Why Did I Attempt 16.2 While Sick?

So this past Friday I completed the Crossfit Open workout 16.2 which probably wasn’t one of the best ideas I’ve ever had since I WAS SICK! Like called in sick to work sick. I had been feeling terrible for several days prior and I couldn’t breath out of my nose, but because I’d set a goal to get through all of the Open workouts I decided to show up to Friday Night Lights at my gym, Crossfit BPM. My mom had actually told me earlier that day to go to the doctor because she thought I had bronchitis, because of the way I was coughing, to which I promptly replied:

The last two weeks of the Open have honestly been terrifying and showing up to my box (hehehe) this week was no different. They had invited members from another box to participate with us and it was cool to watch other people attempt 16.2 but also to have a lot of people there to cheer and support.

My two struggles with 16.2 were: staying on the pullup bar and breathing.

I have EXTREMELY sweaty hands so I knew that getting in my reps on the pull up bar was going to be a struggle. I am also terrible at jump roping but I figured I could kind of breath a little while I was jumping up and down. The weights for the cleans weren’t terribly heavy, starting at about 40% of my one rep max (which is outdated since I haven’t tested it in a while) so I wasn’t too worried about lifting the weight but I knew that I would get winded FAST since I was sick.

Pretty much everything I expected, happened.

I had a really hard time holding onto the bar to start with but I was able to crank out my reps and move on to the single-unders which I didn’t have any problems with. The jump roping definitely raised my heart rate up and I think I got a little over zealous with the cleans. I have a tendency to jump when I’m lifting (because I love jumping lol) but since it was such a light weight I think I probably wasted some energy.

By Round 2 I got a better grip on the pull up bar but because I couldn’t breath I had to break up my reps into sets of 5. Once I finished I had an issue with a tangled jump rope but I eventually got those reps out and made it to the cleans. This weight actually felt better to clean, since it wasn’t as light, but I couldn’t breath because sickness + exercise = terrible.

I ended up timing out at 8 minutes with only one clean left to finish round 2 nooooooo! I’m 99% sure if I wasn’t sick I would have made it to round 3, so that was pretty disappointing but this is my first Crossfit Open and I’m also doing it scaled so it’s not that big of a deal. I had hoped to repeat 16.2 this morning but I wasn’t able to make it to the gym before work unfortunately. I ended up getting through 1 full round with 177 reps and a tie-breaker time of 5:38

Overall I actually preferred this workout compared to 16.1 because I wasn’t sore for a week afterwards but since it was so fast it was frustrating when I couldn’t be as efficient as I would have liked. I’m really loving participating in the Open and seeing people really push themselves further than they thought they could go. We’ll see if I’m going to die in 16.3!

If you’d like to follow me on the Crossfit Open 2016 leader boards you can find me by clicking here.