Tuesday

Today was a pretty good day. I didn't get my morning run in, but I did get in a 30ish minute bike ride to class. I had an interesting time at crossfit this afternoon. First of all, the strength workout was weighted squats. My one rep max is 125 lb. and todays workout required that I do two sets of 5 with 75 lbs. on the first set and 85 lbs. on the second set. Then I was supposed to do a fail set with 95 pounds (a fail set is, as it's name implies, a set where you keep doing reps until you feel like you are going to fail on the nex rep). For some reason I could not do my sets. I mean I could do them, but they felt terrible. I was having trouble getting low enough and my weight kept shifting to the front of my feet. I gave up after two sets, took off a lot of the weight and tried to work on form. Even with a lot less weight I felt sloppy, so I stopped to avoid injury or bad habit formation. It was really strange. I think I'm just really tight from yesterday's workout.

Then there was the WOD. The WOD was:

21-15-9

Front Rack Lunges (same as the video only we step forward instead of backward)
Pull ups (I had to use a band)

Time: 8:18

That is a terrible time! I got it for two reasons. First, nearing the end of my first set of lunges (the set of 21) I fell backwards into the rack. When you do a lunge, it's important to keep your back straight while lowering your knee to the ground and bringing it back up. Once your knee is as straight as it's going to get and you are standing up right, you bring your feet back together. Because I was getting tired, I guess, I stepped back as I was standing up. This caused me to lose my center of gravity while my mass shifted backwards. The result is a big and awkwardly located bruise. The second reason for the terrible time is much simpler. I suck at pull ups.

In other news, I have a half marathon coming up this weekend. I'm kind of freaked out because I haven't been running that much lately. Also my exercise routine has been stop and go. We'll see how it goes. My thought is that I'll be quite pleased if I finish around 2:30 and satisfied so long as I'm under 3 hours. If I'm over 3 hours, I'm going to be quite unhappy with myself.

Also, I'm thinking of deferring my marathon registration for a year. Time is flying by and I don't feel I have probably acclimated my legs to that kind of distance running. A lot of this decision will be based on my performance this weekend. I have until the Friday following this race to decide.

Labor Day

Today's workout punched me in the face. It's a new crossfit.com workout called "Wood." Let me stop you before the bad jokes start flowing because it was named after a member of the Australian special forces, Brett Wood, who was killed by an IED in Afghanistan. The workout was the the following:

5 RFT (rounds for time)

400m run
10 burpee box jumps
10 SDHP (50 lbs.)
10 Thrusters (50 lbs.)
1 minute rest

Time to complete: 36:33

Apart from the recent triathlon, this was the most grueling thing I've done in recent memory. I've been done for the better part of an hour and I still feel like I just finished. I wish I could put a timer on how long it has taken me to write this post as I have to keep stopping because my arms are shaking so much. I'm supposed to go on a bike ride with my fella in a few hours, we'll see if that happens!

EDIT: I made it through a 9.5 mile bike ride. It was mostly trail and  there were a few hills. I kinda wish we had kept going. :)

Tomorrow: AM run, PM crossfit.