Operation Get Some–Thoughts Prior to Competing

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I have been thinking about this a bit as this event has been approaching and thought it would be interesting to get my thoughts prior to and after this “Operation Get Some” business that CFCP is hosting today.

Typically, I hate competing in stuff. Especially, stuff that I am nowhere near competent to be competing in. I used to watch people test for kung fu and wonder why in the hell they were up doing what they were doing if they knew that they weren’t competent with what they had to do or perform.

I find myself feeling VERY pessimistic about doing this. I fully assume that I will be DFL (figure it out) on every event and I don’t even know what the events are! It also does not help that I have been sick for the last few days (first time in way over a year) and have not slept well in quite a few nights. I am not making pre-game-excuses, just venting about what’s on my mind. Also, I paid before I got sick.

At any rate, I fully expect to compete with no one and to have my ass thoroughly handed to me. In the end, I, at the very least will have more activity in one day than the average American does in a month (probably).

Double Unders!

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I can say that I am finally getting my double unders under control which is making WODs that include them WAY more enjoyable.

Friday, 2/4/2011

CFCP was closed because of bad weather, but they made a WOD that everyone could do at home:

  • 50 – 40 – 30 – 20 – 10 Double Unders with 10 burpess between each set

My time on this one  was 8:15. NOT BAD! I was really happy with how my double unders went! I think that my smallest string was 8 or something like that.

 

Monday, 2/7/2011

WODDING in a hotel is always fun. Ryon and I scoped out the weight room and there was ample space for the following (I suggested to Dave, then he added the tweak on the double unders):

10x

  • 10 push ups
  • 10 sit ups
  • 10 air squats
  • 10 double unders (must be unbroken to count – this was Dave’s addition)

I didn’t time this one as Ryon and I were sharing the rope, but it felt like right around 9-11 minutes. Nice little lung burner. I really thought that I would have a lot of problems with the unbroken DU’s, but I will be damned if I only messed up on 2 sets! WOW!

 

Tuesday, 2/8/2011

Ryon asked if I wanted to try some weight under load stuff. It sounded interesting so, of course, I wanted to! We did the following four exercises:

  • Back Squat
  • Lat Pull Down
  • Shoulder Press
  • Bench Press

For each of these, we used a 10 second up, 10 second down scheme until failure. 2 sets each. I think for the most part, I was able to go for 1 – 2 minutes on each exercise. It was a lot of fun, and really interesting to try something different. I would like to incorporate this in 1x/week, but I’ll talk to Dave about that.

What Have I Been Eating

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Sunday, 1/30/2011

9:30am: Breakfast: 3 scrambled eggs + 3 veggie cakes (carrot/zucchini) + coffee w/ heavy cream

3:30pm: Lunch: Paleo chicken salad with mixed green salad.

9:00pm: Dinner: Buffalo chopped salad.

 

Monday, 1/31/2011

6:30am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with spinach and mushrooms, coffee w/ heavy cream

12:30pm: Lunch: Stir fry – 1c chicken, whole bag of broccoli, carrots/celery

3:30pm: Snack: 1/2 paleo chicken salad

6:30pm: WOD – 3x{30 OHS@75#, 400m run, 21 pull ups} – 21:51, cycled 5 butterfly kips

7:50pm: Dinner: 1 small hamburger (GF beef) over lots of greens, 1 tomato, and 1 pickle dressed with paleo mayo + red hot

Tuesday, 2/1/2011

8:40am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with buffalo (about 1/2c), spinach, and mushrooms, coffee w/ heavy cream

2:05pm: Lunch: Ground beef + spinach + rotelle + spinach

7:00pm: WOD: Tabata Tabata: All rounds 11/12/13, Snatches, got up to 145#

9:20pm: Dinner: Chicken chopped salad

Wednesday, 2/2/2011

9:40am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with spinach and mushrooms, coffee w/ heavy cream

1:40pm: Lunch: Ground beef + spinach + rotelle + spices + coconut milk

4:45pm: Snack: 1/4c nuts/seeds + 1/4c coconut

7:00pm: WOD: 15/30, 12/24, 9/18, 6/12, 3/6 power clean/ring dip: 14:05

8:10pm: Dinner @ Manuel’s: 1/2 ceviche Appetizer followed by beef and chicken fajitas with extra vegetables, lettuce, and guac.

Thursday, 2/3/2011

9:40am: Breakfast: 2 eggs plus some lunch from yesterday

3:00pm: Lunch: 2c paleo chicken salad + lots of arugula + food processor

10:30pm: Dinner: 1 Chicken breast + 1 bag of broccoli + mushrooms + artichokes stir fried with some liquid aminos

Friday, 2/4/2011

10:00am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with spinach and mushrooms + 3 slices of bacon, coffee w/ heavy cream

3:00pm: Lunch: Chipotle salad with carnitas and barbacoa + guac

5:45pm: WOD: 50-40-30-20-10 double unders with 10 burpees between each set: 8:15

7:30pm: Lunch: Ground beef + spinach + rotelle + spinach

Saturday, 2/5/2011

10:30am: Breakfast: 3 paleo pancakes (almond flour + egg) with spinach and bacon hash

2:00pm: Lunch: Hamburger salad (1 burger, lots of greens, tomato, pickle, paleo mayo, red hot)

2:30pm-6:00pm: WOD: Helped Ryan Christian move. Lifted a lot of heavy stuff.

8:30pm: Dinner: 1/2 a pizza (canadian bacon, mushrooms, pineapple), 10 boneless wings, chocolate chip cookies (many)

Sunday, 2/6/2011

10:40am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with spinach and mushrooms + 2 slices of bacon

———————- Traveling to Pittsburgh ———————-

5:20pm: Airport Snack: Paleo trail mix, a few handfuls.

9:15pm: Dinner @ Hotel Restaurant: Lg spinach salad with lg plate of chicken/beef fajitas

Monday, 2/7/2011

8:10am: Breakfast @ Hotel Restaurant: Omelet with sausage and double spinach, side of bacon. Totally DNF’d. Coffee w/ cream.

1:30pm: Lunch @ Cafeteria: Lg Salad (mixed greens, spinach, egg, turkey, tomato, cucumber, beets, bacon bits, vinegar, and oil)

6:15pm: WOD: 10x{10 push ups, 10 sit ups, 10 squats, 10 double unders (don’t count unless unbroken)}: Didn’t time. Was sharing my rope, but I would guess ballpark 9-11 minutes.

7:40pm: Dinner @ Toast! (Tasting menu): Lamb ribs with fennel, salmon with green beans, Caesar salad, beet salad, suckling pig, duck confit.

Tuesday, 2/8/2011

8:00am: Breakfast @ Hotel Restaurant: Omelet with double spinach, bacon, and mushrooms + hot tea

1:30pm: Lunch @ Nine on Nine: Beet salad followed by hanger steak salad (fork dipped the ranch).

6:00pm: WOD: Muscles under load. Back squat, lat pull down, shoulder press, and bench press. 10s up 10s down until failure, 2 sets each.

7:45pm: Dinner @ Toast! (Tasting menu): Lamb ribs, fried brussel sprout leaves, trout with kale, salmon, spinach salad with bacon dressing with an over easy egg, beet salad with arugula and goat cheese, hanger steak with yams (at a tiny bite) and parsnip, rib eye with sweet potato, and regular potato (but I didn’t eat the potatoes).

WODs in the COLD

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CFCP is closed tonight due to snow. It’s funny how the entire area goes bananas when we get snow. Although it’s probably the right choice to make sure no one gets hurt, the NY’er in me finds the response to less than 1″ of snow to somewhat hilarious.

Tuesday, 2/1/2011

3×3 snatch – This just sucked for me. I don’t really know what to attribute it to. Cold, tired, sore… just a bad day. Things just weren’t working and for whatever reason, I just could not get the technique to go like I usually do. On Monday, I was snatching 145# pretty effortlessly. This time, I was having problems with 115#. Some days you got it, and some days you don’t.

“Tabata Tabata”

  • 40s on / 20s off on the C2, must stay within 3 calories of previous round.
  • Penalty of 1 strict pull up for every calorie outside of plus/minus 3 of previous round.

All of my rounds were either 12 or 13 calories. No strict pull ups for me!

Wednesday, 2/2/2011

“Double Your Fun” (I named this one myself)

  • 15 power cleans
  • 30 ring dips
  • 12 power cleans
  • 24 ring dips
  • 9 power cleans
  • 18 ring dips
  • 6 power cleans
  • 12 ring dips
  • 3 power cleans
  • 6 ring dips

My time was 14:05. I started out with the purple band on the dips because I wanted to work my range of motion. Somewhere at about 15 or so, I started failing out, so I just took the band off and decided to kip. I guess you can’t really say that I fully Rx’d this one, but I mostly Rx’d it. I still paid attention to my ROM on the dips as much as possible, but man, 90 of them is no small task.

Baby Update

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Time is flying by SO quickly. It seems like just last week I got an MMS sitting in a hotel room in Nashville, TN of a positive pregnancy test.

Now, there are about 12 weeks left until we get to meet little Alexander or Brenna. Whoa.

Things are mostly ready, I would say. We have most of the major stuff. Crib, dresser, glider, clothes, diapers, strollers, toys… and we haven’t even had the baby shower yet. I cannot believe how nice people have been with giving us things that they no longer needed. Believe me, it’s a HUGE help for us and I can’t even begin to describe how helpful this all is. Thank you all so much for your various donations.

One of our good friends is planning a baby shower for V at the beginning of March, so I assume we will get a lot more of what we need then. One of my good friends asked if he could throw me a diaper party. Although I have never heard of this, I welcome anything that people want to do for me =) I consider it good karma. I try to do good things for people so, I never refuse an open invitation for help.

Our Bradley classes are going very well. I am learning SO much about so many things that I have never thought about or considered. I will say that opting to do a natural birth (and, I’m talking about a REAL natural birth, not what you refer to as “natural birth” while in a hospital… that isn’t a natural birth, that’s just you not getting drugged, but that’s another blog all together) has been a very enlightening experience and oddly empowering. To be able to know everything about the process and be able to know when certain things are MEDICALLY necessary and when they are not really helps to make this whole process a bit more comfortable.

In addition to the classes, I am also reading various baby books that talk about labor/delivery and then just overall baby care. Although being a Dad is something I have always wanted and assumed would happen, it literally scares the shit of me to know that I will soon be responsible for another life. The mix of emotions is mind boggling. I am to excited to describe while at the same time terrified that I will do something wrong or make the wrong decision or mess the kid up somehow. I know most will read this and say “don’t worry about it, everything will be fine”, and for the most part, I know it will. These are just my crazy thoughts.

We just had our 28 week appointment yesterday and everything seemed to be fine. The baby’s heartbeat was good and strong. Mama is doing ok too. There’s the general discomfort that goes along with getting bigger and having strain on joints and all of that, but overall, I think she’s doing really well.

I guess we are getting to the home stretch now. Stay tuned!

Knocked Down A Notch

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I was sort of riding high after doing so well at CFCP on Friday night. I performed way better than I thought I could and tried to carry that through Saturday (which I did) and wanted to just kill our WOD last night. Unfortunately, that didn’t really happy. I was dead tired by the time I got there and last night was a doozy.

Warm Up

  • 3 minutes on the C2, damper 3, pull your body weight in watts
  • 3 minutes on the C2, damper 3, pull your body weight in watts, but only 20 strokes/minute
  • stretches
  • 50 GHD sit ups and 50 GHD back extensions superset with 3-5 snatches – got up to snatching 145#

WOD

3x

  • 30 Overhead Squat using 75#
  • 400m run
  • 21 pull ups

My time was 21:51 which I was really not happy with. My runs were terrible. I tried to push it on the first one, but the subsequent two were back to that shitty jog crap stuff. I have found that 400m runs at the 609 box are WAY harder than 400m runs at the clinic. Not complaining, just stating a fact.

On the bright side, I somehow managed to get in 5 pull ups using the butterfly kip (no idea why it’s called that, but whatever). I will have to work on figuring that one out again.

What I’ve Been Eating

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Wednesday, 1/26/2011

7:40am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with spinach and mushrooms

1:10pm: Lunch: 1/2lb ground beef with spinach, tomatoes, and spices

6:30pm: WOD: 3x r/l turkish getup, 3x r/l KB c&j, 3x r/l KB snatch, 1.5 pood, 16:16

8:30pm: Dinner: Chipotle salad: Double meat (carnitas), double veg, just tobasco for dressing

Thursday, 1/27/2011

8:05am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with spinach and mushrooms, plus coffee w/ heavy cream

1:05pm: Lunch: 1.5c paleo chicken salad, bowl of broccoli coup

8:30pm: WOD: 100 sit ups, 100 reverse sit ups, no time.

9:20pm: Dinner: Bowl of broccoli soup, 5 slices of buffalo, 1/2 avocado

Friday, 1/28/2011

8:20am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with spinach and mushrooms, plus coffee w/ heavy cream

12:05pm: Lunch: 1.5c paleo chicken salad, bowl of broccoli coup

6:30pm: WOD: Row 1k, Run 800m, Row 1k, 13:05. Pow!

9:50pm: Dinner @ Pluckers: Salad with extra meat +bacon, -cheese. Used medium for dressing.

 

Saturday, 1/29/2011

8:30am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with spinach and mushrooms, plus coffee w/ heavy cream

9:30am: WOD: Open Gym "Superbowl Shuffle" – AMRAP(20) of 7 burpees, 14 push ups, 21 box jumps, 28 lunges (14 r/l). Wasn’t counting but I think I got 5 rounds.

11:50am: Lunch: Beef with rotelle and lots of spinach

5:50pm: Dinner @ Homeslice: 3 pieces of pizza (2 reg, 1 pepperoni), PBJ Donut from Gordough’s

More WODs!

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Thursday (1/27/2011) evening, my words of “Dave, for the next 8 weeks, I will do whatever you tell me to do” came back to haunt me. I got a text that said “WOD 100 sit ups, 100 reverse sit ups, try to do sets of at least 25, no time”.

Sigh.

Sigh because I really suck at sit ups. But whatever, I did it. I got some cramps which sucked, but I was able to do the regular sit ups in sets of 25. The reverse sit ups hurt way too much to do more than 10-15 at a time. Sad, I know.

Friday (1/28/2011), I got another text from Dave saying “you should come to class tonight”… so I did. The WOD was something I didn’t really have a very positive feeling about especially for a lumbering lardo like myself. It was:

  • 1000m row
  • 800m run
  • 10000m row

I have to admit that I really surprised myself here. I finished in 13:05 and didn’t really feel all that bad. Don’t get me wrong, the last 500m on the C2 felt like an eternity, but at least you know with the rower, that if you keep going, eventually it will be over. The 800m felt just fine and I was able to actually run rather than do that silly looking jog/speed walk crap.

Saturday (1/29/2011), Jody showed us a good time at open gym with “The Superbowl Shuffle” which was a 20 minute AMRAP of:

  • 7 burpees
  • 14 CF games style push ups (where you take your hands off the floor at the bottom)
  • 21 box jumps
  • 28 lunges (14 R/L)

I didn’t count, but I think I got either 4 or 5 rounds in. Whatever it was, it was a good WOD and it felt good to move. She followed that WOD up with “Five Minutes of Fun” which is anything but. Well, it’s 5 minutes, but it sure as shit is not fun.

So there you have it. I worked out for 6 consecutive days this week and am feeling just fine… great, in fact. Maybe these green things really are magical. I haven’t been all that sore either. Maybe just a little bit here and there, but really, I feel like I can do whatever whenever. My recovery is getting much better too. About 2 minutes after that row/run/row WOD, I was pretty much ready to do something else.

Kettle Bell Fun

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Wednesday night… oh, Wednesday night (1/26/2011)…

I looked forward to the WOD all day because I generally like kettle bell workouts and this one had some movements that we don’t normally get to do.

I feel the need to list out the warm up as it was pretty damn significant.

  • 5 minutes of jump rope
  • 2 minutes of double unders (I did 38 in a row which is a new record!)
  • Stretches
  • 50 GHD sit ups
  • 50 GHD back extensions
  • 25 snatch balance (started with 45#, then went to #75, then #95)
  • Group warm up

After all of that, the WOD was 4 rounds of:

  • 3 Turkish get-ups (R)
  • 3 Turkish get-ups (L)
  • 3 Clean & Jerk (R)
  • 3 Clean & Jerk (L)
  • 3 Snatch (R)
  • 3 Snatch (L)

The prescribed weight for this was 1.5 pood or ~55#. It took me 16:16 to get it done. To be honest, the clean & jerk and the snatches weren’t that bad. The Turkish get-ups were really difficult skill-wise and I failed on a few of them simply because I couldn’t keep my arm locked out through getting all of the way up and down. I am thankful for Fio’s encouragement to stick with it because I really wanted to drop the weight just to finish the WOD.

In case you don’t know what a Turkish get-up is, check this video out (but imagine a kettle bell in place of the wife):

Last night (1/27/2011), Dave sent me a WOD to do at home. It was 100 sit-ups and 100 reverse sit-ups. Not for time, but more so to try and work in unbroken sets. I was able to do the sit-ups in sets of 25, but the reverse sit-ups were a whole other story. I could only do those in about sets of 10-15. When I do a lot of ab work, I get really bad cramps. It’s really irritating.