Learning Thrusters

Today, after work, I went straight to the gym. As usual, it was packed, despite being about 7:30 on a Wednesday. I'm beginning to think that there are some people who just sleep at the Y overnight, then get back up in the morning and position themselves on the machines just to take up space.

Yesterday when I went, they were out of lockers in the women's room, so I had to use the all-ages locker room, which was full of little girls. I can't explain how creepy that was. Although there were older women also in the locker room, most of them were with their children, and here I was, 25, alone and getting naked in front of children. All the sinks were super low, with stools for the kids to stand on as they washed their hands, and even the lockers were half the height of the normal ones. I could see clear over the tops of them as I hurried to shove my clothes in so I could get out. After my workout, I decided that the shortened shower heads were just too weird, so I went home without showering. I smelled terrible.

Today, at least there were women's lockers available, so I was quite content as I went to the cardio room and got on the only remaining treadmill, which-- quite unexpectedly-- was one of the four treadmills that had a personal television above it. Usually, these are the first to go, and I had not yet had the opportunity to try one out. I was not pleased when I found out that the headphone jack on it did not work, but I turned on the news, played music from my phone (also a walkman) and stared at the talking heads while I ran.

I know there are a lot of experts that will say not to watch TV while working out, and I agree. But since I had the sound off, I merely stared at the closed caption words and let my mind drift. Before I knew it, I was turning the speed up higher on the machine, and running steadily at a faster pace than I had previously achieved. Including my 3 minute warm-up, I ran 1.9 miles in 20:45 minutes-- a new personal record! If I had warmed up, and then reset the distance, I'm sure my time would have averaged well under 10 minutes a mile. The girl who passed out after running the mile in high school can now run two of them without even inducing an asthma attack.

After the run, I went to the weight room and decided to try the prescribed WOD- thrusters. For a video of the exercise, click here. The idea of the WOD was to increase your weight with each thruster, until you couldn't handle anymore. You got 7 tries. I've never done a squat with weight before, so I decided to try with the bar alone first (weighs 45 lbs) and go from there. As soon as I picked up the bar, I knew I was in trouble. 45 pounds of a long bar combined with terrible balance was not in my favor. I practiced the arm portion first, then tried to squat with the bar. I wobbled and almost fell over. It was obvious that I was not going to achieve the desired form today, so I opted for learning the moves and working on squatting with a weight. I ended up doing 4 sets of 5 squats and working on getting the bar comfortably on my shoulders. I didn't really even try to get it over my head after my first two tries. Obviously this move is way out of my comfort zone and will require more practice.

It's now waaaay past my bedtime, but I really needed to get all of this down before I got too far behind.