Thursday, March 31, 2011

How a running watch can make you a faster CrossFitter.

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I wore my Forerunner 305 for the CrossFit Open Sectionals WOD 11.2 on Tuesday evening.  I knew pacing was going to be important and I wanted to keep track of how long each round took me. So I hit lap after my last box jump each round.  This recorded each lap (round) time to look at later, but it also gave me instant feedback on how long that lap took without having to do any math.  It just pops up on the screen with the last lap time.

I wore the watch on my left wrist which didn’t bother me for these movements. I didn’t wear it last week because I felt it would be uncomfortable with the snatches.  But even if you don’t wear it, you could have an observer hold it, hit lap after each round and call out your last lap time. In this way it provides one more piece of data  for validation.  If I had been counting rounds in my head and swore I did 13 + some change, it’s easy to go back to the watch and count the rounds and realize that I did 10 + a partial round. The 12th round was me hitting lap before hitting stop after I was done.

For me, this showed that I really started to slow down in round 7 and then picked it up again in round 10 when I had the finish in sight.  Based on this information, I’m going to try to keep rounds 7-10 under 1:25 and hopefully complete at least 11 rounds. 

If you wanted to go for the win, 56 seconds per round would get you 16 rounds.

Activity on Garmin Connect

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