This post is too long

So the open is over now which means that it's time to draw some conclusions. The most important parts for me are how did I perform compared to how I would've performed a year ago and lessons learned from the past few weeks. Since we don't have an older version of me available for comparison, we'll have to make some guesses, but here it goes anyway a wod at a time:

• 16.1 resulted in 4.5 rounds. A year ago pullups felt hard and chest to bars felt impossible making a full round unlikely. Also I am not too sure about my ability to do lunges with 43 kilos overhead back then... So all in all I am happy with my development, but less happy with my score. Doing it on Saturday and then redoing it on Monday would've probably been better and focusing on endurance for lunges than weight for chest to bars would've made more sense.
• 16.2 sucked for me since I suck at double unders, but a year ago, I found toes to bar to be hard. I would've managed to do 25, but it would've taken much longer time leaving me much less time for double unders. Also, I sucked much more at those back then than I do now making 30 a much more likely score than the actual 49..
• 16.3 would've been the same then and now (but less shoulder pain afterwards since I wouldn't even have tried muscle ups).
• 16.4 started out great for me this year since I like deadlifts and am reasonably good at heavy weights. A year ago my deadlift PR was 110 kg (compared to 180 now) making 105 scary. I would've probably managed to get through them, but it would've screwed up my back making getting through wallballs complicated and a second attempt the day after impossible. On the other hand, doing it with a day's rest in between might've been a good idea.
• 16.5 sucked for everybody, but I still managed to finish it and get a fairly good score (which makes my statement that I under performed on 16.1 much more believable). Today, 43kg thrusters feel hard, but not at all scary, even at high reps. A year ago I would've scaled it or it would've taken me close to an hour.

So overall it's pretty clear that my fitness is much better now than a year ago. It's also clear that the strength component is the one I need to worry the least about. Technique (double unders, muscle ups, wallballs) and endurance are much more real issues for me to worry about. And that creates a dilemma. The strength part is much more fun to train, mostly because the results (or lack of such) are obvious and the progress is much easier to see. Technique and endurance would, on the other hand, enable me to perform better in competitions and the endurance part would also improve health and other parts of life creating the classical "long term" vs "short term" discrepancy. Well, we'll see what happens...

Sunday wod was a variation on the seven where we managed  5 rounds of the thing in the pic. My legs worked surprisingly well considering all the thrusters during the preceding days....

I've been bad at taking pics of workouts these last few days, so there will be fewer of those than normal. Monday's WOD was a variation of 16:5 so I skipped it and did endurance and gymnastics instead. Endurance was fun, but getting home for it is not doable most days. Gymnastics worked better than it usually does so I feel I am learning stuff. Surprising, isn't it?

Tuesday and Wednesday were conditioning days with high amounts of fairly easy movements while Thursday was a squat clean day. My max of the day was 85 (90 was power clean + frontsquat) which I am reasonably happy with, but I need to do more of that. During the wod, 70 kg squat cleans stopped working as well, so I spent some time doing power clean + front squats. I really need to get the technique working.

Friday was an actual team workout with the entire class being scored as a team. The conditioning part didn't really work for me with a possible exception of cycling since my cold refuses to go away. The strength part had mixed results. On one hand, I am happy with my 8 back squats @ 85 and am satisfied with my 10 deadlifts @ 120 (my grip felt like it would fail in the end so 130 would've probably been too hard). On the other hand, I only managed 5 bench presses @ 80 due to running out of time. I need to get better at those estimates....

This week is Malmö Beer Week. That's basically like Malmöfestivalen, but for adults. It's also part of the explanation for lateness and length of this post. On Tuesday I visited Bishops' Gustav Adolfs that had Release Party for NerdBrewing. Their most interesting beer that day was the beer seen in my right hand, an Else If Imperial Stout with Chipotle. I really miss their Lemongrass IPA....

Wednesday was the day of Danish invasion to Taproom(Malmö Brygghus). Since Danes are good at IPAs I had to taste some of them. My favorite of the day was Cascade hvede ipa (the right one on the left picture) which, as the name would imply is a wheat IPA. I really enjoy that combination....

Friday gave me an opportunity to taste this mystery beer at Bishop's Savoy. Really interesting Xmas ale. And drinking those in April is cool:)