Pain Quantified and Progress

And this morning, Monday July 2, I really thought some Advil would be nice.

I didn't take any because I didn't have any, and between 5 and 5:30 am when I conceivably could have gotten some, I'm generally more interested in getting my second coffee and venting my first.

But I really wanted some.

Yesterday, a rest day, and the first day of July, I decided to count how many burpees I had done in June: 1,534.  I might be off by ten or so since some days I lose count like the day I became aware of the rowing-like nature of burpees and then became obsessed trying to figure out if it's correct to breathe twice per burpee.  Usually when I lose count I adhere to the CrossFit ethic of counting from the last one I remember, but this is going to be a lengthy project, and I admit some days I have said to myself, "fuck that."

So I did about 1,534 burpees in June, and there is some cumulative pain.  It's not all from the burpees.  Yesterday for instance I was rolling relatively hard at Dark Horse Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and I got caught in a bicep cutter.

Ah, the old bicep cutter

If we exclude the incidental stuff, then, 1,534 burpees left me wanting to eat Advil. 

I know now that on average, one burpee hurts enough to take 130 micrograms of Ibuprofen.  Of course my math is suspect, and nobody eats just one Advil, so it's really either 26, 260, or 2,600 micrograms per burpee - in any case a much smaller amount than one lowly milligram.



I've seen lately that some people are doing a 1,000 burpee challenge.  They're sometimes taking over two hours to do this, and they're sometimes going to the hospital with cramping although none of them have gotten rhabdo yet.



I don't know exactly my cumulative time for 1,534 burpees; it's about 90-100 minutes, and that includes 30 or so minutes of rest.  My volume is down, and my intensity is up.

Also in June I did both 100 burpees for time and the 7 minute burpee test.  I did 100 burpees a little bit faster than the last time I tried, and I did a few more burpees in 7 minutes than I did the last time I tried.

Small improvements, but when I express them as a percentage, they come out as whole numbers greater than one.

I'm going to keep my volume down, my intensity up, and my Ibuprofen under three-tenths of a mg per burpee and see what happens in another half year or so.

Of course, I'm a weirdo.