2011-10-17

5 Rounds For Time of:
10 Deadlifts 225/155 (63#)
15 Wall Ball 20/14 (6#)
30 Double Unders ( 15 10" Box Jumps)

+ The deadlifts should be light enough that you can do each round in 1-2 sets. Loss of neutral spinal alignment will result in your workout being stopped! Make sure to pick a load and if necessary a pulling height that allows you to execute 50 solid reps.
+ If you don't have double unders, today's substitution is 15 Box Jumps.

16:16 - just slightly over 3 min per round consistently across all 5 rounds

I had thought I'd be able to manage 83# deadlifts.  They were really too heavy, and my form was lousy, so at Laurel's urging I went lighter and just tried to keep my form legit.  Basically the whole workout was a mental exercise in mastering form faults.  Most of my workouts are these days.  It means I'm going a lot lighter than I would like - A) because I lost a lot of strength during my pregnancy, and B) I also lost a lot of coordination (and it wasn't even that good to begin with).

But the goal is to get stronger without injuring myself, and to fix the myriad and multiple form faults I've always had, and that means taking several steps back before I can go forward.  Frustrating, but there's no question it's the right thing to do.

My left knee felt kind of beat up after the workout - I'm pretty sure it was the box jumps.  No matter how hard I focus, I just can't figure out how to consistently land on both feet, so my left leg gets a lot of abuse.  I probably need to work on jumping to an even smaller target where I can manage to land lightly (although I'm not sure i can manage that just even jumping up and down on the ground :-p ).

How high?

A: Max height Box Jump

B: 3 rounds:
Run 400 meters
21 Burpee
12 KTE (Or GHD sit-ups)

A: 35"
B: 13:54, subbed 95# Good Mornings for the KTEs (protecting my ab)

My hamstrings were sore from this one for days.

2010-06-25

Warmup - row 1000m

Skill work

Worked on Box jumps
2 x 55#, 1 45# x 3
2 x 55#, 1 45#, 1 15# (15.5") x 3
2 x 55#, 1 45#, 1 25# (16.5") PR(?) x 2 or 3 - several attempts - kept getting freaked out.

I had to keep alternating between 15.5" and 16.5". 15.5" was pretty reliably doable. 16.5 i could get once or twice and then couldn't get any more - i think it was more mental than physical though. If i went back down to 15.5 and got confident again I could get 1 or 2 16.5".

I also worked about 30 or 35 right footed pushups (with my left foot hooked over my right foot).

200-06-24 Dirty Thirty

WOD:
For time:
50 Box jump, 24"/20"
50 Jumping pull-ups
50 Kettlebell swings, 1.0P/.75P (25# Dumbell)
Walking Lunge, 50 steps
50 Knees to elbows
50 Push press, 45/30
50 Good Mornings 45/30
50 Wall ball shots, 20/14
50 Burpees
50 Double unders

Scaling:
Did 30 reps of every exercise instead of 50. Box jumps were about 12" (1 45#, 2 25# and 1 15#) K-t-E were more Knees to chest and used the 10# wall ball.

33:22

2:55.87; 2:30.92; 1:51.28; 2:22.23; 5:57.86; 1:59.13; 2:02.94; 5:48.51; 3:35.56; 4:18.59

I apparently scaled this way more than necessary. I expected to be lagging way behind even at 30 reps to everyone else's 50. Instead I was consistently one of the first 2 or 3 people to any given exercise.

This is a 13 minute PR over the last time I did the dirty 30 in July of 2008, and I remember it as being very hard. And this time it never really felt THAT hard - particularly not for the first four exercises or so. I should have done the full volume.

Amrap

Amrap in 20 minutes
5 push-press 95#
10 pullups
15 box jumps 24"

8 rounds + 5 push-press

2010-04-05

20RM Squat - 30# Front Squat

Post load to comments.

Followed by:

50-40-30-20-10

Jump Squat
Sit-Up

Subbed 50% jumps to a low set of weights (2 55# bumpers) no squat 25-20-15-10-5
did full volume of situps

13:22
3:58; 3:36; 2:50; 1:52; 1:03;

1-25-2010 - oly cycle # 5

2 rounds 10 wall squats, 50 sec squat hold, burgener warmup

Snatch skill practice.

3 rounds (not for time):
5 Front squats: 33-43-48
5 Box jumps: 2 kraborg 45#, 2 25#, 1 15# (about 15-16")



Press 5-5-5
43-48*-48
 *might have failed after 4, might have gotten all 5 - i lost count.


Muscles were pretty worked from snow boarding. I tweaked something in my left thigh right around the end of my snatch practice, so I didn't really go through clean & jerk practice today.  And I really only did 2 sets of front squats - the set @ 33# was just a warmup.  However, even though didn't finish most of the exercises, there was clear improvement of form for most of them.

My wall squats were better - I didn't have to do them with a kettlebell - I was even able to get 1/2 to 2/3 of the way down with my hands behind my head, but I did have to grip onto the base of the wood on the wall in order to stay upright in the bottom position, however, it allowed me to correctly work the full bottom ROM, so I don't feel too badly about cheating.

I think the height of the box jumps is about right.  I made about 60% of them on the first try.  (Box jumps and front squats do not go well together).

It wasn't the best workout ever there was a lot of dnf-ing - but I don't feel like it was a waste of time, either.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

1-19-2010 - press + box jump &pushup mini metcon

WOD:
Shoulder Press 5-5-5
40-50-52(fail rep 5)

Then
21-15-9
Depth Jumps* - subbed box jumps
pushups
not timed

NEWS FLASH: today marks the first day I have done box jumps in a WOD.  a bit lower than RX - but 45 reps of actual jumping were done. 

For the record the height was 2 of the slimmer 45# plates, 1 10# plate and 1 25# plate.  Once the WOD was done I added 2 more 25# bumpers and did several successful jumps up to that height, too.

Hello!!! Box jumps!!  In a WOD.  Huge first.

Also - matched and nearly beat my 5rm for presses - it was 50# - set in March of last year.


*Depth jumps are basically squat jumps to a box

12 days of Christmas

Warmup: Jump rope - got several right footed single skips. even managed to get three consecutive! It may sound like a terribly minor achievement, but it's actually pretty major. I have not ever had any success trying to jump exclusively on my right foot, and having enough balance to stay only on my right foot and make it over the rope three times is an exceptional achievement.

WOD:
On the first day of Christmas CrossFit gave to us.....

1 - Muscle-up - subbed 4 band assisted ring dips
2 - HSPU - subbed piked push-ups
3 - Dead-hang pull-ups - green band assisted (mostly) dead-hangs
4 - Jumping squats
5 - Burpees
6 - Push-ups
7 - Toes to bar - subbed knees to elbows
8 - Forward rolls
9 - Double Unders
10 - KB Snatch 1.5pd / 1pd - used 8kg
11 - Box jumps
12 - Virtual snow shoveling 45# plate/25# plate (24"barrier)

Comments:

This went pretty well for a workout I didn't really think i wanted to do.

Actually the most exciting part was pre-WOD when i decided to see whether I could do box jumps, and I managed to jump - without any assistance - to a stack of bumper plates. First I tried 2 of the fuzzy 45# plates - about 10" maybe? - and it was no problem, I put a smooth 45# plate on top of that - maybe another 4" - and tried it, and it was still totally manageable, so I put a 25# plate on top of that (another 3") and, while it was a bit intimidating, I found I could do that, too. I nearly took a nasty backwards spill when I tried to show Daniel my new achievement; I got distracted by someone else. But I got it on my second attempt. I was actually bummed not to get to the box jumps in the WOD. That's a first, for sure.

Since the 3 pull-ups were supposed to be dead-hang, i tried to keep my band assisted pull-ups as kip free as I could - and for the first several rounds, they were fairly static - as the rounds went on, as I started getting tired i started kipping a bit more.

I have to say that I find it very gratifying that I am still making improvements in some areas despite the fact that my diet has been absolute crap this month, and I've only been making it to a handful of workouts a week.

Diet wise, I've pretty much written off the month of December. There are just too many wonderful things out there this time of year, and I am enjoying my freedom to eat whatever terrible food i want, but I definitely feel and see the effects of not eating clean, so I am also looking forward to getting 'back on the wagon' in January.

Terrible Team WOD

WOD:
In two teams:

Break up into squads of 3 people.

Each squad must perform the following as a relay:

Row 1500 Meters #4 - 500m
Run 1200 Meters #2-400
105 Pull-Ups #5 - 35 green band assisted
150 Push-Ups #7 - 55
150 Box Jumps #9 - 60 (step ups)
105 Burpees #10 - 30?
75 KB swing 2.0/1.5P #8 - 25 (1P)
105 Wall-Ball 20/14 Pounds #3 - 20
75 Ground-To-Overhead 75/55 #1 - 15
75 Front Squat 75/55 #6 - 12

- Each athlete may only perform each movement once.
- Only one squad may do an event at one time: another squad cannot start the event before the currently performing squad is finished.
- There are no additional rules.
-The winning team is the team with the lowest cumulative time across all squads.

Results:
78 minutes - or so. Would have been a great deal longer except that for the last 4 exercises we all worked in tandem. we just wanted to be done.

Comments:
I knew I would hate this WOD as soon as I heard about it. I REALLY resent workouts where the structure is such that it becomes necessary for other athletes to do more work to make up for my inability to keep up. REALLY. I appreciate the theory - I'll work my ass off to try to make my weakness as little of an impact on the team as possible - but in practice it just makes me feel shitty and inadequate.

I was paired - based on the rankings of a pre-WOD warmup - with two very strong, but not super fast people. For every exercise, I went first and did as many reps as i could, and then the rest was up to them. I'm afraid I made our time even slower, because the few reps I could do for the strength based exercises - like front squats and ground to overhead, were done quite slowly, and since I couldn't go back to an exercise after resting they had to wait for me to rest in order to be able to do more reps before giving my turn over to them - and even with the extra effort, my total reps were usually well short of a third of the total reps. They were extremely nice and very supportive, but even with 'cheating' for the last 4 exercises, we were still the last squad to finish.

Yuck.

Fight Gone Bad!

Still recovering from this cold, with a chest full of phlegm and diminished energy - not to mention feeling somewhat beat up from Grace - I decided to take this one "easy" and just try to set and maintain a 225 pace. It went pretty much according to plan:

Exercise	Set 1	Set 2	Set 3	Total
Wall Ball	20	20	20	60
SDHP	15	15	15	45
Box Jump	15	15	15	45
Push Press	10	10	15	35
Row	15	15	20	50
TOTAL	75	75	85	235

I was feeling kind of guilty about sandbagging, so pushed for the last couple movements of the last round. Even 40-something points below my PR, this felt pretty challenging, particularly the final round.

Fight gone bad

In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. We've used this in 3 and 5 round versions. The stations are:

1. Wall-ball: 20 pound ball, 10 ft target. (Reps)
2. Sumo deadlift high-pull: 75 pounds (Reps)
3. Box Jump: 20" box (Reps)
4. Push-press: 75 pounds (Reps)
5. Row: calories (Calories)

The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of "rotate," the athlete/s must move to next station immediately for good score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each calorie is one point.

For the experienced: the goal is to do 10% better than your previous Rx best. 1 minute after FGB is done, you owe 1 burpee for each rep below your goal.

My Goal: 133

Exercise	Set 1	Set 2	Set 3	Total
Wall Ball	2	0	1	3
SDHP	11	11	10	32
Box Jump(Step up)	0	0	0	0
Push Press	7	6	6	19
Row	12	11	12	35
TOTAL	32	28	29	89

Finisher: 44 Burpees (I was actually expecting to have to do more, so I was relieved it was under 50). Somewhere in the realm of 7 or 8 minutes, i think. SUCKED. If Daniel hadn't needed someone to yell at him, I think I might have curled up in a ball and cried.

I don't know where my wall ball went. it went far far away. Ynez was a real stickler for only counting the reps that hit the x. Didn't matter if it was high enough - if it didn't hit the x it didn't count - not that there were that many that would have qualified.

Pretty much everything except my row suffered - actually - it was pretty well on par with my last FGB in June - still, I dunno where my power went. I did much better in April - particularly on the push-presses - though I think that was in the middle of our strength cycle.

Fight Gone Bad!

In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. We've used this in 3 and 5 round versions. The stations are:

1. Wall-ball: 20 pound ball, 10 ft target. (Reps)
2. Sumo deadlift high-pull: 75 pounds (Reps)
3. Box Jump: 20" box (Reps)
4. Push-press: 75 pounds (Reps)
5. Row: calories (Calories)

The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of "rotate," the athlete/s must move to next station immediately for good score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each calorie is one point.

264 RX

Exercise	Set 1	Set 2	Set 3	Total
Wall Ball	30	22	17	69
SDHP	27	13	15	55
Box Jump	20	15	20	47
Push Press	15	15	12	42
Row	20	15	16	51
TOTAL	112	80	72	264

As opposed to two weeks ago, when I just tried to hit as many in the first round as I could, I went into this one with a very specific plan: 125/100/75 = 300. I did about twenty points better than last week, but was still 12 points off my PR, well below 300, and pushed myself harder than I think I've ever pushed in a FGB before.

Mostly it's deconditioning, I think - I got that 276 right after Games training, when I was the fittest I've ever been. It's sad to see the numbers go down. I also just blew myself out in the first round, and was miserable afterward. I don't know how else to do it, but next time I might shoot for an even 100/100/100 and see what happens.

Another Games WOD (modified)

Legs very sore today from Wednesday's workout. Didn't really have any choice but to take it somewhat easy on the workout - anything involving bending my legs slowed me down.

In this workout you move from each of eight stations after three minutes. The stations are:

squat cleans (100/155 lb.)
toes to bar
box jumps (20/24 inches)
muscle-ups
Single-Arm Push-Press 1.5P/1.0P
double-unders
thrusters (95/135 lb.)
pull-ups (chin over bar)
burpees
walking lunge steps with 45/25 lb. plate overhead

The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of "rotate," the athlete/s must move to next station immediately for good score. One point is given for each rep.

190. Scaled the cleans and thrusters to 95#, and didn't get any muscle-ups (big surprise there).

"Well, it only gets hard when you get good at it."

Words of wisdom from Coach Maximus, RE: my current dread of Fight Gone Bad.

Max is gambling that some version of FGB will be at the Games next weekend, and I'm guessing he's also ramping up for FGB IV, thus two FGBs on consecutive Thursdays.

In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute.
This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed
before repeating. We've used this in 3 and 5 round versions. The
stations are:

1. Wall-ball: 20 pound ball, 10 ft target. (Reps)
2. Sumo deadlift high-pull: 75 pounds (Reps)
3. Box Jump: 20" box (Reps)
4. Push-press: 75 pounds (Reps)
5. Row: calories (Calories)

The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of
"rotate," the athlete/s must move to next station immediately for good
score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each
calorie is one point.

275 RX

Essentially the same score as last week. The transition to the rower at GWPC is poor, which cuts a handful of calories from the overall workout, but it would not have been enough to get me over 300, and it's not like I wasn't sufficiently miserable as it was.

Exercise	Set 1	Set 2	Set 3	Total
SDHP	25	20	20	65
BJ	25	23	20	68
PP	15	15	12	42
Row	20	17	15	52
WB	21	12	15	48
TOTAL	106	87	82	155

Good pace out the gate, but it went south at the second row (and REALLY tanked in Wall-Ball, my God). The more I do this, the more I think I'm never going to get the additional 25 points I need in the second or third rounds. Next time this comes up, if I remember, I'm going to shoot for 125 in the first round, then just hang on for dear life through the next two rounds. I have to rely on that minute of rest to be sufficient to get me through.

FGB - Again

Warmup:run 400m, 10 pushups, pushpress skill work, wallball skill
practice

WOD:
In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute.
This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed
before repeating. We've used this in 3 and 5 round versions. The
stations are:

1. Wall-ball: 20 pound ball, 10 ft target. (Reps)
2. Sumo deadlift high-pull: 75 pounds (Reps)
3. Box Jump: 20" box (Reps)
4. Push-press: 75 pounds (Reps)
5. Row: calories (Calories)

The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of
"rotate," the athlete/s must move to next station immediately for good
score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each
calorie is one point.

Results:

Exercise	Set 1	Set 2	Set 3	Total
Row	15	13	14	42
Wall Ball *10#	1	4	4	9
SDHP	12	12	9	33
Box Step-ups	17	17	16	50
Push-Press	8	7	6	21
TOTAL	53	53	49	155

Comments:
I did better today than I did last week. My row, my SDHP and my push press - heck even, marginally, my wall ball, are up. The box step ups slid down a couple reps i'm sure just from not coming at them first thing. I was having a hard time keeping my balance today. (Likely from being thoroughly winded.) ANd though there was improvement from last week - it still falls short of my perfomance in April for pretty much every exercise except rowing.

the 14 and 15 on the ROW are definitely PR's.

The wall ball is still just absolutely ridiculously bad. even with the 10# ball. Where the hell did this skill go?

FGB

Warm up: run 800m, dowel practice of SDHP and PP

WOD:
Three rounds of:
Wall-ball, 20 pound ball, 10 ft target (Reps)
Sumo deadlift high-pull, 75 pounds (Reps)
Box Jump, 20" box (Reps)
Push-press, 75 pounds (Reps)
Row (Calories)

In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute.The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. On call of "rotate", the athletes must move to next station immediately for best score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each calorie is one point.

Add your points and post them to comments.

Results:

Exercise	Set 1	Set 2	Set 3	Total
Box Jump(Step up)	20	20	20	60
Push Press	6	6	6	18
Row	10	13	12	35
Wall Ball	0	2	2	4
SDHP	10	10	11	31
TOTAL	46	51	51	148

Comments:
Except for the row (and the box step-ups, which i didn't do last time to keep it rx) this is in every way worse than my last FGB. The wall ball was just embarrassingly bad. The 4 that I got were with the 10# ball. And I lost a couple points on just about everything else. I think it can be partially explained by the order of the exercises - I always try to start with the wallball, but I didn't get to do that today, and last time, I had a minute of rest before the push-presses - but as a whole this performance is dissapointing.

Fight Gone Bad!

Remember that relief I felt that I didn't have to do Fight Gone Bad at the cert this weekend? Yeah, me too.

Three rounds of:
Wall-ball, 20 pound ball, 10 ft target (Reps)
Sumo deadlift high-pull, 75 pounds (Reps)
Box Jump, 20" box (Reps)
Push-press, 75 pounds (Reps)
Row (Calories)

270 RX

Exercise	Set 1	Set 2	Set 3
Wall-Ball 20#	25	20	21
SDHP 75#	20	20	15
Box Jump 20"	25	20	20
Push-Press 75#	15	10	10
Row	20	12	17

This felt so, so horrible. Five points lower than last time, nearly three months ago. However, there was an equipment malfunction on the rower in the second round that lost me a good 20 seconds, so I think it was essentially the same. Disappointing not to have any improvement in the score, but I am 10-15 pounds heavier than I was then, which does make it harder. Also, I didn't allow myself to do the circular KB-swing-style SDHP this time, which makes it much harder to crank out reps.

I need to get better at chaining together box jumps and push-presses.

CrossFit Level 1 Certification, Day 2

Day 2 dawned with moderate soreness. Mostly I was just happy to have the Fran experience behind me. We jumped straight back into class with a Q&A session with Dave Castro, who then went on to fill in some more info from his "What is CrossFit?" section the day before. Then we went outside for a brief session on the two most complicated and frequently mis-performed fundamental movements, the push-jerk and the medball clean. From there we went straight into the WOD.

Everyone was expecting Fight Gone Bad, and when they started wheeling out the rowers and the 15# plates, we thought for sure that's what we were in for. Well, not quite. In a pleasant surprise, they gave us a team variation on FGB that wasn't anywhere near as punishing. It went something like this:

Teams of 4. In 15 minutes, perform AMRAP of:

Row: 10 calories
75#/45# Push-press: 15 reps
24" Box Jump: 10 reps
Rest

Each team member must be at their station until everyone has completed their reps, then they can advance to the next station. One designated counter marks a round when they get to the rest station.

My team, a coed team, was one push-press shy of 4 rounds. This was a pretty typical score. Two teams managed 6 rounds. I acquitted myself very well on the rower (10 calories = 12 strokes) decently on the box jumps and tolerable on the push-press. At any rate, I didn't feel like I was a hindrance to my team. I was glad they did this workout - it was more fun than FGB, which everyone has done, and was a good example of adapting a classic WOD to a slightly different format to accomodate given circumstances. Even with all the gear they had, I don't think they could have done FGB in one heat (someone should count, after all, which means two heats) and I got a sense that they really didn't like running heats.

Following the workout, Pat Barber led a session on nutrition, which quickly became a session on the Zone diet. I didn't take any notes here, as it was all very basic (and often oversimplified) stuff. I pulled my old-school by-hand mathematics out of the dusty closet to figure out my blocks without a calculator, and came up with somewhere between 16 and 17 blocks. I'm toying with the notion of doing a monthlong strict zone challenge, just so I can have the experience of having done it and come from a more informed place when I describe it to clients (it is the official diet of CrossFit, after all), but I have no idea how I'd make that work with cooking for Rebecca, leftovers, and all the eating out we do.

Another delicious lunch prepared by the Castros, and we watched the trainers do their own workouts. A brief session on the Glute-Ham Developer with Stefan followed, then we broke into five groups for a series of 15-minute skill workshops:

• PVC snatch with Stefan - he basically taught the Burgener warmup. Emphasized snatching from the hang position as being 90% adequate for lower-skilled athletes until they could reliably snatch from the ground.
• Rowing with Freddie - he went over basic mechanics then had us race 500m. I came in second, with 1:30.2 (a PR!), but this other dude who was also 6'4" but 230lbs came in first at 1:26.5.
• Muscle-ups with Pat and Jason - the rings were too low for me to get a decent kip, so they just told me to work on my ring dips. Which I DO need to improve.
• GHD with Jolie - even at its maximum extension, the GHD is too short to allow me to do back extensions (as opposed to hip extensions. True back extensions require trapping the hip on the pads). I can do hip extensions and situps, though.
• Kipping pullups with Austin. He went over the progression from the mainsite video (ie, lying on the floor, etc). Not much to learn, here, other than I could probably be pushing away from the bar more.

The trainers are good, but with groups of 12 people and a window of 15 minutes, they could really only go over the most basic elements of each movement.

Freddie led the last session on programming. He emphasized the superiority of 3-on, 1-off, but acknowledged that it's an extremely difficult cycle to make work in a real-world setting. He also went over the basic breakdown of movements (W = weightlifting, M = monostructural, G = gymnastics) and how to combine them into singles, couplets, triplets and chippers. Throughout the weekend, the coaches warned against programming too many workouts at an hour or more time domain, and also seemed leery of CFSB, CF Football and CFE - they clearly wanted the emphasis to be on plain vanilla CrossFit, at least for us. Though they said they do encourage boxes to do their own programming, thereby letting the Games be the mechanism by which they discover whose programming is superior. When the Frequently Asked Questions came up, they all came back with standard party-line responses (Go heavy and slow or light and fast? Yes. Two-a-days? If you can workout twice a day you're not working out hard enough. Etc.)

I was ready to leave when it ended, so I collected my certificate and took off. I missed working out with my CFEB friends, and hoped to make it back in time for the evening workout, despite feeling pretty thrashed. I DID make it back in time, but the workout looked too heavy for me to do in my current condition, so I wound up going on a five-mile trail run with Alex that was a lot of fun and completely kicked my ass. I haven't been as thrashed as I was after this weekend for quite a while.

My overall review? Pretty much unchanged from before I went. The level 1 cert is not worth the (very high) cost, UNLESS you intend to become a CrossFit trainer. In that case it is valuable, and not just because it allows you to legally pursue a CF career, but it also gives you some direct experience at the hands of a variety of coaches. But the vast majority of the information taught at the cert is widely available to anyone with a CF Journal subscription, a membership on the boards, and a measure of self-motivation. There is this mythology out there that you need to take a cert in order to "be serious" about CrossFit, and that's totally not true. You'd be better served with simply going to an affiliate as often as you can. I don't feel as though I'm a significantly better CrossFitter at the end of the weekend as I was at the beginning (although I AM motivated to fix my goddamn squat), nor did I find the experience itself to be terribly enjoyable or fulfilling (Great Fran Humiliation aside).

However, I DO want to become a CF coach, so I'm glad I went. I look forward to getting the opportunity to train others, and ultimately going to a level 2 - I think that might be more of what I'm looking for.

On our way

Squeaked in this little workout just before heading down to Aromas for the weekend:

For Time, in any order:

75 Box Jumps 24"/20"
75 Burpees
75 Wall-Ball 20#/14#*
75 Push-Ups

Uh, I don't remember. 21ish, I think.

Friday was the first day I started to feel recovered from my cold, although it was still lingering a little. I really wanted to get a WOD in just to try and keep a foot in the game, but I didn't want to risk a relapse or killing myself before the qualifiers, so I went at about 75% intensity for the full volume. It felt good, with the volume just barely on the far side of intimidating. Probably spent a little too much time chatting while catching breaths, but whatever - as my DOMS the next two days would attest, I was doing something.

Caught dinner with Alex, Rebecca and Jiro at Le Cheval, and then headed down to Aromas. Checked in the hotel at around 10:30 and went straight to bed, since we had to be at the ranch before the crack o'dawn the next day. Details to follow.