Ready or not, the 2016 CrossFit Games Open is here. I’ve been a broken record saying how it’s been a bananas few months for me at work, I prrrromise that nonsense will stop in the next couple of weeks. I haven’t exactly been on my A game in the workout & nutrition department, either. Clearly I’m playing with a full deck.

Between a bachelorette party and a business trip taking up Friday-Monday of this weekend, I found myself at the box on Thursday night, staring nervously at the TV wondering how the hell I was about to start my FOURTH CrossFit Open. I had one chance to do the mystery WOD, with zilch opportunity at a redo.

Our box decided that this year, we’d all get together to watch the live stream and then watch 2 coaches do the WOD head-to-head immediately after. Week 1 obviously drew a big crowd, and I was nervous about having to do the WOD on my own off to the side while everyone else excitedly watched Coaches Mike & Jon throw down.

Katy’s Internal Monologue: Holy crap, there are a lot of people here. PLEASE let there be double unders. If I’m going to work out with an audience, can the WOD at least contain one of my strongest skills? How come we can’t hula hoop for time? Come onnnn rower and jump rope, please no wall balls or pull-up bars! I hate wall balls and I’m peanuts at anything on the pull-up bar. Did I mention that there are a lot of people here? Thank heavens Amazon Prime delivered a new canister of preworkout today. Lemon berry yum yum yum. Should I have had that extra half scoop? Oh well. TOO LATE NOW! I’m not going to sleep until 4am.

There I stood, all hopped up on a scoop and a half of preworkout and road rage over the fact that I’d just worked from 8a-7:30p with only a 20min lunch break. (Like I said, work’s a little bananas lately.) A Luna Bar stashed in my tote and a leftover apple from my Panera lunch ended up being ‘dinner’, as I realized there was a snowball’s chance in hell I was getting out of work in enough time to cook, eat and digest dinner by the time Dave Castro dropped his sinister nonsense on us.

Garbled AF, Castro announced all the way from Argentina that 16.1 was…

WORKOUT 16.1

Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 20 minutes of:
25-ft. overhead walking lunge
8 burpees
25-ft. overhead walking lunge
8 chest-to-bar pull-ups

OH walking lunges, okay! Burpees? Couldn’t avoid them 2 years in a row. 20 minutes? I’m no Sam Briggs, but I like longer workouts. Then came the crap on a cracker. Chest to bar pull-ups. I’ve had so many issues in the past with getting my collarbone above the plane of the bar, only to have my stupid shoulders refusing to cooperate and let me make contact with the bar.

I didn’t even bother to watch Emily Abbott & Chyna Cho face off. I walked into the other room, chalked up, hopped up and pulled with all I had to see if I could get a legit C2B. Ain’t no room for bro reps when you’ve got 40 people about to watch you do it up. Lo and behold, I MADE CONTACT. WHOA. Here’s why.

One of our coaches also dabbles in still photography, and will bring his DSLR in about once a week to capture action shots during class. Go figure the day Sway decides to capture the 5:30 is the day absolutely zero fcks are given in the outfit department. Anyway – here’s why it’s good to suck it up and ask someone to take a photo/video of you performing a skill or lift you feel you need to work on.

How a movement FEELS versus how it actually looks can be completely different, and you’d never have known it without that second set of eyes. I knew my grip was narrow, but then I SAW IT:

Jeebus. No wonder why chest to bar were always an issue. So, when I hopped up on Thursday night, I made a conscious effort on each rep to go for an extra wide grab on the bar. It worked like a charm. I scored 141 Rx reps on 16.1, unbroken lunges and not a SINGLE no-rep on any movement in the workout. I did the C2B one by one, but I made sure that every pull meant something.

Halfway through the WOD, I was getting smoked by the other competitors on the floor, and was practically grinning from ear to ear because I’d slayed a demon that had been haunting me for the past year. In the first 5 minutes of my entire 2016 Open, I felt like I had already won.

This is why you sign up and participate in the Open. The only way I’m going to Regionals is if I’m sitting there as a spectator with a beer in hand, but that doesn’t mean that ponying up $20 to HQ is a waste.

Sometimes, you need a little external push to clear a physical or mental hurdle. The Open is that push for a lot of us. As soon as the annual muscle up WOD is posted, brace yourselves for the influx of videos shared of athletes all over the world getting their first muscle ups.

Sometimes, goal smashing requires a little help from your friends. 16.1 was my chance, and the overwhelming energy and support from the CrossFit Factory Square family helped me smash that 20min AMRAP to bits.