JENNA AT THE GAMES RUNNING BLOG: EVENT SEVEN
Event 7
After what was clearly her toughest event of the Games thus far, Jenna had to quickly regroup mentally and physically to get ready for the next event: Rinse ‘N’ Repeat…the swim event. Last year in the 2021 Games, the swim event was by far Jenna’s worst event and, as a result, she embraced it as part of her training throughout the year and got to the point where she actually *enjoyed* her swim training sessions – in short, she “made friends with her weaknesses” and worked to improve them – she didn’t avoid them in her training.
Rinse ‘N’ Repeat
Every 2 minutes:
50-yard swim
8-cal Ski Erg*
*Add +2 cal each round
The structure of this workout is what’s known in CrossFit as a “beep test” – that is, do a given amount of work on a fixed time interval, and “earn” your next interval – if you don’t hit the target for the interval, your workout is over. In this case, if you finished the work in 90 seconds, that means you’d have 30 seconds to rest (i.e., the remainder of the 2 minutes) before the start of the next round.
Side bar for a story from last year: In late 2021, one of the online qualifier workouts Jenna did to qualify for Wodapalooza was a “beep test”. In that qualifier, she went so hard on each round to “get to the rest period”, but could never fully recover, and had a brutal workout and was not satisfied with her score. Upon reflection, she decided to re-test but this time to pace it and “go slow” in each round and not “race to the rest” – treat it as one continuous workout (making sure to just barely hit the targets), rather than sprint-rest-sprint-rest. We ironically called it “The Lollygag Strategy” – and it paid off tremendously – she got a MUCH higher score, with less effort.
Back to 2022 Games Event 7: Jenna quickly identified the similarity of the Event 7 structure to the Wodapalooza qualifier from last year, and she decided in advance that she would employ the “The Lollygag Strategy” for this event. In the first round, Jenna was in “last place” – not just 10thplace, actually 20th place since they were all going in the same heat with the ten 16-17 boys. Whereas everyone had about 30-40 seconds rest in the first round, Jenna only had about 10. You could tell people in the stands weren’t even sure if she’d make it out of the second round. Another interesting note: the jumbotron in the venue showed everyone’s real-time cals/hour on the Ski Erg – Jenna’s was showing about 800-850, while everyone else was well over 1000-1100.
Second round comes up – same thing, Jenna only has about 10 seconds of rest. Third round – same thing, Jenna is still in 20thplace with only about 10 seconds of rest…but something interesting is now happening: everyone else is getting less and less rest while Jenna’s rounds all look the same. Fourth round – they need to hit 14 cals this round – Jenna’s competitors, who were getting out of the water about 15-20 seconds before her on earlier rounds – are only getting out of the water about 4-5 seconds before her. Jenna is now hitting about 1000 cals/hour on the ski erg but…her rounds still look all the same! Fifth round – they need to hit 16 cals – a couple of her competitors start to fall off and Jenna is getting out of the pool at the same time (or a little before) them! Jenna now starts to put the hammer down on the Ski Erg at over 1150 cals/hour on the jumbotron and her ski shows even with 3 other athletes. The athlete 2 spots ahead of Jenna on the overall leaderboard fails to hit the 16 cal target for round 5 and she’s out – but Jenna moves onto the next round. Sixth round (18 cal target) – this is it. Jenna swims hard and gets out of the pool even with a couple other girls. She needs to hit 18 cals in less than a minute and she hammers the Ski at over 1250 cals/hour. Watching the “virtual race” on the jumbotron, Jenna is chasing down 3 athletes, including the girls currently in 2nd and 3rd on the overall leaderboard. Down to the final second of the round…Jenna hits 17 of the 18 cals and her workout is over. But…we look at the results on the big screen and see that she has beaten the 2nd and 3rd ranked girls by 1 cal! The remaining competitors move on and finish their last round. Jenna is absolutely thrilled with her results (she wasn’t sure if she’d make it out of the round of 12 or 14 beforehand) – and for the first time during the Games, she gives a smile and wave to her family in the stands.
The Rinse ‘N’ Repeat event at the Games was the absolute pinnacle of Jenna’s strategic acumen – she maximized her current abilities for that specific event – one of her proudest moments of the 2022 Games.
Now only one event remains!
Coach Brian’s view of Event 7 from the Airport Bar
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