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.

The first day of classes

So I'm seriously starting to freak out about the races I have coming up because I have not been working out nearly as much as I should be. Races are a blessing and a curse because they are so much fun, but the lead time can be stressful (a blessing in disguise, I suppose, because it gets my butt off the couch).

Anyways, due to my schedule it's looking like I'm going to have to go the gym at 8 AM on MWF. I have an 8 AM class on Tuesday/Thursday so it would be nice to maintain a consistent schedule (we'll see if I can pull it off). I've also decided to bike to and from school as much as I can. This morning was day one and my bike basket broke and my bike chain slipped. Not only did it add several minutes to my bike time (making me almost late to the gym), but my stuff spilled into the street and a nice gentleman had to help me pick it up. I was very thankful for that kind stranger. Anyways, the ride to the gym took about half an hour and the ride home took around 24 minutes. We'll see if I can get that time below 20 (no I'm not competitive!).

The workout today was pretty awesome. We started with a crossfit warmup, which I won't go into, and then overhead press (5 x 40 pounds, 5 x 45 pounds, and 6 x55 pounds). My trainer gave me some excellent tips to improve my overhead press. As I got tired, my back started to arch so he told tighten my abs and squeeze my butt. He said something like "protect yourself like a prisoner in a shower." A bit crass, but it definitely helped. After that, we worked on form for the olympic squat (aptly timed, given some of the more recent posts). It's amazing how much form really matters. I love my gym because we focus on different aspects of form each week. Little things like grip, bar placement, and timing. It seriously makes a difference.

Then came the workout. The workout was in two parts. The first part was the baseline. The baseline consists of a 400m run, 40 air squats, 30 situps, 20 pushups and 10 pullups for time. My previous time was 5:32 and I got it down to just over 4:50. a 40 second improvement! I was happy with that, though I felt like crap. The second part was one minute each of burpees, sumo deadlift high pulls, american swings (16 pound kettlebell), push press (45 pound bar), and double unders for max reps. I lost count of how many reps I did at about the halfway point, but it was a killer workout.

We closed with 3x10 overhead press at half maximum and 3x10 sets of up GHD sit ups. It was a good day at the gym! :)

I'm going to try and run 13 miles this weekend and I'm planning to run 7.8 on Thursday with a group of people. I'll try to squeeze some other runs in as well. We'll see!

Just another manic Wednesday

Today's workout:

my warm up - mile run

50 wallballs (14 pounds)

40 hollow body rocks (arms by my side)

30 burpees (I f-ing hate burpees)

20 tuck crunch

10 sit to stand

Time: 9:27

Skill: 2 max false grip holds (I should have done better with this but it took me too long to figure it out)

I really liked this WOD because it was mostly core, which is one of my strengths. I kept up with everyone through the wall balls and rocks, fell a little behind on the burpees and then blasted by on the tuck crunches and sit to stands. I was generally pleased with my performance. 

Lately, we have been doing quite a lot of hollow body gymnastics work at the gym which it has been incredibly helpful for me. Working on hallow body really helps you to get in the habit of engaging core muscles that need to be engaged during various movements. For example, the kip portion of a kipping pull up requires you to engage your abs at the appropriate time in order to be effective. After today's WOD I did some work on my kipping pull-up and was able to, for the first time, do two or three at a time repeatedly. I'm really excited about this because I've never been able to complete pull-ups without using a band for assistance. During future workouts, I might start trying to do the pull-ups, or some of the pull-ups, without bands. I feel confident that, with practice, I'll be able to string more of them together without stopping!! 

I am a little frustrated with myself for not doing a 3 -5 mile run today. Doing the one miler was kind of rough. I think my body was too sore and my back was too sore from the WOD yesterday to really propel myself effectively. The nice thing about crossfit is that, even if you don't run, you did still something that was pretty damn difficult!!