End of the week…

Leave a reply

This weeks “Heavy Metal” class (Friday, 4/3/2010) was a lot of fun. Our friends from Ft. Hood (Centurion Crossfit), Amy & Donny came to work out with us. It’s always nice to have people from other places come down to visit and workout with you. It helps build the community which you are probably sick of hearing about.

We started out with the Bergner warm up, like we do every week. We went over some different snatch drills and the moved on to talking about the clean & jerk. For this class, we concentrated on the split jerk.

After going over drills with the PVC, it was time to start playing with some weight. We started out with a modest 65lbs to work on form. I have some flexibility issues going on in my upper arm/shoulder area that make it really hard for me to get the bar racked. I am working on this.

After working with 65lbs for a bit, we started upping the weight. I won’t bore you with the weights for every lift in between, but I eventually maxed out for the night with 205lbs. I was pretty happy with myself there. There’s a video somewhere, but it’s still on the flip camera, un-rotated, and unedited. By the time it gets on here, I will probably be pushing 300 =). P.S. There’s also a video of my falling on my ass and dumping like 155lbs or something. I told V that she can only post that one if it’s cut with some funny music and sound effects.

Saturday morning (4/4/2010), we decided to head on over to Crossfit Leander. We had met some of the people from there when we were selling at sectionals. They all seemed really nice. When we got there, surprise, everyone was super nice. I love that Crossfit is a douche-bag barrier.

The WOD that they had planned was pretty cool. We started out with a pretty lengthy warm up. It’s pretty much the same one that Crossfit Central does with some ladder drills thrown in at the end.

Once that was done, we had to find 3 eggs out in the area. Inside of each egg was a piece of paper with an exercise or “EGG-zercise” as they called it that day. These 3 movements made up your Tabata set. I drew box jumps, air squats, and pull ups. They had the Tabata sets as 15/15 (as opposed to the normal 20/10) as there are new people. The 15/15 is a bit less work and a bit more recovery.

I didn’t track my numbers but it was still a good workout that tired me out.

Our eating has pretty much been crap since about Friday. I feel pretty awful right now. I can feel swelling all over my body. My joints feel like crap. I am bloated and am producing some pretty bad smelling… well… never mind. You get it.

It’s weekends like this that make inspire me to get down and dirty with Paleo for a while before “cheating” again. I NEVER, repeat N-E-V-E-R feel like this when sticking to paleo foods.

There’s a lot of other stuff going too, but I am finally feeling sleepy again. No doubt, tomorrow being Monday will suck the life out of me, so I had better try and get some sleep to deal with it as best I can.

<Witty Title>

Leave a reply

I had a pretty bad day today. You know, those kinds of days where nothing seems to go right? You don’t feel like you got anything of consequence done. You feel like you are fighting upstream with everyone and everything around you. That was the kind of day I felt I had.

If I would have missed a workout today, well, that would have been bad, but luckily, V and I made it to the 6pm class. Upon walking in the door, I started feeling better. A little self inflicted punishment to help forget about the day and how much it sucked… that’s a good thing.

Tonight’s workout, I hear, was a qualifying WOD somewhere (not sure of where exactly) but it was five rounds of:

5 power cleans (Rx @ 155lb)
10 burpees (did as many strict as possible)
Red Line Sprint (roughly 200m, and there was no sprinting)

My time for this one was 14:41. I thought I did a pretty good job of keeping myself moving while not taking too many breaks. The first three rounds were OK, but the last two felt like someone had removed all oxygen from the planet Earth. Not a pleasant experience.

After the WOD we hung around and talked for a little while. I love the people that we have met at the gym. They are so incredibly nice. Not really any douche bags to be found there.

V and I hung around the house for a bit after getting home. I didn’t feel like cooking so we just scrounged around. We watched some more of a movie that we started a few days ago, then went to sleep.

Unable to sleep by the constant turmoil that is my upcoming wedding in Mississippi, I now sit here writing this blog post. I don’t really want to get into the details of what is ailing me on a public forum, but it has been the source of many hours of lost sleep. Needless to say, a huge weight will be lifted on June 6th, 2010.

I love the girl I am marrying more than I can ever describe. That’s got nothing to do with it. It’s all coming from the event itself.

At the very least, I managed to be a little bit productive by creating a fan page for Crossfit Cedar Park. If you go there and you love it like I do, take a second to log onto Facebook and be their fan.

I guess I’ll try to go to sleep now.

DT

Leave a reply

I have been looking forward to trying out DT for a while now. I LOVE barbell workouts. They are by far, my favorite thing to do when it comes to fitness. I don’t know what it is about it. Maybe it’s the sense of satisfaction you get you execute a perfect lift rather than muscling the weight up. There’s a difference… it’s a huge difference and very noticeable.

In times of debating the merits of Crossfit vs. other fitness training regiments, I have come across the argument that Crossfit is “mindless” and “requires no skill”. If that is how you feel, try this workout and see if it changes your mind a little.

DT is 5 rounds of:

12 dead lifts
9 hang cleans
6 push jerks

The “Rx” on this WOD for men should be 155lbs.

As I said in the beginning, I have been looking forward to this one for quite some time. This one is all about technique, technique, and some more technique. You need have your hook grip working and you need to know how to do hang cleans efficiently.

I do not yet know how to do hang cleans efficiently. We hardly ever really have them in WODs at our box. That’s not an excuse, more so just a fact. We don’t do them very often.

I decided to go with 135lbs for this one as the hang cleans would be my weakness. My time was 16:30. Come to think of it, the last time I remember doing hang cleans in a WOD was really close to when we first started and my 3 rep max was 135lb.

The dead lifts were cake. The push jerks were slightly challenging. I didn’t have to break on any of them. The hang cleans SUCKED. I can see why the hook grip is so important here. I would say at least 3 times during this WOD, I got to the shrug part of the movement and the bar came right out of my hands. Had I had the hook grip on, that would have not happened. I think I need a thinner bar to accommodate my stubby fingers =).

I am still happy with my performance and look forward to trying this one again.

5 whole K’s?

1 Reply

I hate running.

I really hate running.

If you know me, you know, I hate running.

When there are WODs that have lots of running in them, well, I don’t really look forward to the running part of things.

I have made some really great advances in running over the past year. With the help of my friends Jody & Paula, I was able to do the entire Turkey Trot last Thanksgiving with zero walk breaks. A few months after that, I did a Pose running skill session with Dave.

I am getting better at Pose, but I am still not that great at it. Granted, I don’t really work on it all THAT much, but my stride has certainly changed. I definitely notice that.

Still though, I hate running. That’s why this challenge is perfect for me.

Today was the start of it. We had to run a 5k (that’s 3.1 miles). Not really a huge distance, but not really over right away either.

My total time to complete was 32:31 or something like that. I don’t remember exactly, but it was somewhere between 32 and 33 minutes. I ran this one straight through without stopping to walk at all. With that said though, there were a few times that I really wanted to stop and walk, but I didn’t.

I did learn a few things from this run:

I can run faster than I give myself credit for. I run slow and conservatively because I **HATE** getting cramps in my side. Once I get one of those, running gets even worse for me.
I don’t really know what my weakest link is. I noticed today that when I was running, my lungs were fine.
There really wasn’t a time that I was out of breath or couldn’t catch my breath. The reasons that I wanted to stop were:

My legs feel like lead.
My legs are burning.
I am bored.
This is uncomfortable.

I hit a really great stride at the end of the run. It felt like I picked it up about 30-40% over what I had done up until that point. It was at that point that I realized that I was on the end of the damn run and there was just about a 1/4 mile left. Suck.

In 4 weeks, I want to be able to work at a higher pace and not do this blur between “running” and soccer mom power-walking. At the very least, I want to be able to have periods where I am running faster than what my current rate of “normal” is.

With all that said, I still think that it’s a great accomplishment to say that I ran a 5k without stopping.

It can only get better from here, right?

Dating Sage

Leave a reply

Wow. Just wow. This WOD yesterday (3/16/2010) was insane. That is all I can say about it. From what I hear, Sage is Bergenger’s daughter.

All in all, this is probably one of the most demanding WODs that I have had to do since starting the whole Crossfit thing 8 months ago. I found myself having to actually take breaks resting on the floor. When your coach says “the 95lb snatches aren’t the challenging part”, be worried! In fact, he was right! The thrusters are by far the killer.

“Dating Sage” consist of the following:

5 rounds of

10 snatches (95lb)
15 pull ups
20 thrusters (75lb)

I read the blog and said to myself, “boy, that looks like fun!”. As usual, the first round was fun. Round 2 – 5, yeah, not so much.

My overall time on this was 33:14. I could have taken quite a bit of time off had I not taken so many breaks. There were times where I thought I was going to hyperventilate. It’s because of this though, that these ARE the types of workouts that I love; the kind that you want to quit 5 minutes in. These are the kind of workouts that show you what you are made of and what kind of will power you have.

Somewhere around round three, I honestly believed that I would not finish the WOD. Part of me was hoping Dave would tell me to stop at 3 rounds, but, Dave’s a good coach and knew that I could finish. He knew more than I KNEW that I could finish.

With that said, I am proud that I got all the way though five rounds of this WOD. It was physically and mentally taxing.

If you read my blog, you know that I like to do some math with these WODs. This one is just an insane amount of work. Allow me to break it down:

10 snatches @ 95lb = 950lb * 5 rounds = 4750lb
15 pull ups @ 200lb = 3000lb * 5 rounds = 15000lb
20 thrusters @ 75lb = 1500lb * 5 rounds = 7500lb

That totals 27,250lb moved around. Divide that by 2000 and you get 13.625 tons. I moved 13.625 TONS IN ~33 MINUTES. That’s insanity. To put that in perspective, my car weighs 3468lbs. So, I moved like, almost 8 of my cars. Crazy. Anyway…

This Saturday, we are running a 5k to kick off the next challenge at CFCP. I am really looking forward to this one. Running has always been the bane of my fitness life (cue up memories of junior high school of my fat ass “running” the mile in the school yard, with all of the other kids blowing by me), so it will be nice to take a four week period to actually focus on improving that.

Team WODs

Leave a reply

Yesterday’s workout was a fun one. Well, “fun” is up for interpretation. I don’t think many would actually think this was “fun”. Maybe I’m just crazy.

We started out with 5 minutes of fun:

1 minute of jack-knifes (20lb med ball)
1 minute of leg raises
1 minute of jack-knifes (20lb med ball)
1 minute of leg raises
1 minute of jack-knifes (20lb med ball)

I think I got something like 109 or 115. The 20 lb medicine ball became heavier and heavier as time went on. I think someone was playing a joke on me. We then continued on to a nice little team WOD that Dave made up:

3 rounds of

2 minutes of {row, renegade row, squat}

I didn’t keep track of my reps here. There was no rest in between rounds and at the end, we had to add up our team score. I don’t remember what my score my team got. We came in 3rd out of the 3 teams, but I still got a great workout.

This Weeks Workouts

Leave a reply

On Wednesday (3/10/2010) night, we did a little number that I thought I did pretty well at. It was three rounds of:

400m run
10 clean to overhead (135lb – Rx)
10 pull ups

My time here was somewhere in the 23:46 area. I don’t remember exactly, but I think that’s right. Like I said, I thought I did pretty well on this one. I didn’t take any walk breaks on the 400’s, although, my last run was SO slow I may as well have been power-walking with my AM/FM headphones on. I felt strong on all of the clean to overheads and OK on the pull ups. I think I could have done more pull ups unbroken, but still, I was happy with my effort.

Friday (3/12/2010), I managed to get out of the house to workout. I was happy that I did because we did “Baseline” two times. The way the workout was written was:

“Baseline” (500m row, 40 squats, 30 sit ups, 20 push ups, 10 pull ups)
Rest 3 minutes
“Baseline” (500m row, 40 squats, 30 sit ups, 20 push ups, 10 pull ups)

There were not enough rowers for us all so we went in heats. The rest ended up being “until the next heat finished” which was closer to about 6 minutes. Again, I improved my baseline time. The last time we did baseline (the night we did it 3x), I did my first round in 5:00 flat. I was using a band (don’t remember the color).

This time, I finished my first round in 4:43. That’s an additional 17 seconds off my original baseline time of 5:40 on my first day of Crossfit. I have gone from jumping to band to kipping pull ups all in less than a year and that makes me happy. I have improved my time while making the workout harder. Cool.

The second set took me 5:14, just about 30 seconds longer than my first set. About 150m into the row, I felt my energy bottom out. It was all mental from there.

Grocery Shopping

Leave a reply

In my last post, I talked about going to the Sassy Pea market on Crystal Falls Pkway. While we were there, I started talking to V about the sense of satisfaction that I get from buying my food from people who actually know where it comes from.

I talked about this with my friend Ryon once and he said “I die a little inside every time I go to Costco”. I can’t think of a better way to say that.

Believe me, Costco has it’s uses, but I don’t really buy that many food items there anymore. Their meat isn’t grass fed and the majority of their produce is not organic. Lately, though, I am starting to see a few more organic products popping up here and there. Still though, there’s no way I can get everything I want/need as far as food goes there.

The next step we took was to start going to Whole Foods. Whole Foods claims that it’s chickens are free range and that it’s “grazing animals” are grass fed. Do I believe them? Well maybe. I don’t know. I can’t see them, nor can I talk to the person that raised the cows/pigs/chickens/etc. Also, their produce is too damn expensive and is shipped around the world from god knows where. In fact, I cracked a joke this weekend at the register asking when they would be accepting “first born child” as a method of payment as I “can’t afford this shit”. I will go adopt a kid and give it to Whole Foods if I have to.

Yes, I was joking. Luckily I can afford to pay for this crap. Hell, you can either pay for it now or later right? I guess I might as well pay now and hopefully not get a bunch of diseases later on.

Whole Foods does a great job of “selling organic”. Yes, I know that tons and tons of fossil fuel was burned to get this cauliflower to the store, but AT LEAST it wasn’t grown with nasty chemicals and <whatever>iscides. I always feel like I am doing something better for myself than buying the beef that walked around in it’s own shit and never saw a blade of grass from Costco/HEB/Walmat/<supermarket>.

I guess where I am headed with all of this is that I want local and I want organic. Yes. I am one of the hippies that I used to always bitch about. The corporate machine, man, the corporate machine is killing the people of this country with the terrible food that they MANUFACTURE to make money. And yes, people are WAY to stupid to know what is going on. Not many people want to know where their food actually comes from and what’s in it.

Getting back to the Sassy Pea market…

I loved shopping here because the woman that I interacted with knows the rancher that she gets the beef from. She knows about the cows, what they ate, why they ate it, and all sorts of great things like that. Do you know what YOU’RE steak ate before you ate it? I’ll bet you don’t. Maybe you THINK you do, but you probably don’t.

Starting on March 27th, Cedar Park will get it’s own Farmer’s Market and I could not be more ecstatic. There is no better food buying experience than being able to ask the person selling you the food how it was produced, what’s in it, and what practices are used. Try THAT at HEB while you buy your <manufactured chemical piece of shit> along with your <two free pieces of shit> that come along with it. Now THAT’S loco.

Weekend Workouts

Leave a reply

Friday was a relatively light work day. Normally, I go over to Jose’s house to work on Friday’s but he’s leaving for a trip, so we decided to work remotely. Since he had to go and pick up a van over lunch, I took the opportunity to accompany V to a Crossfit nooner.

3/5/2010 – Stairway to hell:

100 double unders (sub 300 singles)
90 back extensions
80 squats
70 sit ups
60 lunges (1 per step)
50 push ups
40 box jumps
30 KB swings (1.5 Pood)
20 burpees
10 pull ups

My time was 23:51 Rx. Well, 1/2 Rx? I did 300 singles, not double unders. I would have been there until the evening class if I would have tried. I guess I just need to work on them outside of WODs. Anyway… this workout seemed never ending. Even half way through, it still seemed like I had a ton of work still left to do. Sometimes, it’s just important to finish…

3/6/2010 – Saturday morning, we did the 300 challenge, a first for me.

25 pull ups
50 dead lifts (135lb Rx)
50 push ups
50 box jumps
50 floor wipers
50 KB clean & jerk (1 pood, 25 per arm)
25 pull ups

I came really close to finishing this one, but unfortunately, I will have to give myself a big, fat, DNF. I had 21 pull ups left when the cutoff time of 20 minutes came. Despite that, I am really proud of the effort that I put forth for this one.

I had a conversation with Lance after this WOD. I was lamenting the fact that I didn’t finish and he made a great point. He said that your body doesn’t care if you don’t finish. Your heart, lungs, cardio system, and muscles don’t give a crap. As long as you work hard, you have made a huge deposit into your “health account”. I wasn’t really feeling badly about myself, but this was really good to hear.

I was also really proud of V b/c she used the Rx weight for dead lifts. That’s right, ladies, 95lb dead lifts 50 times. That’s no joke. She also didn’t have to go down to her knees for the push ups. Can your girl do that? (Ryon, don’t answer)

Other than all that, it was a pretty, well… interesting weekend.

The chiropractor we have been going to told us about a place in Leander that sells grass fed beef and pork called the Sassy Pea market. We went there on Saturday to check it out and they had a pretty good selection of stuff. I would like to eventually buy 1/2 a cow and stash it in the freezer, but for now, we just got a few things to try; some short ribs, an arm roast, and some stir fry beef. They didn’t have any ground beef and they were out of pork.

They also have farm eggs, which makes me very happy.

We also had a conversation with them about selling our Perfectly Paleo products at their store. They did tell us that they are trying to do a little farmer’s market type deal and we might be able to sell there at some point. That’s a whole other blog post.

I am sore… and drained in every way I can imagine. Great way to start the week.

Life, these days…

Leave a reply

Life has been really busy lately. It seems that I am starting to take on more responsibility in this little company of ours, which is fine by me. I have never really been a project manager or even any management type, for that matter, but I am learning. As our company grows, my role, I feel will be shifting towards this as well as a lead or high level technical person. I think.

Aside from that, we are still getting things ready for our wedding. The biggest area of focus right now is the invitations. We are very ambitious in what we have planned and we need to get it done… like 3 weeks ago. If our wedding planning were a restaurant, we’d be “in the weeds”.

On top of that, we are in the preliminary stages of getting “Perfectly Paleo” set up so that we can actually start selling items legitimately while protecting ourselves from civil liability. Fun. Who knew I would one day be starting a business. Not me. It’s pretty damn exciting, but a lot of research and work. There are so many unknowns and so many questions. Hopefully once we are passed this initial period, we will be able to start working on actually growing the thing to replace Victoria’s current job. I don’t see that happening for a while, though.

What else…

As much as I try to not allow it to, money has been somewhat stressing me out. I am, thankfully, in a really good financial situation at the moment, but when large expenses start rolling in, I get stressed out. Currently, we are looking at a few things like replacing the roof, an unexpected medical bill, and obviously, our wedding. We are also looking at some start up costs or the aforementioned business.

Tonight, we are going for our second visit to Maximized Living in Cedar Park. This office is a special branch of chiropractic care that looks for something called “subluxation” in your spine. That means that it looks for stuff that’s out of whack in your spine that might be compressing or hindering the communication of your nervous system. Although it might not hurt, you still might see adverse affects from something being slightly blocked or compressed. Last time, they just took x-rays. Tonight, we are going to sit with Dr. Meers and actually look at the x-rays to see what they have found. I am really fascinated by this.

Tonight is also the primaries here in TX. There are lots of people running for lots of offices, so I am trying to figure out who best to vote for.

Busy.