Crossfit log for Wednesday, October 31st

Workout for day 1 of the paleo challenge

The paleo challenge has ended (not that I actually participated. I already eat paleo enough, and i refuse to track what I eat), so we repeated the workout from day 1. On top of not really pushing my paleo habits to extremes, a friend came over last night with cake and ice cream for an impromptu belated birthday celebration. So on top of the m&m's I had on the bus ride home (once in awhile I feed this craving), I had a substantial amount of chocolate smarties ice cream 12 hours before the workout.

Despite all that I did quite well.

I was able to match my PR of 205# back squat (which I failed last time) and I finished the WOD in 16:19, 24 seconds faster, and with 75# on the bar instead of 65#.

A lot of recent work on snatches may have played in my favour. I'm happy with this.

Crossfit log for Tuesday, October 30th

Did the Olympic lifting class last night. Worked on snatch. Since I still can't overhead squat, they had me doing split snatch, which worked fairly well. I was able to snatch 110lbs. I'll take it.

This morning we did strict press, 5 sets of 5. wasn't stellar, worked up to 85#, but had to go back to 75# for the last set.

The WOD was a 15 min AMRAP of
100 wall balls 14# ball
80 double unders (I did 100 for some reason).
30 pull ups.

I did one complete round (with an extra 20 double unders) and 27 wall ball into round two. Not bad at all. The double under really slowed me down. I did the wall balls in sets of 10 with planned breaks, and zipped through the pull ups in 2 sets of 15.

Good workout.

Crossfit log for Thursday, October 25th

Today's workout was snatches.

Drill, from hang, snatch balance, power snatch.

Then work up slowly to 1 rep max.

I'm getting closer, but I still can't catch a snatch in a full squat. Everything else is pretty much there. I think I'll book an appointment with the physio to get a new set of exercises. There's light at the end of the tunnel, but it's hard sometimes to tell just how far away it is.

Crossfit log for Wednesday, October 24th

WOD Wednesday (aka put the strength work in the WOD day)

16min cap, 4 rounds

4 chest to bar pull ups or 8 regular chin over bar pull ups
10 double unders
10 dead lifts 185#
15 double unders
15 knees to elbows
20 double unders

10 was a lot of dead lifts at 185#. I actually did quite well at the double unders, surprised myself. The problem became grip strength between the pull ups, dead lifts and knees to elbows, the forearms were mush well before the end.

Made to almost to the end of 4 rounds before the buzzer (like 10 double unders to go). (maybe I should've gone lighter on the dead lifts, but the point was to go heavy).

Glad it's over.

Crossfit log for Tuesday, October 23rd

Great morning at Crossfit.

Strength work was cleans, full cleans, catching is a full front squat. Working to a 2 rep max, so 2 in a row, but still heavy.

The catch has been my weak link, I've been able to lift 150# high enough to get under it, but when it lands on my deltoids, cradled at the end of my fingers, I usually either panic, or am off balance and have to bail. Once I've caught it there's no problem, I can front squat a lot more than I can clean.

So today as I worked up I really focused on the catch, even with lighter weight. As it got heavy around 135#, coach Isabelle corrected my starting position. I was in more of a dead lift start and need to lift my chest more, and lower my hips (still above the knee, but lower than a dead lift), I kept everything tight and initiated with my knees (as online Crossfit coach Mike Burgener says to do).

I landed the 135# quite easily, for two reps, but my back was rounded and my weight forward when I caught it. I was able to hold it so when upped it to 140#, I really focused on the catch again, given the new starting position. I nailed it. Wasn't gonna stop there, did 145# (my previous best), twice in a row. So I had to try 150# for at least one rep. Sure enough, bang! Well naturally I had to ride the success and went for 155#.

Usually I says to my self "man this is heavy", today I said "I can do this. I'm Superman", and I nailed it. It was awesome. It just felt right.

The WOD was not so fun.

5 rounds of 3 minutes AMRAP on 1:00 rest
- 3 power cleans, 115#
- 6 push ups
- 9 air squats

I think this is one of the ones we'd done wrong before, because the 1:00 was left out, and we couldn't figure it out.

It sucked just as bad with the rest. Got 4 rounds the first time, then 3 the rest. The scoring makes no sense, since if you are close the begining of a round with little time left there's no motivation to get more reps. Either score should be reps or you should start where you left off the previous round. But I'm not telling the coach that, it sucked enough as it is!

Crossfit log for Monday, October 22nd

A nice treat today. With Kiza's mom in town, so we both went to the this morning's class. Kiza has asked me to remind her never to do a 5:45am class on a Monday ever again.

It was a good workout too, but so soon after her half marathon, it was rougher on her than me.

Strength work was sumo dead lifts to 1 rep max. I don't know what my previous 1rep max was, but last time I hurt my back trying (back in May, just after the fire, Kiza will remember).

Managed 235# (20# less than my regular dead lift max, which is to be expected). No problem with my back.

The WOD was a 15min AMRAP
2 reps increasing by 2 reps every rounds (2-4-6-...)
-thrusters 75# (blue was 95# but that wouldn't have been pretty)
-kettle bell swings 20kg
-ab mat sit ups.

Did 6 complete rounds (12 reps) and made it to 6 sit ups of the round of 14 reps.

Kiza was right behind me. She's relentless.

Goofy Training log for Sunday, October 21st

I guess Goofy training has officially begun.

Haven't really felt like running this past week, but finally got out for a real run. Was scheduled for 19km, but I hadn't even left yet and was working out ways to cut the route short.

Once I got going, it wasn't so bad, but I still cut the corners I thought about. I figured I'm still in recovery mode, 19km was probably ambitious to begin with, so I added a loop of my block to make it 17km even.

Not much of a difference, but I'm happy with it.

Crossfit log for Friday, October 19th

Did Back squats yesterday at the Y and as luck would have it, strength work yesterday was back squats! So yay! They did 5 sets of 8, but I worked up to my 1 rep max of 205#.

I think I would have at least tried 210# (and quite possibly succeeded), but I was too scared to drop the weights at the Y.

At Crossfit, if you bail on a lift, it's not a failure, it's a different mentality because everyone does it, all the time, but at the Y, the perception is that I bit off more than I could chew.

Maybe it's just in my head, but that's the point. It's just not the same.

Today was 1 rep max push press. Been doing a lot of overhead stuff this week, which is good, definitely one of my weaknesses.

Made to my existing 1 rep max of 140#, just couldn't get 145# up. Not enough hip drive. Need to work on that.

The WOD was brutal. I don't think I've ever found a WOD so challenging, maybe because on the whiteboard it looked so easy.

Row 800m
followed by 3 rounds 15-12-10 of:
-pull ups
-power clean 105#

I'm really good at kipping pull ups. I can power clean 115# with ease, not just once, repeatedly, 105# should've been a snap. I don't know if it was the strength work, or the rowing, but after the first round of pull ups, I went to clean that bar and "holy crap" it weighed a ton. I had to drop it almost every rep, I couldn't chain more than two or three together. It was horrible. 13:41

Maybe the flu shot had something to do with it.

Goofy Training log for Thursday, October 18th

Ended up running 20 minutes on the treadmill for 2.13 miles

Felt surprisingly good. Nothing planned today, I'll go to the gym and do something. Either mobility or lift something heavy.

Crossfit log for Wednesday, October 17th

That's funny, I didn't post yesterday. I thought I had.

I went twice yesterday, the regular morning class, then a "skills" class in the evening, where we learned progression to muscle ups.

The WOD was crazy, after working on split jerk for strength (did 3 sets of 3 jerks @ 75#-95#-95#) we did 75 push presses. Followed by double unders AMRAP, the cap was 7min.

I didn't even make it to the double unders, I got to 67 presses at the buzzer.

The muscle up progression went pretty well, the whole "false grip" thing wasn't intuitive, and the jumping into to transition and "ripping off your shirt" went surprisingly well, but I lack the back strength to pull my sternum to the rings to make the transition while hanging from the rings. Learned a lot. Need to practice.

Today was WOD Wednesday.

Thrusters 80# and box jumps 26" couplet 5 rounds 15-12-9-6-3

10:14.

Glad when it was over.

I think Crossfit is helping my run. PEC 1/2 Marathon

My goal was simple: beat my previous best from NCM 2008 at the height my my Ironman training (1:37:38)

I've run 4 half marathons since then, but as the 1:50 pace bunny. I haven't race one since. I've raced a good number of shorter distances and a couple of Around the Bays, but not the half.

My strategy was simple too: go hard to the finish line, or explode along the way.

I did pretty good. The last 5km were rough, but I dug deep. I finished in 1:38:23, 45 seconds off my PB. I'll take it.

The real story however is the training I put in.

These are mileage totals for the 6 weeks of training I put in.
27.82 km - 2:26:02 Pace: 5:15s /km
36.79 km - 3:25:47 Pace: 5:35s /km
36.50 km - 3:13:44 Pace: 5:19s /km
29.66 km - 2:41:52 Pace: 5:28s /km
30.59 km - 2:42:09 Pace: 5:18s /km
32.16 km - 3:01:58 Pace: 5:40s /km

My long runs were 12km, 19km, 12km, 19km, 23km and 10km

This is after a summer of virtually no running, but almost daily Crossfit.

I think it's safe to say Crossfit has helped my run. To get within 45 seconds of my best time (a time I got when I'd been training all winter gearing up for Ironman) on less than 200km over only 6 weeks says a lot.

We stayed with Erin McDougall, who lives nearby, the night before the race. A truly wonderful family and very gracious hosts. Just stay out of those two back rooms!

The biggest challenge was getting the kids to sleep. Race morning was early and not too stressful. Erin and I drove to the finish to catch a bus, leaving the women and children behind. Stood in line in the misty rain for quite a while before finally boarding a bus to the start line, arriving with maybe 40minutes to spare. Got my bag checked and went for a warm up run just shy of 10 minutes out, found a tree for a quick pee break then ran back with about 10 minutes to spare.

It was a small field, when the horn went off it was barely 6 seconds to get over the mats. I settled in to a groove right away, just under 4:30/km. Felt good, didn't feel like I was pushing it. Played leap frog with a couple of girls for the first 5km before dropping them, and one guy who really didn't want me to pass him.

He was funny. All over the road, like the anti-tangent, he'd pass people really wide, spontaneously switch sides of the road, it was weird. I stayed with him most of the run.

After I took my first gel at the 7km marker, the markers started to show up far more quickly than I was expecting them km 8, 9 and 10 went by in the blink of an eye.

I was mostly within 7 seconds of 4:30 up until 15km, it started to get harder at that point.

At 15km one of the girls I had dropped at 5km passed me, so she became my new focus. Around this time, weird guy stopped to pull down his compression socks and 20 steps later stopped to pull them back up. I figured this was a fatal mistake, so I took advantage and passed him aggressively. Leapfrog girl was still holding a good pace and I was fighting to stay as far under 5:00/km as possible. Not long after that, compression sock boy passed me again, he really didn't want me in front of him.


The hill at 16-17km was expensive, but I still managed to pick it up a bit compared to 15km and 16km splits.

The hill slowed everyone down, but it broke weavy compression sock boy. At the top of the hill he started walking, I blew past him with less than 4km to go, trying to hold to leapfrog girl and never saw him again.

After the big hill, with the help of some down slopes and my rabbit leapfrog girl, I was able to get a couple of splits around 4:45 and the last km I put everything I had to try and catch her before the finish. I made it to within 10 feet, but ran out of road. I congratulated and thanked her for a great run and for pushing me to the end.

I friend of mine, Heath gave me my medal! Thanks Heath!

Looking at my splits, I definitely faded progressively but held pretty constant for the first 15km and was able to dig deep to the end.
1- 4:29
2- 4:37
3- 4:20
4- 4:32
5- 4:25
6- 4:32
7- 4:35
8- 4:34
9- 4:35
10- 4:37
11- 4:42
12- 4:37
13- 4:35
14- 4:36
15- 4:52
16- 4:54
17- 5:16  (the hill)
18- 4:46
19- 4:45
20- 4:52
21- 4:41
21.1 0:38 (169m) 3:45/km

I'm very happy with this result. In a couple of years, when the kids are older and I've got more Crossfit under my belt I plan to start a more conventional training cycle (not sure if it'll be for triathlon or just running), and I expect to see some serious improvements. For now, this seems to be working really well for me.

Thanks Kiza, I appreciate your support in these crazy endeavours. And thanks Erin for your hospitality.

ETA: 10th out of 46 in the men's 40-49 category (top 21%), 32nd male out of 195 (top 16%) and 35th out of 695 over all (top 6%). Not too shabby.

Crossfit log for Thursday, October 11th

Just finished the relay race for Government Workplace Charitable Campaign.

Wow, middle distance running sucks. I thought my chest was going to explode! Then I had to do it a second time!

We finished 3rd out of 14 teams (well 11, there three walking teams). Not bad. No official timing so I don't know how we did individually. It was just hard. (The event raised over $6000, $990 from my group).

I'm just glad it's over, I can focus on the County Half.

This is the first year I've done the relay. I was voluntold to organize the corporate services team. Herding cats is not really in my skill set, so it's been an even more stressful week (as if the daycare issues weren't enough).

It was fun though. More spectators than I expected. The loop is just shy of 600m.

Crossfit log for Wednesday, October 10th (part 2)

Before last workout done, one more before the Prince Edward County half marathon.

Olympic weightlifting class, with Dan Robitaille, Canadian national level coach. Went through power clean and power jerk series.

Since I couldn't do a the jerk very well he told me to do a split jerk but very shallow, so that you aren't dropping so much under the bar as powering it up over your head and just locking it out.

It was good. I felt solid even though we didn't go heavy.

Tomorrow after noon we have a relay race for the United Way, 2 loops around the front lawn at the parliament full tilt. Can't wait.

Crossfit log for Wednesday, October 10th (part 1)

Good one today. Hard. No strength work, but the strength work was in the WOD

5 rounds for time:

3 rope climbs
5 clean and jerks 85#
3 rope climbs
4 clean and jerks 95#
3 rope climbs
3 clean and jerks 115#
2 rope climbs
2 clean and jerks 125#
1 rope climb
1 clean and jerk 135#

Red Rx was way heavier (I think it started at 115# and ended at 225#!) and the number or rope climbs match the number of c&j's the whole way through. I had no problem cleaning the weight but putting it over head was hard the last 2 rounds. I'm so weak in the shoulders.

Crossfit log for Tuesday, October 9th

Thanks!

Today was double-unders day.

We started with 5min to find our max unbroken number of double unders (made it to 19)

Then strict press and weighted strict pull ups
- Press 4 set of 8: 65#-75#-75#-75#(5)
- Pull up 4 sets of 2 or 3: 15#(2)-15#(3)-15#(2)-15#(2) (done with a dumbbell between my legs).

The WOD was "Megan"

3 rounds: 21-15-9 of:
-burpees
-kettle bell swings 20kg
-double unders.

Just before the WOD started, after I'd warmed up my kettle bell swings, I gave the double unders another go and shocked my self with 27 in a row!

Didn't go so well during the workout. I think my longest streak was 6. But I did the rest unbroken (although the last 9 burpees were kinda slow).

7:44

PEC half marathon training log for Monday, October 8th

I am race ready.

10km @ 4:34/km avg pace. Only started to get uncomfortable at the very end. Looking forward to PEC.

Crossfit log for Friday, October 5th

Big PR on bench press today. 165# (which according to this chart, is just above Novice for my body weight, but it's progress).

I think I'll use the intermediate level as my new goal for all my lifts (bench, dead lift, press, power clean, power snatch and squat), they are for the most part less aggressive than the arbitrary goals I set for myself in 2012 (dead lift twice my body weight, squat 1.5x my body weight, clean my body weight).

The WOD was interesting.
4 rounds of
- run 400m (340m)
- 2 rope climbs
- 20 push press 95# (dropped to 85# after first 5 reps of round 1)

21:24 (or maybe 22:24, I don't remember)

The push press really slowed me down, the running and rope climbing was a snap, maybe I should've gone 75# like the other two guys, but I felt moderately ashamed of dropping below blue Rx, which is unreasonable, I know, but sometimes you can't help feeling that. It was harder and took longer, but I did the work and I'll be stronger for it.

Revised weightlifting goals. Derived from intermediate level for my body weight at www.exrx.net
(most of which will not likely be attained in 2012):

Lift / % body weight / actual target weight (rounded) / current PR
Bench / 112% / 190lbs / 165lbs
Dead lift / 177% / 300lbs / 265lbs
Press / 77% / 130lbs / 105lbs
Power Clean / 109% / 185lbs / 145lbs
Power snatch / 84% 140lbs / 95lbs
Back Squat / 150% / 255lbs / 205lbs

Crossfit log for Thursday, October 4th

Glad I went today.

The class was full and I was first on the waiting list so I took more effort than usual to roll out of bed at 5am. I decided I'd go anyway in case there was a no-show and maybe just do the strength portion and not the WOD.

When the class started at 5:45 after the warm up, there were 4 no-shows. Coach wasn't too pleased with that, but I was!

We did hang cleans. I like doing cleans, my technique is getting better and I'm on the verge of a breakthrough, I can feel it.

We did 5 sets of 3-3-3-2-2
Did 95#-115#-125#-135#-135# (x1) I can do more, I know it, I have to work on dropping into that squat to catch the bar low, I can power clean 125# without squatting at all, so I can get a heavier bar high enough, I just need to catch deeper. I'm so close.

WOD was 7 rounds of cleans and hand stand push ups
7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 cleans (from the floor)
3 - 3 - 3 - 3 - 3 - 3 - 3 hand stand push ups.
or
14 - 12 - 10 - 8 - 6 - 4 - 2 push ups

Made it through 4 rounds before I had to resort to regular push ups.

Crossfit log for Wednesday, October 3rd

A sneaky Wednesday WOD:

Every minute on the minute for 20min. No score.

1 heavy dead lift 80% of 1 rep max (195#)
3 chest to bar pull ups or 4 regular pull ups
4 burpees.

The first third I was consistently 35sec. I'd finish the burpees and look up 0:24 left on the clock. By half way the chest to bar were really costing me (0:10-0:12 left on the clock) so I switched to 4 regular (which brought me back to 0:21-0:22 left). But that just kept getting shorter and shorter with each round. The last two I went over, but no matter.

Eye made some progress

Well so much for that writing catalyst.

Not one single post in the entire month of September.  Ouch.

Last Thursday I waltzed into the Riverside Hospital and let retired Colonel W. Delperro sever some over zealous muscles controlling my left eye.

The results have been less than miraculous.  All this time of my brain ignoring the left eye has left it unable to synchronize with it brother.

The recovery, as usual, not as trivial as advertised.

Granted, it is still early in the healing process.  I only missed 2 workouts, and the abrasion on the eye was unpredictable, so I should be, and really am, thankful that it went so well.

My eye no longer shoots up and in, which is good.  I still have double vision (which I've lived with for 35 years and can manage quite well), but now the images are parallel, whereas before the left images was slightly rotated (about fifteen degrees).  On the rare occasions when the image from the left eye asserts itself it is less disorienting than before, which is a bonus.

The muscles are still in spasms according to the good Colonel, and will take a couple of weeks before they settle into the new normal. So things may yet improve. At that point we can measure the difference in angle and decide where to go from there.

There are only two choices. Corrective glasses with prisms, that would correct both vision and angle. Since I'm farsighted, I'd need glasses for reading for vision and angle, but I'd also need glasses for driving with only the angle correction.
The other option is corrective surgery to permanently alter the angle of the left eye to match the right when looking straight ahead, leaving me with regular reading glasses. 

Having committed to this course of action, I suspect I'll be returning to the Riverside Hospital over the winter to see this process to it's end.

My brain will decide on it's own whether turning my head to maintain stereoscopic vision, or reverting to discarding the image from one eye will be the best approach when not looking straight ahead.



I really should have done this years ago.

PEC half marathon training log for Tuesday, October 2nd

Another treadmill disaster today.

Thought I was smart, did the warm up, 1 mile at 9:22/mile, stopped the treadmill and immediately started my first interval with a fresh timer. at 4:08/km

2 minutes in the treadmill just stops. Screen still says I'm going 9.0 mph but the carpet ain't moving. Reset, get back up to speed go another 30 seconds, dies again. Gah!

Thankfully the treadmill next to me had just freed up so I jumped on that one, got it up to speed and started over, did 4:00 @ 4:08, 2:00 rest, 4:00 @ 4:05, 2:00 rest, 4:00 @ 4:03 and then I was done. So almost 4 intervals if you count the first broken up one.

Grrrr.

Crossfit log for Monday, October 1st

Day one of the paleo challenge (which I'm not doing since I refuse to track my food intake), and we had a special WOD which will be repeated in 30 days to gauge the impact of the paleo diet on performance.

After back squats to 1 rep max (managed 195#, couldn't repeat my max of 205#) we did this lovely set:

9 rounds of 2-4-6-8-10-8-6-4-2
-snatch 65# (blue Rx was 95# but I can't power snatch 95#)
-double kettle bell swings - 16kg each hand
-knees to elbows

16:43

The middle three rounds were really rough. Kinda glad I can't snatch, it was rough enough at 65#