Helen, Basketball

Early afternoon

Helen

3 Rounds for Time

400m run
21 KB Swings (53# KB)
12 Pullups

9:17

Late afternoon

About 2 hours of basketball. Half court. Still pretty winded and tired.

Workout comments: Nothing about the Helen workout seemed intimidating. I think 12 pullups is fairly manageable, and I've been doing tons of KB swings unbroken, so I knew these wouldn't be a problem either. There's only so fast you can move through KB swings without throwing your back out. That left the run. Still, with only 400m to run, you can quicken your pace by 30 sec/mile, see only a few seconds gain in time, but still pay the price with your body. I was trying to work out a sub 7:00 Helen in my head beforehand and basically would only have 2.5 minutes to finish all swings and pullups if I ran at a decent 6:00 min/mile pace. Since this was the first time I was doing it, I didn't think too much about it.

Did the workout with John W. at lunch. Always better to do a workout like this with someone who will push you and keep track of your progress. Since we aren't really supposed to take the equipment outside, the running portion was done on a treadmill. I initially set my first 400m pace at 6:30, but soon knew this was going to be too slow. I sped up to 6:00 min/mile for the second and third sets, but even then felt pretty decent on the subsequent movements. Pullups were still the limiting factor, as all the KB swings were unbroken. It's just amazing to know that there is an extra 2min19sec floating around in there somewhere to remove.