CrossFit Games 12.1 Workout – Complete!

I’m pretty much wiped out from my workout today. I did the CrossFit Games Workout 12.1 – 7minutes of Burpees. Total reps is your score. I do not like burpees —

I was all excited/nervous gearing up for this workout. Not sure why — it’s a competition and I guess that’s normal. I also in the back of my mind worried about my asthma. Wall balls, box jumps, running and burpees get me every damn time and this was no exception. I had a full blown attack during the workout!

So I was all ready to take this on–visualizing me doing it, getting in the zone and rep 13 — i felt my chest tighten and my head started to wander about what the heck! I shouldn’t have done this — i feel this way and it’s only the beginning of the workout….you get the idea. Basically I lost focus on getting the prize and started to think about how friggin hard this is. Then the breathing started to get labored — I started to sound like Darth Vader (at least that’s what some of the guys told me afterwards). My chest seized up and I wasn’t getting any good deep breaths. I would do as many as I could, stop and try to regroup and that usually resulted in a few really good deep, hurting coughs but I was not going to stop. I have my team to be on the hook for and I work too hard to let this get to me. In hindsight, that may have not been the best route.

When time was called, I literally laid on the floor for a few sec, got up and headed right outside to try to catch my breath. Hacking, coughing, grasping for air – Kim came out after me to make sure I didn’t full on die. For that, I am forever grateful. I think most of the people thought I was throwing up, but I was trying to regulate my breathing.

I didn’t realize until afterwards too, that the 2 chalk X marks that were done on the ground for another athlete’s guide probably didn’t help as I was breathing that chalk in with each burpee. My chest was so tight and I was having spasms.

Exercise-induced bronchospasm causes shortness of breath, chest tightness, exhaustion, coughing and possibly wheezing. These symptoms may occur a few minutes after starting to exercise or about 10 minutes after stopping the exercise. If you have exercise-induced bronchospasm, it will be difficult for you to exercise for more than 30 minutes at a time.

It took literally an hour or so for me to regroup and here it is 6 hours later and my chest still hurts and I am wiped out.

It also took a bit of a toll on me mentally. It’s so friggin frustrating to be hindered by it – can you imagine how much more I would be able to do if I didn’t have this issue? This is probably one of the first times I have actually really continued to plow through it and it scared me. Tears came 30m later – not only because I was annoyed and frustrated but also, it was scary. Not being able to get a full breath of air – to fill up your lungs. Yeah, not a super pleasant feeling…

total reps=71