Day 40! Wow, 40! Analysis of Episode 2 of TAR, plus Crossfit (surprise)

OK so I’m going to start with Crossfit. Today Anthony told me how much better I was doing than when I started. Yeah so fine, I live for that stuff ;-) I also brought some of the coupons I’d gotten from a client and gave them out to the “gang” (Jimmy, Karen & Rich, Ashley – that’s the buff blonde’s name, I finally asked, Traci (the one I loaned Supple Leopard to, the runner), Anthony, and Margo. It was a little weird because there were other folks there when I handed them out, but basically I gave them to everyone who did the WOD with me except the 2 new girls, but they’d left already anyway).

I think Traci and I are pretty evenly paced. She smoked me in the run, but she and I did the deadlifts the same (the “orange” bar plus 2 5 kg plates – she added 2.5s on each end so she was at 15 to my 10, but that’s pretty close), plus she did the dips with the red band and I did it with the green. By the end she said she was super toasted on the red (it goes black – 75 lbs help, green 65, blue 55, red 45, then there might be another after that), so she was doing better than I was with the help on the dip, but she wondered if she should have done blue.

The WOD was 25 min AMRAP of 400m run, 10 deadlifts, 12 dips. We did 7 – she did the whole 400m of the next round, I finished my 7th FAST to get it in and then had just like 2 minutes left, so I did sprints up and down the meter markers so that I wouldn’t be around the back of the building when they called time (I got 125m in).

I learned during the warmup that an “L-sit” is literally sitting your body straight up with your legs out, like an “L”, so you are pushing with your hands to make your back as straight as possible. Part of the warmup was 30 seconds in that position – then there was a 30 second handstand, which I can’t do, so I did a 30 second plank. Anthony said to be sure that the “insides of my elbows” point “front” which puts my shoulder in the most stable position.

It was good music today too which helped – the whole Katy Perry “Roar,” “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger”-type music.

Sheri, Rich, and to some extent Ashley and I talked about high school reunions at the beginning -Sheri had just gotten back from hers, which was in Indiana this weekend. I was not feeling great when I went – stomach a little upset. I personally feel it’s because I drank Saturday during Mom and Dad’s anniversary, then 2 Vespers plus champagne yesterday after car shopping with H. I mentioned that, and Sheri said she felt like she was still a little drunk from the high school reunion “weekend” which made me laugh!

I also spoke with the gal in the office – her boyfriend J.B. does the Parkour classes – I really plan at about Day 200 (smile) to do a couple private lessons in Parkour. It’s SO COOL and I think it would be a helpful “skill set.” That’s why I like Crossfit though, too – the idea that it’s going to help you “push up and over a wall” versus your standard “Globo Gym” workout at a Nautilus machine or treadmill makes a LOT of sense to me. That’s also why I REALLY like The Cave – that it has not just Crossfit, but gymnastics and Parkour – is super duper I think. Interestingly, that’s why Kat tried to steer me away from The Cave (“Oh, it’s mainly really a Parkour gym and it isn’t really serious Crossfit”) – but the fact that our box took 3rd this past weekend in a competition (of course it was Amazing Karen and – can’t remember who did it with her – Andrew? Someone I haven’t met) and that everyone there in MY opinion is SUPER serious (in a fun way) seems to bely that. I also like the fact that, while I’m up there in the top of the ages, not many are really young. It makes me feel like I’m not an “old lady.” :-) I mean, except for the fact that I can’t lift anything that weighs more than a pencil…(joke! joke!)

OK, so on to TAR Episode 2. This time (spoiler alert) The Bingo Boys got eliminated. I’m trying to remember the sequence of things, but the first “task” was riding bikes out to the largest salt mining operation in the world (presumably this was still in Chile, I just can’t remember). The female ER doctor had BIG TIME issues with riding the bike – it seemed like she couldn’t shift gears, etc. R and I have had a little Facebook “convo” about this – the husband actually swapped bikes with her, and then she did okay – which basically means that he set up the gears for her on that bike. Then when they stopped, the weight of her backpack basically threw her off the bike – which was brutal. It was interesting that neither the baseball wives nor the “ice queens” (a/k/a the “race wives” of the Afghanimals) had much trouble with biking – I think honestly that it was just not a “skill” that the female ER doc had thought she’d have to “master” before coming on the program. (We’re making a list!)

The choice was to either mine the salt (picks and hammers) to find a clue “inside” a salt rock, or take 50 lb. bags of salt to big tanks of water, putting in enough salt so that you could float and read the newspaper. Interestingly, there has to be some sort of a math equation for this. That’s the first thing I thought of – especially when the “mean girl” and her ex were putting it in then not floating, and they hadn’t really “stirred it up” (the salt sank to the bottom). HERE is a little discussion about it…The thing that I personally know, however, from triathlon training is that I FLOAT LIKE A CHAMP. There are some people that are “sinkers” and some are “floaters.” To see which you are, you literally just lie in a pool with your face down and your arms/fingers/legs spread out “starfished” (because this displaces the most water).

I don’t have one bit of my body that sinks under the water. (For three different teams, I’ve been the “example” of a “SuperFloater” – usually, it’s a black guy who is a “SuperSinker” meaning that not one bit of his body stays UP above the water.) So the good part about that, is that I would actually personally know that if we had to “read the paper” in a “salted pond” as it were, that I would float WITHOUT much salt. (So that’s a good little bit of trivia to know. It also means that if, let’s say, a task is to get things off the floor of a pool or pond, it takes me a big effort to do it, because my body is to buoyant. I have a lot harder time than the “average neutrally buoyant person” in doing that.)

ANYWAY – the take-aways from that were:
1 Be able to ride a bike with a fully-loaded backpack on. I know I can “ride a bike” – the key is to understand the gearing of the bike that you’re going to be on. These were mountain bikes, looked like 3 rings in front – and they had click-shifting on the bar, very like the bikes we’ve rented in Sedona. My thought would be NOT to just “jump on the bike” immediately, but for like THREE minutes put the pack down and RIDE THE BIKE to get it into a comfortable gear, especially as it was VERY sandy/salty, and so that’s going to definitely affect shifting, especially the front gears. (I’m actually surprised no one’s chain dropped off.)
2. Know whether you’re buoyant or not. If R and I are both “SuperFloaters,” then it doesn’t make that much difference if there was a task that is for one person, and involves floating (or diving down). But if it turns out R is less of a floater than I am – once she’s lost weight of course – then that makes a difference. I’m probably even MORE of a floater now that I’m fatter than I was when doing tri team and Ironteam, but I know that when I’m “fit and trim” I’m still a “SuperFloater.” This is also why I can tread water for pretty much hours (literally) without even using my hands – because I am such a floater already, that it doesn’t take too much “kick” to keep me up. Good to know.
3. Have jogbras that can double as bathing suit tops – and PERHAPS undie/bottom combos. A couple of the girl “pairs” had to “change into” their bathing suits, whereas one pair (I think the baseball wives) were ready to just hop into action. They didn’t have “cute bikinis” like the Icequeens did, but they just stripped down and got to it. I think that wearing jogbras and then finding some sort of “bottom” that could double as a undie/bathing bottom would be the best bet. My supposition, frankly, was that the gals who didn’t have the ability to just “jump to it” never EVER thought that in the middle basically of a freakin’ salt desert that they’d need to be in their bathing suits. So – lesson learned. I personally love my Handfuls jogbras, they are SUPER comfortable ALL day long, don’t chafe, etc. They also have (and I have) tanks made similarly (just with a “tank” bottom) which I really like as well. I have a grey and a black of that – I have a number of the jogbras because I wear them EVERY day (pink, white, tan, black, purple, brown).
4. Have your “flip flops” ready. The “Ice Queens” were walking back and forth with the 50 lb. bags of salt in their bikini-ini-inis and – bare feet! This was insane. I still believe that Keen’s are the way to go – and they’d be floaty, too (extra bonus LOL).

I think that’s all my “learnings” from that exercise. ;-)

Now, I might be mixing this up, but either then, or before (to get there), everyone had had to get a bus that was a 24 hour ride (!!!) – and the first/speediest bus could only take 1/2 of the group. The rest just asked to be put on “the next bus,” but the Bingo Boys were smarter – they were the last ones to get to the bus terminal, but after everyone had bought tickets to the next bus (which left in 1/2 hour), they asked which bus would get them to their destination the FASTEST. It turned out that a bus that left 4 hours later would get in 5 minutes after the one that the “2nd group” had taken – because that bus had a lot more stops. The first bus was a “direct” bus as was the third bus (that the Bingo Boys took) – but the 2nd was NOT. SO the question to ask is: When will this bus GET ME THERE – not When is the next bus?

Unfortunately, it LOOKED like the Bingo Boys were going to wind up 4 hours AHEAD of the 2nd bus of folks, but they (and we, as the audience) misunderstood what they were told (adrenaline…adrenaline…) – the heavier of the Bingo Boys had “misinterpreted” what was said, thinking that he had been told the 3rd bus would wind up 4 hours ahead – NOT that they had to WAIT 4 hours (there) and that it would get in just about the same time (5 minutes later) than the 2nd bus. It was a bummer because I was really congratulating them for their ingenuity – then it turned out that it wasn’t quite as good as “we” had thought. I suppose it depends on whether you’d rather spend the 4 hours on the bus, or in the bus terminal….probably on the bus, because you could sleep and not have to “worry” for those 4 hours whether or not you were going to sleep through and not make it ONTO your bus.

The last “task” that folks had to do was to meet up with a shoeshine person in a big plaza, shine the shoes for client, then take the shoeshine person’s “stand” and get it to the storage place that it was stowed overnight. The shoeshine “stands” fit together like a puzzle – everyone got their client’s shoes shined, then they just piled everything up on top of itself and went to the storage area, where they were basically told “uh, no.” SO they had to figure out then how to put it together the right way. One gal forgot the rug it was sitting on (stupid mistake), and I was curious whether the actual person who “owned” the shoeshine stand was standing there and whether one could have asked for help putting the thing together for storage. That was unclear. One thing though was that the clue was actually named something like “Putting a Puzzle Together” or something, and so if you were not amped up on adrenaline, and paid attention to the clue, you might be able to realize that there was a “trick” to “putting the shoe shine station together” (like a puzzle) to put it away.

So, this leads to where the Bingo Boys were disqualified. OMG. It was so so sad, funny, oh dear. The heavier of the Bingo Boys picked the task, and he just found a random shoeshine guy on the plaza, and conned him into teaching him how to shine the shoes for his client, and then he made the guy pack everything up and go with him to the storage area. O-M-G. It was SO SO SAD! The guy who he’d picked was saying things (in Spanish) like “Hello, this is my livelihood, what do you want me to do? You’re crazy…” – but you gotta figure that here he is, a SHOESHINE GUY, and a crazy gringo heavy American descends on him WITH A CAMERAMAN AND A SOUND GUY, and asks him to do this – Hell, that’s the story of the century for him to take home, right?

The take away though was that if you are given a task like this, LOOK FOR THE OBJECT THAT HAS TAR COLORS, that is where you have to go. I happen to remember in the back of my mind this happening a couple of times in past seasons. I seem to remember a couple who just went to a home somewhere in Asia, “surprising” the couple there, and had them “teach them” how to do an altar piece (something like that) – and another time something similar with just “showing up” at a place and learning how to cook something. The take-away here is LOOK FOR TAR COLORS or IT IS NOT THE RIGHT PLACE.

Because the baseball wife had forgotten the rug, she had to go back, and so in actuality, the Bingo Boys (once he actually got the correct “TAR-sponsored stand” and had shined the shoes and brought that to storage) were SO CLOSE. I also wondered (which is what makes me wonder whether there was a “person” that could have “helped” the other teams) whether – since he’d actually SEEN the “real” shoe shine guy put his whole station together – if he was able to put his together quicker because he’d seen that there was a “knack” to it. In writing this, I actually tend to think that the “customer” that was sitting at the TAR-sponsored shoe-shine stations WAS the owner of that station….so they probably would NOT have helped.

So that’s my Day 40 writeup! OH, I also discovered why I never, ever seem to be able to get to yoga, though I am still working work-study to get it for free. It’s because Crossfit Monday goes from 9:00-10:00 “or so” (depends on how long you stretch after), then I go from there to grocery shop, because I’m already out and it’s convenient. So when I get home, put the groceries away, etc. I wind up having like 2 hours before yoga. In writing this blog post and seeing if there was any work for me in email, it’s now 1:00pm (class is at 1:30pm). So I could make it today (and might!), but now I realize “what happens to my Mondays.” It’s the grocery shopping/picking up dry cleaning/etc. that I do “in between.” Also, if I were to take a shower now, then I wouldn’t “feel so much” like heading to hot yoga, where I have to take a shower AGAIN. I know, T.M.I., right? Stinky me, writing this blog. LOL!

I think that maybe every 10th day (gee that’d be today) I should do a “conglomeration of things learned” or something – like, tasks that we need to consider being able to do. Maybe I’ll let R come up with that ;-)