The C.R.A.S.H.-B.'s made me do it …

Monday, January 19, 2009
Meters rowed: 6,471
Time: 30:00
Pace: Pyramid – 1minute(1rest)-2m(2r)-3m(3r)/3m(2r)-2m(1r)-1min
Total Meters Rowed: 264,984

I am doing the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s so I can do workouts like this one. A “pyramid” routine that I cadged from the Concept2′s Web site training site. One minute at sub 2:00, one minute “rest” at 2:25, two minutes at sub 2:00 and so on up and down. It was an awful workout; it was a wonderful workout. It was exhausting; it was exhilarating.  I hope I never do it again; I can hardly wait to crank it.

Yes, I am doing the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s so I can do workouts like this one. I realized that yesterday somewhere toward the end of all the agony this pyramid produced. The sequence is important here. I am NOT NOT NOT doing this workout so I can do the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s. Yes, the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s are out there waiting for me (laughing at me already, I am sure). And so to prepare, workouts like this pyramid are necessary. But like I recall Col. Potter once saying on a M*A*S*H episode about another hair-brained scheme of Lt. Kinger’s to get out of the army; “This one has a lot of reverse topspin. This is why I am doing the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s: Because I would never in a zillion lifetimes sit down and do a workout as awful as this one just because, just for fun, just to “do it.”

To paraphrase the late, great Flip Wilson (as Geraldine): The C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s made me do it. Indeed, there is something of the devil in the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s, I suspect. And (more paraphrased Flip/Gerladine): “What you do is what you get.”

Yesterday I sat down on the Concept2 and busted my gut, broke my heart, seared my lungs, pounded my quads. Because the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s told me to. The down slope of the pyramid — three-minute sprint, two-minute rest, two-minute sprint, one-minute rest, one-minute sprint– was 10 minutes of mind-bending horribulisiosity (I am falling back on my four years of high-school Latin to find words – even made up ones – to describe how it felt). What I did was what I got. For one of the first times ever, I think, railing at Dad for dying of his heart attack at 50 years old wasn’t enough motivation enough to stay with it. When I rolled from the final two-minute rest into the two-minute sprint, THERE WAS NO REASON TO KEEP GOING BEYOND THE MERE FACT THAT I HAD TO. But I am 56 years old and I did it.  C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s, thy grip is powerful.