Born to Run – Live – Weekend Double Post

***Do not be scared***

I know you all have been expecting me to hit you with some sort of beast running workout. A 5k or a 10k, or an interval workout reminiscent of my high school track days. Don’t let the title of this post fool you, this is not what you’re expecting.

So I get home this morning after flattening myself on the workout to discover an email from a good friend of mine who is currently working down in Mexico, right near the Copper Canyons. Here is a clip. For those of you that haven’t read the book, Born to Run is an interesting read about running and ultramarathons, and indigenous running cultures, of which the Tarahumara are one.

“While working today I was passed by a Tarahumara family. Check out the sandals on the father and mother, the mother in particular. Sawweeeet! Also drove through Creel on the way in here and saw the dirt road that heads off into the Copper Canyons that “the race” began and ended on. Anyways, pretty cool to have that book come to life a bit, thought you’d be interested too.”

Wicked cool. Made my morning. Anyways, on to more local issues, such as the weekend workouts.

One of the things that drew me to Crossfit when I first got into it, was the concept of what loads and tasks the ideal athlete would be capable of performing. It may have been a well crafting sales pitch, but it got me. The idea being that the ideal male athlete might be a guy that could run a 3:00 km or a 5:00 mile, but also pull a 500 lb. deadlift and have the body control of a gymnast. A bit ambitious perhaps, but no one has ever gotten anywhere without some ambition.

I’ve thought about this from time to time since then, and have tried to build up in my head more of those numbers on various lifts that that ideal athlete might have. One of the thoughts was that if this prototypical athlete had a 300 lb. jerk that would be a good demonstration not only of his power, but also of speed and many other of the 10 general physical skills. Interestingly a 5 minute mile is 300 seconds. So if this athlete could run a mile in 300 seconds and jerk 300 lbs., the differential between these two would be zero. Similarly, if someone could run a 4 minute mile and jerk 240 lbs, i’d still be very impressed. Or alternatively run a 6 minute mile and jerk 360 lbs., well, I’d probably not challenge him to a fight. Since athletes come in many different shapes and sizes, I conclude that I think the lower this differential is, not the absolute values, may be a good indicator of the athlete’s fitness.

Saturday will be a test of this theory:

Warmup: Coach’s Choice for both warmups this weekend

Tech: Push Jerk, Split Jerk, Jerk from behind the head

Workout: Run (or row) 1 mile followed by 5 min. to find a 1RM Shoulder to Overhead (from a rack)

Score is time in seconds minus weight in lbs. Lowest wins.

Sunday is not quite as glamorous, but just a classic battle.

Tech: Hang Power Clean 3-3-3

Workout: “Nasty Girls”
3 rounds for time of:
50 squats
10 HPC (135/85 lbs.)
7 Muscle ups

Hope you all enjoyed the week! I enjoyed the opportunity to program it and throw my thoughts around a bit.

Dan and Andy