My First Fran & An OPT Tester

"If I were a smoker I would have died today"
A lot of words today. I bolded the important things for the skimmers, like myself. Videos below. Overall a good week of training. Week 5 is hell at school, it is the halfway point of the quarter. I had 3 mid terms this past week, so I was relatively busy preparing for them. I also had a handful of testers this week in my training as well. Nothing crazier than what I have been doing, but rather benchmarks with a "name", so I get a bit more anxious leading up to these ones.
I knew Fran was coming up in my training, it was just a matter of time. My past few Sundays have involved sessions that were very "Fran Like" in terms of time domains and how I might essentially feel, so I knew I would soon be doing it. On Monday I got my week of training. I skimmed through it at first and saw Grace on Friday, and Fran and an OPT tester for Sunday. I knew it was going to be a tough weekend, and it was only Monday at that point. I hadn't done Fran before, but everybody talks about Fran and how awful the work out is. I didn't think it would be harder than anything I have done leading up to it, except it has a name and is a benchmark so it seems like a bigger deal. My plan was to attack Fran and hoping to walk away not feeling any worse than I have previously felt in other work outs.
Sunday - LEnd3 x 2 sessions
AM
Fran as rx'd - go all out, no pacing, trust your engine!
3:23
Well, I felt horrible. Crashed on the set of 15 pull ups and everything from then on was tough; thrusters, pull ups and even jumping up to the pull up bar which has never been an issue. I thought I would make it through the 15's and 9 thrusters unbroken and the only thing I thought I may have to break were the 9 pull ups. I managed to keep the thrusters unbroken , thank god or else I would have been really upset. I look at the video and see myself resting a lot and it's annoying but I felt awful and was trying my best, it was a lot worse than it looks. Definitely hope for a better time next time (like always), especially now that I know how I held up and where I fell apart. BUT, I hope it's a while until I do that again, it was just as awful as everyone talked it up to be. I threw up after and recovery was about 20 mins. Does anybody know a good female Fran time? Sub 3? I've been looking and seeing things from 2:40 all the way till 4:00 for some of the top athletes, some stats are old and some are new so I guess this is a good general time frame and I fall in the middle which is cool; a 3:23 Fran for me is good. A few months ago I would tell people that IF I HAD to do Fran I would hope for sub 5. I have come a long way in the past 6 months and today I knew sub 4 was possible, and wanted more like 3 mins, which is what I was shooting for. Testers are always tough but a great way to evaluate my training and hard work, which seems to all be heading in the right direction! Thanks Michael.

PM
For time:
Row 250m
15 pushup burpees
25 Kbs - 24 kg
15 pushup burpees
Row 250m
4:15
I looked up good scores for this, some of the better females were about 4:30 back in November, so I feel pretty good here, I would not have done this well in November though. Rows were fast and everything felt good. Second set of burpees was slower than I was shooting for, but overall I felt good here kind of took KBS as my recovery but 25 reps was a bit too long and I felt like I was working rather than recovering by rep 18. Last row was finished a few seconds after my last pull, I didn't pull all the way till 250m but waited till it rolled to 250m. I think the rows were about the same time but I was definitely trying harder and feeling worse on the second one. After, I had bad lung burn but overall felt like a million bucks compared to this morning!

Fran from Chelsea Ryan on Vimeo.

OPT Tester: Row/Burpees/KB/Burpees/Row from Chelsea Ryan on Vimeo.
Overall a good week and weekend of training. I have looked up some scores and I feel that my Grace time is one of the better times I have seen. I compare myself to the best athletes (because I want to be the best) and I have a better performance on Grace than a lot of the athletes I looked up (men included). My Fran time falls in the middle range, which is fine. Grace is more in my wheel house than Fran, both mentally and physically. The OPT tester went well, I wanted under 4:30 and finished with a time that compares well with other lady Big Dawgs I felt good here there wasn't really a moment where I just crapped out, things slowed down but I stayed moving. I feel like I have a better handle on the 3 to 4 minute time domains than I did last week.