can get a score, and it's a pure, simple test of endurance with a side of will power.
I did my burpees on Friday. I was aiming for at least 80, with a bonus goal of 90. I had it all worked out how many I needed to have at the end of each minute (12 or 13 per min to get 84 or 91 respectively). I had a chart in chalk on the floor in front of me and everything. After the first minute I had done more than I needed (15) so I paced myself a bit, ending up with, in each minute, 15, 14, 11, 11, 12, 11, 13 = 87. I was pretty pleased, but felt like I wasn't quite as exhausted as everyone else and probably could have pushed harder. The fact that I was immediately willing to do it again confirmed this. So, to repeat the strategy or to try something new?
In the interest of science, I decided to try again on Sunday and dispense with the pacing strategy. This time, I turned away from the clock, I didn't let my judge tell me how many I'd done, and I went balls out as fast as I could. This time: 16, 12, 13, 11, 11, 13 = 96 (!)
For a bit of background, I'm a pace it sort of person. I'm willing to use all the gas in the tank when there's a team win on the line, but normally I'm not in the business of having to puke/cry at the end. I really didn't know what was going to happen if I just went as fast as possible for the whole time. But, obviously, it worked! Notice that my last 3 minutes were almost identical in each trial. This suggests to me that a person's "tired" burpee pace (ie, the pace you settle in to for the second half) is the same no matter how hard you work in the first half, so you might as well get as many done in the beginning as possible. Coach Jen tried to tell me this, of course, but sometimes one has to experience these things first hand to believe it. This was really an eye opener for me, not only because pacing did not help me, but because I found I could get through it without taking a break. No wandering around in a circle, no sips of water, just keep moving. There are obviously exceptions to this: heavy lifting requries concentration, and sometimes you just plain max out. Also, the lenght of time matters...I don't think I could have kept going at that pace for 10 minutes, say. But for bodyweight movements it's balls out from now on. (Side: Why are all the good phrases to do with male body parts? I suppose tits out just sounds too crass...)
Experimental conclusion: Intensity > pacing (9 extra burpees = 3624 spots in the ranking. There are a LOT of people in the middle of the pack!)
Side conclusions:
1. Not eating for 4 hours beforehand effectively eliminates the desire to puke afterward. Noted.
2. I do not need a sip of water nearly as often as I think I do. I will not dry up and crumble like overdone cookies.
Oh, speaking of ranking and numbers. Last year a fellow stats nerd/crossfitter, who also happens to be called J Young, kept a blog where he analyzed data extracted from the leaderboard (age, weight, height, gender). He was looking for biases in age and body type, and has some really cool data to show that the open last year was actualy quite fair; those nearest to the "ideal" BMI, which was the easiest metric to compare across body types, scored similarly regardless of height and weight. Various advantages for small and large people sort of balanced out in the end. I badly want to play with the data from this year, but I have no idea how to write the code to scrape the data from the website (my friend assures me it's too tedious to bother). Fortunately, some other fellow nerds are already on the job, and plan to make it available, because math nerds are such helpful folk. So, soon I will have NUBMERS and then I can do MATHS on the NUMBERS and answer all of your burning questions (and make some pretty pictures too!) Mmmmm data, I am very excited.
Check out his statistical summary from last year
IMPORTANT PS!! Thanks SO much to everyone who was cheering, you kept me going just that bit faster. What an electric atmosphere with amazing people. Can't wait for next week!
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