16.5 Announced, Done and Re-done!

The last workout of the 2016 CrossFit Games Open was announced on Thursday. It was a bit of a surprise, because it broke the pattern that had been observed in previous years' Opens - we have to repeat an exercise, the bar facing burpee. But it continues the tradition of repeating a workout from a previous year. 16.5 is the same as 14.5 (the last workout in the 2014 Open). The neat thing about repeating a workout like this is that many of the people who do 16.5 have a time to beat from when they did it two years ago. I wasn't doing CrossFit two years ago, so the workout is brand new to me.

WORKOUT 16.5

21-18-15-12-9-6-3 reps for time of:
Thrusters
Bar Facing Burpees

Men use 95 lb.
Women use 65 lb.

I did the workout Friday morning, and I think I did okay. On Coach Dave's advice, I split the first two sets of thrusters in half, doing 11-10 and 9-9, then I went by feel and split the rest up 5-5-5, 6-6, 5-4, 6, and 3. For the burpees, I just kept going without pushing so hard that I couldn't handle the thrusters. I think I paced it pretty well. If I had gone out harder, I would have had to slow down and probably ended up doing smaller sets. I finished in 12:53. I'm pretty pleased with that time, but I wasn't sure it was the best I could do. Even so, this was me when I was done:

So, I did it again today. I actually ended up splitting up the thrusters more because I went out a little hard with the burpees, so my set of 18 was 6-3-3-3-3, but I did the rest of the splits the same. I pushed a little harder through the middle and at the end to shave 24 seconds off my time to get 12:29. I'm really glad that I did it again, I knew that I could have pushed harder the first time and that's exactly what I did.

As a side note, I also found out yesterday that I passed my CrossFit Level 1 test. Yay!