CrossFit Athletic Group

1st. Decker - 5:01

2nd. Chris - 5:01 and a little change

3rd. Owen - 5:12

Big ups to Mrs. Bennis for going there to time the thing. I might do a little follow-up post. We'll see.

UPDATED 8 pm

Show me the money. Jack Decker ran in a mini-skirt with $100-bills designed all over. It left very little to the imagination and was illegal in seven countries, so I am submitting this to the IOC to have him stripped of his victory.

I care about things, it's my special power. A few days ago when I realized that we'd be racing on Wednesday, I immediately felt nervous. It was really cool. When I get nervous for workouts it's because I know the kind of misery I'm about to put myself through. In this occasion, I called out Jack and Owen on this here site and did not want to lose. I was competing against other people. I treated this like a game.

Pregame ritual? You bet I did! Same as I would if it were a college basketball game. I went to sleep at around 11 last night, got up at 7:30 for a normal 5-block breakfast. I did tomorrow's workout at 8:30, did a couple things around the house, ate a 3-block snack at 10:30, then laid down for 10 minutes before heading to the track.

Gameday workout? I think it's time to do another post on this, but yes. I took the Tabata workout at about 7/10 intensity up until the rowing - which I subbed single-leg jump ropes instead of burpees because I wanted to prep my feet for later on. I was decently cooked after the workout. I felt great at 11 o'clock.

Stages of adaptation. Last time you guys ran a mile I talked about how the progress most of you made would have happened in most programs under most coaches. Those are 1st wave adaptations. My time was 5:02 according to Mrs. Bennis and my goal was a 4:58. Taking those extra 4 seconds off is a 3rd wave adaptation; like Mel hinted in the comments, I chose to "draft" behind Decker because of the wind at the expense of running the first two laps too slow. I can't think of an occasion where a strategy mistake on a workout/sport would be a 1st wave adaptation.

Silent Confidence. In 2014 I wrote a editorial about how sometimes we just gotta "know" and not feel the need to prove ourselves. There is a very loud majority of me that sees the number 5 in front of that mile and wants to either 1) claim Mrs. Bennis's phone timer is inaccurate or 2) tell Decker to come back from Michigan every nice weekday we have left until I get a clear-cut sub-5 (in April we raced and I was riiiight at the 4:59/5:00 cutoff.) Somewhere there is a quiet but solid part of me that knows I have the capacity to run a 4:59 mile. My margin for error at this exact time is just not enough to make up for strategy errors.

What's the limiting factor? Stamina. My lungs were buring but nothing out of the ordinary; I was able to stay standing after the race - unlike Fran or Candy or The Hill earlier this year. In the last lap - specifically the last 100 - my legs felt like your arms felt on Cindy last week: when they go they go. In the last 100 meters we swapped leads twice before I was not able to match his 3rd kick. My legs gave out and Decker probably could have run another mile right after in 5:30 or less. If I worked as hard as Owen does in workouts, I'd probably be back in the mid-high 4:40s.

What about Owen? To me, his limiting factor is mobility. His hamstrings are about as tight as it gets, and when there is that constant tension pulling in you muscles you know that is going to eat up your energy faster.

What about Decker? He said his limiting factor is speed. Speed is one of those weird categories of fitness (along with power) that is part-organic and part-neurological, meaning there is a lot of coordination involved. Decker runs for Michigan's club team and his training involves running a lot of long, slow distance. The old saying "you practice how you play" applies here: his brain is so used to going at the speed he practices at and he had a difficult time speeding up in this shorter event. Give him a few weeks of track practice and he'd probbaly be in the 4:30s.

Pose? I thought about my form for about 3 seconds during the 2nd lap and that was about it. It was a good reminder that, as I said above, you practice how you play. Everything in practice is about building habits so that when the competition comes you can just think about strategy. Judging by the picture above, I'm probably up to the standard of 1-frame-in-1-frame-out of Pose. I have a feeling in the last 100m sprint I was lagging quite a bit.

Final notes. Competing is the best thing in the world. And God gave us a beautiful day to do that.