Burpees Suck

Burpees are not my friend. Burpees are not anyone's friend. Burpees suck. A quick google image search proves it:

 

 

Specifically, me doing burpees sucks. And, must be comical. There's something to definition number 2 in that first t-shirt. I imagine my coaches had a hard time stifling their laughter as they watched me struggle through 45 of them today. Seriously, forget the Make-A-Wish Foundation. They should show those dying kids video of me doing burpees, it would have them laughing so hard they'd forget they had cancer.

There's something I'm learning about Crossfit and I think this is how you get sucked in. You can look at a WOD and think, "That doesn't look too bad". Then you do the WOD and it's hard. You're dying. You don't know how you're going to finish before the next class arrives in an hour. You don't know how you can physically make your body move in that way yet again. And then you finish, you chat a little and stretch, you drink some water, you've caught your breath, you've stopped sweating and you walk out of the door and you think...

"That wasn't so bad."

WTF?! Yes it was!

So yeah, today's workout, my first "real" Crossfit workout:

-Warm-up with a 300 m row and 10 reps each of push-ups, pull-ups, v-ups, and air squats-Strength portion: 3-3-3-3-3 chest press (meaning you do 3 reps per set and increase weight with each set. And don't screw up because if you do, you're treated to 30 burpees as punishment)
-And the WOD:
 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 (reps) of:
 burpees
 kettleball swings

Yeah, I know, looks easy, right? By sets 6 and 5 I was dying during the burpees. Even the kettleball swings afterward - potentially my favorite Crossfit move thus far - were HARD. By the set of 4 I was pretty much crawling in and out of the push-up portion of the burpees. I'm pretty sure I was also having an asthma attack even though I don't have asthma. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that the next set would be fewer reps (oh yeah, and sheer determination, let's not forget that). I managed to finish the WOD in 11 minutes and then got to treat myself to 25 GHD sit-ups as the "finisher".

So I survived. It wasn't pleasant, but it was still, somehow, fun. The only question now is, do I go back for more tomorrow?