Every time I train, I look for the “gold nugget”.

Let me explain.

Today I walked over to the box for the 7 am CrossFit class. I glanced at the whiteboard and saw both a strength component and a short metcon. Excellent!

After our warmups, I partnered with Big Frank. He’s built like the hulk. In his early forties, he recently competed in the Intermedio Division at the Cholula Games. Perfect.

Every minute on the minute we did 3 deadlifts. After we warmed up with 10 reps at 135, we did working sets at 185, 205, 225 and 275. Francisco slapped on 25s, and did 325. I politely declined that weight.

That was my “gold nugget”. Today was supposed to be 85% of max weight. I hit 315 for 1 in 2019.

Last year I remember doing 275 for 1. So I was surprised after the fact to personally hit 275 for 3 reps. Was it tough? Sure. But very, very doable. Today I had more. And I kept it in the tank.

It took me a long time to learn that you don’t have to burn the castle to the ground every single time to still call it a victory.

And there was still more work to do.

The WOD was elegant. On a 14 minute running clock, do As Many Rounds As Possible of a 200 meter run, 10 deadlifts, and 10 hand release pushups. Every round, add 5 more deadlifts and 5 more pushups. If I can do 4 rounds, that’s 10-15-20-25. I put a 45 pound wheel on each side of the bar. Today 135 pounds felt right.

I finished the round of 25 with 67 seconds left on the clock. I sprinted the final 200 meters and got 8 final gasping deadlifts before the clock went beep beep and coach yelled “TIEMPO!”.

I ended up lying flat on the floor staring at the ceiling . There is a powerful feeling when you make a plan and execute it.

Do you look for “gold nuggets” in your day?

What have you discovered?