The 15.1 is here. You can watch the Week 1 Announcement here.
I love snatches. Loooooove them. Can you hear the sarcasm in my voice?
In fact, this is me after a recent snatching session.
The athletes battling it out at the live announcement were: Rich Froning and Mat Fraser.
For Rich Froning, introduction is hardly necessary. The King of CrossFit. Bible verses and all. Mat Fraser is definitely the more interesting character of the two. A newcomer to the sport, he surprised everyone last year by coming in second (after Froning). His long term goal is to “find a job as an engineer somewhere and settle down”. Ha. Notice the differences: Mat is shorter and a bit lighter – more compact, and better built for Olympic weight lifting. His background IS in Olympic lifting, as it shows, as he snatches and cleans and jerks more than Rich.
Mat’s Fran time is also faster. That one’s gotta hurt. “I’m glad I don’t have to compete against him any more”, Rich says about Fraser in the interview after the workout. Of course, Rich very conveniently switched to the team division this year, leaving the top podium spot wide open. Possibly for Mat?
The unique feature to this workout is that it consists of two separately ranked events – in other words, there will be a winner in 15.1
and (possibly) another winner in 15.1a, as well as an overall winner in 15.1. The strategies suggested “to the rest of us mortals” during the announcement included: “Start preserving your grip early”, “Don’t get sloppy” and “You have a heavy lift looming, but don’t worry about it”. All in all, the chick with muscular arms dishing out advice was more annoying than helpful.
The best answer in terms of strategy came from Rich:
“How can you know when to break up?” “Well, when you can’t hold on to the bar any more, you have to come down”.
We’ll see how this goes tomorrow. I predict that toes to bar will be my biggest issue – fifteen of those babies will last a long long time. Deadlifts will be really light, but 75-lb snatches are on a heavy side for my shoulders – thankfully, I can power snatch. Clean and jerk number will be disappointing, since the grip will be gone – but that’s the nature of the beast!
Oh, and a little preview for the 15.5 – the “three queens” taking it on:
YOUR TURN: What do you think about this workout? What part would you be most worried about?
Hugs,
SOLO