Quit yer bitchin'

Max has resolved to work at keeping a more positive mental attitude about his workouts. I think that's an admirable goal, and one I need to adopt myself. In general, I try to be a positive and supportive person, but I have in the past had to consciously retrain myself to be less sarcastic, and I think this is similar: negative thinking begets negative emotions and leads to urges to give up, sandbag or make excuses. As addicted as I am to this fitness thing, I have noticed a tendency on my part to whine about the workouts (usually right before I have to do them), make sarcastic quips and in general be negative. There is a place for such things, but it's dangerous to get habitual about it. So here I resolve to accept and embrace the difficulty of the challenges facing me, and to quit bitching about them.

Speaking of painful...yesterday I joined Max, Ynez and Hodges at the track above Clark Kerr for some running practice. Unfortunately a section of the track was fenced off for construction, but we were able to use half of it, so we did 4 x 400 sprints, turning around halfway through (yuck).

400m sprints, every 5 minutes:
1:23 | 1:25 | 1:28 | 1:32

Then, at Ynez's behest, we did 3 x 100m sprints up a STEEP hill (top of Dwight).
0:38 | 0:33 | 0:34

The 400m times are pretty terrible. I attribute this to feeling a little sick (think I'm getting a cold), being a little heavy, coming back from a trip where I ate pretty poorly, and having to turn around.

I don't have a baseline to compare the sprints, but they were probably a bad idea - they hurt my ankle quite a bit, and I was limping the rest of the night and had to take some ibuprofen before bed. Frustrating.

Beach Burpee Bingo

Today's the big (wedding) day, but we didn't really have anywhere to be until the ceremony at three, and with everyone busy making preparations, we made ourselves scarce and went down to the beach for an impromptu WOD.

AMRAP in 20 minutes:
100 meter sprint
15 burpees

8 rounds + sprint and 10 burpees

This was a gasser. Sprinting and burpees on the beach are challenging, especially when you're barefoot and the tide is coming in. It's hard to sprint in three inches of water! And it was fun when you'd drop down in the pushup position and the water would flood in just as you were about to drop your face to the ground. I did not approach this very intelligently - I made a new burpee angel at each round, with the idea that I could then use the angels to keep track of my rounds. This neglected to take into account the fact that Rebecca was going at the same time as I was, thereby making her own angels and confusing my math, as well as the fact that the first five burpees are by far the hardest, as your feet skid in the wet sand and don't provide good traction for jumping up until you've dug yourself a little trench. So I did not do it as efficiently as I could have - still, it was good to get out and move a bit, since I've been going stir crazy here.

The weather today was finally nice enough to WANT to go outside on the beach, too, which made the whole experience much more pleasant.

Kitchen Sink

33:57

Splits:

1:40 10 GI Janes
1:04 Run 100 Meters
2:09 10 Box Jump 30" box (stepup 24")
1:02 Run 100 Meters
1:32 10 KB swing 2.0P/1.5P (1P)
1:02 Run 100 Meters
1:30 10 C2B Pull-ups (28kg SDHP)
0:47 Run 100 Meters
2:47 10 Weight Overhead Lunge 45#/25# (8kg)
0:49 Run 100 Meters
2:29 10 Ankles-to-bar (knees to chest)
0:41 Run 100 Meters
2:25 20 Supermans
0:45 Run 100 Meters
3:28 10 clap push-up (hopping? pushups)
0:44 Run 100 Meters
4:09 10 Double-Squat Wall-Ball 14#
0:00 Run 100 Meters
4:06 50 Double-Unders (Subbed 200 skips)

I think I was feeling a bit under the weather, and hoping not to push myself over the edge into full blown sick, I decided to do half volume. Also, we had a full afternoon planned with a trip to the Circus School open house and a friend's Christmas party later that evening, and I didn't want to be totally wiped all day. Blogging this 2+ weeks after the fact is tricky.

Gi Janes on rings are hard because you have to find the rings before you jump - unlike a bar which is stationary.

Even though I was only stepping up to the box, I still managed to fall on my butt when i got both feet up, but couldn't get "out of the hole". Lame.

The swings went relatively well, though I still have a little way to go before 16kg is reliably good form.

I did SDHP with the 28kg KB instead of pullups. 28kg is definitely the heaviest I have managed to perform this movement with, and I was able to get it most, but not really ALL the way up. This is a good practice movement for explosive hip movement.

I did the OH lunges with the 8kg KB ... these were hard. but i did fairly well with them. Definitely a movement I should practice.

I think the first couple reps of knees to chest were actually pretty close to knees to elbow. After the first 5 or so, they were barely knees to chest. another movement that would be good to practice.

The wall ball actually went much better than the last time i tried it. The las ttime I tried it, I could barely get any - I'm not realy sure why, but they just wouldn't go up. This time, it was pretty stright forward. I still can't string them together because I suck at catching it, but I managed to get the height.

Since I was only doing half the reps, I tried to really go for form, and not worry Too much about time, but it's hard when you just want to get it over with.

Holy Ow.

Warm up: ME, hands over head squat, wheelbarrow, piggyback rides.

WOD:
Run 800 Meters
25 Push-Ups
Run 600 Meters
50 Burpees
Run 400 Meters
75 Kettlebell swings 1.5P/1.0P
Run 200 Meters
100 Jump Squats
Run 100 Meters
125 Double-Unders

*subbed a 12kg KB for swings, and did 500 single skips in lieu of 125 double-unders.

Results:
56:55

Exercise	Time	Trans.	ET
800m	4:58		4:59
Pushups	2:43	0:39	8:21
600m	3:48		12:09
Burpees	11:29	0:26	24:04
400m	2:38	2:21	29:03
Swings	5:49	0:29	35:21
200m	1:19		36:40
Jump Squats	8:42		45:22
100m	0:40		46:02
Jump Rope	10:53		56:55
Total	52:59	3:56

Comments:
Um, OW!!!

Fortunately my headache disappeared late yesterday afternoon. However, my shoulders were quite sore this morning when I woke up - I'm guessing it's mostly from yesterday's Push-presses - a lot of reps with a weight that was just barely manageable - but I' m guessing Friday's presses, and yesterday's pullups also did not help. Since I was feeling beat up before the workout even started, I kept telling myself I was going to cut some part of this in half, - the exercises, the running , something, but I'd get to half, and decide that, "what the hell, I'm half way there." My shoulders might not forgive me for my stubbornness. Probably not for a couple days, anyway.

I'm glad I did my six pull-ups for the day this morning before this WOD. None of them were as good as yesterday - i think the best of them was probably nose to bar - the worst, forehead to bar.

I didn't actually mean to record my transition time, and I wasn't consistent about it after I started, but I wanted an accurate time for my runs, and I hit my lap timer right after the pushups were done. In hindsight, this is probably a pretty useful metric to track, since the goal is to get transitions down to a minimum, and since my new watch has so many laps, I might start trying to record transitions, too.

I was pretty happy to get my 800m under 5 minutes. Since there was a lot of volume and a lot of jumping, I decided to wear my trail running shoes to give me as much cushioning as possible, despite the fact that they have made me feel a bit clumsy in the past. They didn't bother me at all today, and I'm glad i decided to wear them. This workout would REALLY have sucked in my little brown shoes.

The pushups were a lot harder than they've been in a long time. I think my first set was 7 or 8, the second set might have been 4 or 5, and all the rest of them were 1's 2's or 3's - mostly 2's.

The only other 600m time I have on record is from the running ladder we did on Oct. 11th, and I did nearly a whole minute better today than I did then, but I'd also run a heck of a lot farther before I got to the 600m run in that workout. Still, overall, I feel pretty good about my runs, today. They weren't super fast, but they were solid - and probably the least tortuous part of this WOD.

The burpees, on the other hand, were far and away the MOST torturous part of today's WOD. I swear they almost killed me. They did reduce me to tears. But I got the fuckers done - about 1 burpee at a time ... in 11.5 minutes. >.< Burpees with burnt shoulders SUCK. I nearly quit on this one.

The 400m run was fine - the time compares pretty favorably with recent efforts - again not super fast, but right about on par with 400m in other recent metcon workouts.

And then we hit the 2:20 of 'transition time' before the KB swings. This was me trying to figure out a)what KB to use, and b) how many reps to do. It was also at this point (when several other folks were just finishing this workout) that Max came to me and asked if I was going to complete the full volume of the workout. I was still totally strung out from the burpees, and really feeling like i was right at the edge of my capacity. I asked whether he thought I should just do half the reps for the remaining exercises. The answer was a speedy 'Yes!' followed by him saying that whatever the rep scheme, I should set a 1 hour time limit for myself.

I decided I'd try to get through 40 reps with the 1P KB. I picked it up swung it back and forth a couple times experimentally, and realized that that was NEVER going to happen, put it down, picked up the 12kg KB, and basically decided that I'd see how things were going @ 40, but since I was using the lighter weight, I should do the full # of reps. I think that having sore shoulders actually probably helped my form with these a bit since I really wanted to use them as little as possible.

The jump squats were not fast, and they were often ugly, but they were not as brutal as the burpees, and therefore were totally tolerable. One of the reasons I managed to make it to 100 with these is that I felt like my 45-47th jumps were probably the strongest ones I'd done so far, and I continued to get some pretty good ones even in the higher numbers.

The skips were actually kind of fun - even though i was pretty tired by the time I got to them. I was able to find a really good rhythm a couple times. My first set was 55 consecutive jumps, and a couple similarly good runs after that, interspersed with sets of 15-20. I was super excited, though, when I managed to get my last 100 skips all in one shot! :-) That was a great way to end an otherwise brutal, un-fun, workout. I think that if I can get 100 skips unbroken, double-unders shouldn't be too far behind, I just need to actually work on getting them.

A CF friend, Ynez, and I were discussing how everybody has their particular strengths - hers is (literally) that she is just naturally quite strong. We decided that mine was tenacity. I definitely would not have made it through the full volume of this workout without that trait. That said, I'm not sure doing the full volume was an entirely brilliant idea. For whatever reason, I seem to be at less than the top of my game this week. And it was supposed to be an EASY week. I am going to think about making next week a half-intensity week, too.

Fortunately, I'll get two full rest days before the next workout because we won't be able to go climbing tomorrow due to Daniel's office holiday party. So I'll see how I am feeling on Wednesday.

Death due to Tuck Jump (not quite the same as 'by')

Warm up: ME, Run 800m, 5 KB swings, 5 pushups, 5 KB cleans

WOD:
For Time:

7 Rounds

Run 100 Meters
5 Kettlebell Swing 2P/1.5P *1P
10 Push-Up
15 Kettlebell Clean 1.0P/.75P
20 Double-Under *Tuck Jumps

Results:
33:21

4:06 | 4:24 | 4:46 | 5:00 | 5:05 | 5:30 | 4:30

Comments:
I was seriously only going to do 3 - maybe 4 rounds of this. But I kept remembering that i was going to stop after doing the run - and i couldn't stop part way through a round now could I ... Jeez.

Everything here was really manageable - except the Tuck Jumps. OMG do tuck jumps really really suck. A lot. I MUST figure out how to do a double-under because tuck jumps will kill me. My left ankle feels a little bruised from the repeated heavy landings - i am not a graceful jumper, and I know my abs are not going to let me off lightly for punishing them further - they barely agreed to be on speaking terms with me this morning.

The one bright spot where these are concerned is that they look a lot better than they used to - most of the time I can get my feet reasonably far off the ground and my knees reasonably close to my chest - instead of the wimpy little jumps that used to pass for tuck jumps. But holy hell do I dislike this exercise.

I checked my time on my runs and they were all within the 35-45 second range. My last one was about 36. I spent a lot of time between exercises just trying to catch my breath. I know on at least one round I accidentally did more than 5 KB swings - i think there might have been a round of cleans that went over, too. And I lost count on my tuck jumps in round 6 - so i may have done a few extra of those f**ers too.

The KB swings felt pretty solid - though I didn't always get them all the way overhead. I counted them if hey were above eye level, but I definitely got several full ROM reps.

The pushups felt really solid. I definitely feel like these are one exercise I can really do now. I think only maybe the first round or two were unbroken. Typically it was a set of 7 and a set of 3. I was very consciously trying to make sure every rep was strict form, keeping my core solid. (another cause for my abs to exact revenge upon me).

The cleans were ... well they were fantastic on my left side. I was struggling with my right. I always started off with my right hand and got as many as I could with it, and then would finish out on my left. It was so easy with my left though, that I had ample time to try to figure out what it was that I was doing with my left that I was missing on my right, and after the workout was over (doh!) I took the opportunity to figure it out. There's the hip pop, and then this slight jerk back with the elbow - sort of like starting a lawnmower that keeps the KB close to the body. And I was missing the 'elbow jerk' on the right side. This causes the KB to really whack ya when it lands. I'll have to play with it some more. My right side tends to forget stuff if I don't work it repeatedly and often. >:-p (lame.)

I think that if i hadn't done every CF workout this week, this workout would not have been such a killer, but, I did, and it was. Not sure how I am going to accomplish any climbing tomorrow. Maybe just low nuimbers focused on form and technique. And lots of belaying ...

And Thus Endeth Skill Week

Max promised us a combination of all the skills we focused on this week as the culmination workout, and it proved to be a nice mid-size metcon:

For Time:
7 Rounds

Run 100 Meters
5 Kettlebell Swing 2P/1.5P
10 Push-Up
15 Kettlebell Clean 1.0P/.75P
20 Double-Under

30:35 RX

Splits: 3:15 | 3:53 | 4:49 | 3:53 | 4:38 | 6:04 | 4:03

Not sure what happened in round 6. I don't remember it as taking particularly long. The killer (for me) on this one was the double-unders. Since I can usually only do them two or three at a time, it takes forever for me to get through twenty. I'm seriously considering buying one of those Byers-recommended speed ropes, though I have no idea when or how I'd practice. But like the kipping pullup, a solid double-under is really critical to those workouts that call for it.

The 2-pood swings were not as bad as I feared, and the pushups, cleans and runs were fairly utilitarian. Took a few too many rests, but overall I'm just happy that I did a double-under workout RX'd.