Fran, Fran, Fran… that word has been going around our Crossfit gym quite a bit for the last few weeks. Granted there’s a “Fran Challenge” going on right now, so, it’s on everyone’s mind.

Eight months into Crossfitting and I have yet to do Fran, until this passed Friday. I have seen people do it. I have seen videos on YouTube of it. I tried my best to coach V when she took on Fran for her 2nd time this past week… I’m not really a good coach as in, I am not very forceful with my instruction, but I tried.

Needless to say, watching all of these people do it, and seeing the videos that I have seen caused quite a bit of anxiety for me as it became clear that I would have to do this on Friday.

If you read my last post, you know that I had some neck issues from sleeping all weird at the beginning of the week. Thankfully, those were resolved. By the time I got to class on Friday, all that was left was some upper back soreness from the night of 100 cleans.

So, here’s Fran (2/5/2010):

• 21 – 15 – 9 {Thrusters (95lb), Pull ups}

That’s it… 45 reps of both. Simple, right? WRONG. This was probably the most uncomfortable 7 minutes and 51 seconds (that’s right, 7:51 Rx’d), that I have spent in my time doing Crossfit type workouts.

All I could think of during the entire time was that I could not catch my breath. It seemed like “air” was always about 5 steps ahead of me. Honestly, it was miserable. I had Nikki, Jody, Wladi, and others shouting at me to keep moving, get on the thrusters, get on the pull ups but “air” became all I could think about. I think I actually saw spots and colors during the 21’s. I definitely felt light headed and had to take a few seconds to get back on it.

Honestly, I have never felt anything like that in my life. My guess, is that using opposing muscle groups as this workout calls for, basically means that every cell in your body is screaming for oxygen at the same time.

All in all, I am happy with my time and that I was able to do it Rx’d as well. Hopefully next time won’t be for a while and I will shave some time off.

Yesterday (2/6/2010), V and I went to open gym. The workout that Nikki came up with for us was rough:

5x

• 400m run
• 7 thrusters (115lb, Rx was 135lb, but that was too much)
• 15 burpees

This one felt never ending. In fact, all of the 5 rounders feel never ending. I got a good feeling of accomplishment from this one as I was able to do each of the thruster sets unbroken. I did OK on the runs too. I didn’t really take too many walking breaks.

My time was  27:01.