Well, that was fun! It’s amazing how just adding the extra pressure of competition can turn a normal looking 15-minute workout into a death trap that leaves you writhing on the floor. Looking back at the workout on paper after having done it on Friday night, it still doesn’t LOOK bad, but I sure do remember feeling a little more thrashed than usual after it was all over! For those of you that just completed your first Open WOD ever, how did it go? Exciting but terrifying at the same time beforehand, and right away during the workout it seemed like you went out way too fast and had nothing left about halfway through it? Yeah, same.
Here’s the thing about the Open – we still have to strategize on how we’re going to attack the workout in a smart way, so that we give ourselves the best chance at success. If 20.1 came up on a random Tuesday, and didn’t count for anything, would you still have done the first round in 1 minute, shooting yourself in the foot for the next rounds to come? If you feel like you didn’t plan out that effort very well, understanding your own strengths and weaknesses, now you’ve learned that lesson. When 20.2 peeks it’s head around the corner on Friday, inviting you to throw caution to the wind and just go for it, take a couple minutes to dissect the workout. Try to understand it as if it was a regular workout that you wanted to maximize your result in, without the pressure of the Open. Where are you going to have a hard time? Where are your strengths that you could exploit and maybe speed up a bit? If it’s a longer workout, remind yourself to rein it in a bit in the beginning. If it’s a short sprint, make sure you get REALLY warmed up and on 3-2-1-GO you’re feeling nice and loose and ready to roll.
So, what is workout 20.2 going to look like? With only one workout behind us, it’s hard to tell. But if we assume that it will be something different than what we just did, we can try to paint a little bit of a picture, or at least rule some things out. 20.1 was a “long one”, especially for an Open WOD, at 10 rounds and 180 reps total if you completed it. Even the 15-minute time cap is on the longer range for previous Open workouts, although we have seen 20-minute AMRAPs and workouts with no cap that seemed to go on forever!
I believe that 20.2 will be a bit shorter, maybe 10 minutes or less. 19.1 back in the spring was a 15-minute AMRAP, and then 19.2 started with an 8-minute block of work, followed by more 4-minute blocks if you completed the first part. For most of us the workout ended with that first 8 minutes!
Having said all that, Dave Castro has a way of taking what everyone is expecting and going the opposite direction, and he’s got 4 more workouts to play with in order to narrow down the Fittest On Earth to invite to the Games.
What do you think CrossFit Open WOD 20.2 will be? Castro just released a hint on Instagram… it’s grass? That can’t be good…
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