The Oracle of Apollo Snippets from the life of Apollo Lee

CrossFit Day 20

Today’s workout was named “Mary.” Mary does not like Apollo. Mary craves a lot of movement in only 20 minutes. Mary likes to spank Apollo. <whine />

Max reps in 20 minutes of:

1. 5 handstand pushups (sub: regular pushups)
2. 10 one-legged squats (assisted by bench)
3. 15 pullups (assisted)

Working out at the local elementary school par course before sunset means that I either endure gawkers, commenters, and chatters, or I have to wait until whomever it is messing around on the bar, the benches, or the steppy thing (similar to this apparatus) gets bored and moves on. From now on, I think I’ll use the equipment in Sunnyvale Middle School Park, which is farther away. It has several advantages over the one at the closer school.

1. The par course runs the perimeter of the fence.
2. The apparatus area is more sparsely frequented by people not trying to get work done.
3. The low bar is almost 7 feet up and I have to jump to get to the high bar.
4. Parallel bars!
5. The ladder apparatus at the side of the track is useful for various things.
6. There is a more significant cooldown march back to my house (about a mile).
7. There are parking spots adjacent to the fence if there’s a need for me to bring dumbbells or kettlebells to the party.

My goal for today’s “Mary” was 6 sets. I breezed through the first set in about 2 minutes. The rest of them went much slower. I managed to complete 8 sets. The most difficult part, other than the assisted pullups, was getting up from the bottom position of a one-legged squat. If I didn’t have anything to push off of, I doubt I’d even be able to do this exercise once.

My results: 8 sets in 20:00, 4:58 zone (hard); HR: 168 avg, 185 max; 310 cal

[…] Today’s workout was a nice respite from the recent killers, such as Murph, Mary, and J. T. especially. So, about 9:30, I threw my kettlebell into the trunk of my car and drove over to the pullup bar. I was going to walk over there and carry the kettlebell on foot, but it was getting late and I realized that carrying it home after the full workout was going to suck more that I could anticipate. […]