Hellfire pizza and Crossfit don’t mix aka London Box Battles Round 3

Note to self: do not eat super spicy pizza called Hellfire Chicken the night before a Crossfit comp.

I can handle spicy food, Vindaloo and all, but Muscle Food’s Hellfire Chicken protein pizza is HOT on another level. Geebus. I HAD to have a beer as well to be able to finish it (and I had to finish it because it was delicious, despite the heat).

That was Friday night. On Saturday morning I headed over to my Crossfit box for the 3^rd round of the London Box Battles, this time we were battling against Crossfit Ivy. I never eat anything but plain food the night before a race so no idea why I thought a spicy pizza and alcohol would be great the night before a Crossfit event.

My stomach felt a bit dodgy since I woke up but I figured the workouts would be short so I’d be ok. The first one was a 2-part workout called Activated Fran. Fran because that’s the name of one of the main Crossfit workouts and Activated because right before Fran we had 6 minutes to get a max rep double thruster and max number of strict pull ups.

I did pull ups first while I was fresh, 5.9 with chin-up grip (my biceps are stronger than my lats). The 0.9 didn’t count of course but I’m mentioning it because I was soooo close to getting 6. After that I did the thrusters, 2 x 35, 2 x 40, 2 x 45 and then 2 x 47.5. The left side of my back was twinging a bit, no idea from what so I wore a belt and that helped. I didn’t push it beyond 47.5kg, when the back niggles even a tiny bit, it’s not a good idea to push it.

Fran itself is 21 thrusters with 30kg, 21 pull ups, 15 thrusters, 15 pull ups, 9 thrusters, 9 pull ups. I have done it in a bit over 10 minutes before. This time I finished in 6:28 which is a pretty good time, I think, but I felt awful – dodgy stomach and totally dizzy. Stomach no doubt because of the pizza, dizziness because Fran is just so freaking fast.

I actually thought about stopping half way through and calling it quits with the whole comp but somehow soldiered on and got it done.

I wasn’t keen to do the other workout but once I had a bit of rest I figured I’d give it a go and just go at a pace that didn’t feel too awful.

The second workout was a mad combo of 30 box step ups, 20 ground to overhead (with a 15kg plate), 30 burpees, 20 toes to bar, 30 burpees, 20 ground to overhead, 30 box step ups. Time limit was 10 minutes.

Box step ups are faster than jumps but 30 are still tiring. Getting the 15kg plate from the floor to overhead was the easiest, the burpees where the hardest and the toes to bar were the slowest because I can only do singles. I didn’t quite manage to do everything in the 10 minutes, I finished with 13 step ups so had 17 points deducted from my score. Still, I felt much better during this workout than during Fran.

Rest of the time I just took photos, ate my lunch and snacks that we all had ordered from Protein Haus, cheered others and cursed the fact that there is no café nearby – waiting until 2pm to have a coffee is no fun.

I was so glad to see lots of women take part of a comp type of event for the first time. It’s always scary first time, especially if you can’t do all the fancy Crossfit stuff that the überfit can do – pull-ups and handstand push-ups and muscle-ups and so on. It’s awesome therefore that there are events out there that are casual and chilled and scaled for all levels.

Next Crossfit challenge – 12 Days of Crossfit in December. I’m giddy with excitement already 🙂

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