I would NOT have gone to this WOD if hadn’t been September 11th.. I remember waking up and reading the WOD for the day and thinking, wtf why are we doing some random, hard ass WOD today??? And then it hit me.. Oh shit, it’s Sept 11th. I have to go.
Now… a few days before a competition is NOT ideal for doing some crazy ass Hero WOD, but this one seemed special to me. Hero WOD 343 is representative of every firefighter who died on 9/11/01.
It was the following:
100 wall balls
100 burpees
100 sit ups
43 push press (shoulder to overhead, I basically did push jerks) 115/75
32 min time cap
Now.. 100 wall balls, fine. 100 burpees, fine, 100 sit ups, ehhh my tailbone curls when I see this.. 43 push press, fine.
combine all that? Holy fuck. I literally had to keep reminding myself that this was not for me. Each rep was representative of someone’s life taken. As Tom said, that person would much rather be there, at that moment, alive and doing burpees than dead.
So I kept going.
The only thing.. which I’m ashamed of, but at the same time, glad of for personal, long term reasons, is that I stopped my sit ups 62 reps in. I could feel the skin on my tailbone getting raw, and each rep I did I felt it starting to burn more and more. Raw tailbone and butt crack, esp before a day in the heat at a comp is not what I wanted. So I opted to stop and move on to the push jerks.
I will go ahead and apologize to the 38 people whose lives I skipped over and didn’t honor by not finishing the sit ups. 🙁
I had gotten through 21 push jerks, and time was called. Tom made me finish. I ended up finishing in 33:51.
This one was right up there with Murph and Kelsu and those other chippers. Good God.
It was not for me.