It does appear that it has been almost a month since i have been to crossfit...gasp. Work, travel and life has taken the insane approach and very sadly even though i'm only going to crossfit 1x a week sadly crossfit got dropped. Although that being said, in about 6 weeks time I may be back to 3-4x a week. I've pretty much decided on the OC tri as it looks like Pumpkinman is the weekend after I will be returning from an experimental trial that might be a little exhausting and I won't have enough time to travel to Las Vegas for the tri either due to travelling. So...i have approximately 6 weeks. It will be interesting. The only lingering question in my mind: Should I do the 50 mile bike ride (not a race, just a fun ride) the day before?
For crossfit today was 3x:
21 double unders
21 dumbell squats-jerk 20lbs (rxd was 25)
3 rope climbs
hahahaha...i can't climb the rope to save my life. I did improve (sorta) as the rounds went on, but I just lose the rope under me after I have hoisted myself up and then i'm just hanging by my arms. No good.
I did have to scale down the db squats-jerks but only to 20lb dbs and I felt I did those at a reasonable clip...still hard, and tiring but decent effort. I think the rxd 25 pounds would have put me on the floor, so a decent edge for me. Happy to be back though, even though I can tell the arms are going to be decently sore tomorrow.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Start value = 6.5
I have been watching a LOT of the olympics and recently when the individual events for gymnastics came up some differences in approach started to show. There were some athletes that would do a reasonably hard routine, but not go for the highest start value = 6.5. They would execute well and then wait and see if anyone could challenge the well executed, but maybe not the 'all for glory' type of routine. Then other athletes would go for the highest start value and basically go for gold. It was all or nothing baby. It was a mentality of 'in it to win it' and if they fell...they fell and that was it, game over...but if they executed perfectly it was all about the podium...all about gold.
This mindset has challenged me a little in general life, work and whathaveyou. I only get one shot at this life, why not go for a start value of 6.5 on things? I most of the time will do a 'no guts no glory' attitude on things, but today as I was putting together a plan for some experiments that I have to run off site, my co-worker interrupted me as I was still in the middle of the laundry list of things I wanted to do during this experiment and said: Are you on drugs?? (OK maybe I am asking a lot...but that's the way it goes.)
No guts no glory right? Shoot for the stars and you might hit the moon. But I don't always take this approach and sometimes, well...sometimes maybe it is worth it to go for a start value of 6.5 and just see what happens. Maybe I will fall on my face, but maybe I will stick the landing and then...gold.
This mindset has challenged me a little in general life, work and whathaveyou. I only get one shot at this life, why not go for a start value of 6.5 on things? I most of the time will do a 'no guts no glory' attitude on things, but today as I was putting together a plan for some experiments that I have to run off site, my co-worker interrupted me as I was still in the middle of the laundry list of things I wanted to do during this experiment and said: Are you on drugs?? (OK maybe I am asking a lot...but that's the way it goes.)
No guts no glory right? Shoot for the stars and you might hit the moon. But I don't always take this approach and sometimes, well...sometimes maybe it is worth it to go for a start value of 6.5 and just see what happens. Maybe I will fall on my face, but maybe I will stick the landing and then...gold.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Getting my legs under me
I just had a great run for me and now I need to share it:
Mile 1:10:07, 143bpm
Mile 2:8:49, 162bpm
Mile 3:8:54, 163bpm
Mile 4:8:37, 167bpm
Mile 5: cool down
The goal of the run, middle three miles to be in my LT which for me is between 160-170bpm. And the result...THREE MILES SUB 9MPM. OK...not superhuman fast but after months of being injured and months of fighting back and looking at my fitness a year ago and it being in the total trash due to my focus being graduating it just been a long road back. It has been a long while since I felt good about my running and fitness in general and I am starting to feel better about it all and let me just say: it.feels.so.good.
Ohhh update on my general aversion to masters swim: I didn't avoid it yesterday. THREE weeks in a row, YEA. Sadly the coach failed to show up so someone scribbled a workout on the board and my lane mate sorta helped me decide what to do. I still showed up...and that counts in my book.
Mile 1:10:07, 143bpm
Mile 2:8:49, 162bpm
Mile 3:8:54, 163bpm
Mile 4:8:37, 167bpm
Mile 5: cool down
The goal of the run, middle three miles to be in my LT which for me is between 160-170bpm. And the result...THREE MILES SUB 9MPM. OK...not superhuman fast but after months of being injured and months of fighting back and looking at my fitness a year ago and it being in the total trash due to my focus being graduating it just been a long road back. It has been a long while since I felt good about my running and fitness in general and I am starting to feel better about it all and let me just say: it.feels.so.good.
Ohhh update on my general aversion to masters swim: I didn't avoid it yesterday. THREE weeks in a row, YEA. Sadly the coach failed to show up so someone scribbled a workout on the board and my lane mate sorta helped me decide what to do. I still showed up...and that counts in my book.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Blame the Olympics
I don't even own a TV that I can watch the Olympics on, but I am glued to it at my friend's house. Little blogging I'm sure will happen over this Olympic time period. Olympics + crazy business with everything = me...not enough sleep, lots of work, and not enough sleep. But can I make one ity bity complaint? Can Micheal Phelps be just a smidge, just a smidge more excited when he get a gold medal? I mean we don't need a display like his excitment over the 4x100 relay(I mean who wasn't screaming over that one?), but to break a world record in the 200 butterfly and while earing the MOST career golds with.that.race. and have this look of disappointment. They speculate he was going for a faster time...but seriously...look sorta excited. Puuuuleez. (edit:so...today I found out that his disgruntled-ness may have been due to water in the goggles...but this is not the first ho-hum "gee I won a race/broke a world record." Come'on show a little excitement, it IS the OLYMPICS. But that is just MY opinion.)
I have to decide pronto on if I am doing an oly in 6 or 10 weeks...i'm leaning towards one in 10...but I may have a work conflict. I should know that verdict soon here.
Training is going remarkably well for having little focus. I have been swimming a lot more lately between masters and joining katie b and co for some open water swimming last week. I am finally getting my legs back under me with my running and starting to see my times drop, which is so nice. My 7 mile run last sunday, majority of the run was in a pace range I like and I am starting to feel like my hip is back to normal and my legs are just beginning to like the whole 'training' thing again where I am going faster for me, and able to start pushing some real boundries. It is starting to come together.
I have to decide pronto on if I am doing an oly in 6 or 10 weeks...i'm leaning towards one in 10...but I may have a work conflict. I should know that verdict soon here.
Training is going remarkably well for having little focus. I have been swimming a lot more lately between masters and joining katie b and co for some open water swimming last week. I am finally getting my legs back under me with my running and starting to see my times drop, which is so nice. My 7 mile run last sunday, majority of the run was in a pace range I like and I am starting to feel like my hip is back to normal and my legs are just beginning to like the whole 'training' thing again where I am going faster for me, and able to start pushing some real boundries. It is starting to come together.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Round these parts...
It has been chaos in my little life. But things are just going all crazy and not much I can do about it but hang on for a crazy ride.
I had a pretty awesome weekend of training. I had a really awesome ride on Saturday. The group I went out with I was new-er to the group as I had only been out with some of these people (OK one of this group) the week before. So I had no idea where on the riding spectrum I would fall. We headed out and somehow I found myself with the 'fast cats'. Oh crap was my thought. But I did hold their pace for most of the ride and near the end when I started to fade a little, they kicked it back a notch so I didn't completely fall off the bandwagon, which I totally appreciated. I had a great ride and enjoyed the day.
Sunday I pounded through a 8 mile run that really was supposed to be 9 miles. Parts of it sucked like no other, but i think part is just reminding myself how to run on tired legs. That can be a bigger mental exercise than an actual physical one...especially when it is warm.
Total success on monday...i dragged my butt back to masters...woohoo...it was pretty funny though because there were 3 lanes. The REALLY fast lane, the FASTER lane and then my lane. (YES me with my spastic puppy swimming) The first two lanes were made up of people who actually knew the drills the coach was talking about and then there was me and my lane who contained a variety of knowledge, I won't speak for the other three people in my lane, but it didn't seem like there was whole lot of drill knowledge between the four of us on anything but freestyle. And considering we were doing 100m IM sets...only being familiar with freestyle drills only gets you 1/4 of the way through these things. So there was a lot of: What does she mean by that? Um...what? I'm just going to do freestyle. Now granted in undergrad I did take two semesters of 'swim class' so I'm not a complete newbie to doing drills and such, but but that was...gasp...over 10ish years ago when I actually took those classes. So this was me during the class:
Uh...what is the order of the strokes?
Uh...what if you can't actually DO the butterfly? (For the record...I do more of a butterflop) And you want me to do WHAT without choking on the water? And after explanation of one of the drills...this what went through MY head: how exactly am I to do a dolphin kick with breast stroke arms and not find myself at the bottom of the pool?
Uh...what do you mean by a breast stroke drill?Practice the leg part on my back? (what is this lady talking about)
Uh...backstroke drill? You mean you actually want me to do the backstroke in a straight line and not hit the other 3 people in my lane. Funny lady.
By the end of all our IM drills, I actually did attempt to do the butterfly for a couple of the 25m...one time I was doing actually ok (granted it was more of a moth than a butterfly...but the flailing did seem to be in the correct timing of the stroke) and THEN my calf cramped up and I nearly drown. So I went back to flopping around in the water. I think in total I made it once about halfway down the lane before I started to hyperventilate.
I was just happy I made it back to masters without coming up with a zillion excuses. YEA...swimming goal at the moment is to go to masters once a week and an open water swim once a week. I'm just trying to swim more and not worry too much about my pathetic slow nature in the water. Consistent swimming will help, even just increased endurance in swimming will help with my speed. I just need to get to the water on a consistent basis.
I had a pretty awesome weekend of training. I had a really awesome ride on Saturday. The group I went out with I was new-er to the group as I had only been out with some of these people (OK one of this group) the week before. So I had no idea where on the riding spectrum I would fall. We headed out and somehow I found myself with the 'fast cats'. Oh crap was my thought. But I did hold their pace for most of the ride and near the end when I started to fade a little, they kicked it back a notch so I didn't completely fall off the bandwagon, which I totally appreciated. I had a great ride and enjoyed the day.
Sunday I pounded through a 8 mile run that really was supposed to be 9 miles. Parts of it sucked like no other, but i think part is just reminding myself how to run on tired legs. That can be a bigger mental exercise than an actual physical one...especially when it is warm.
Total success on monday...i dragged my butt back to masters...woohoo...it was pretty funny though because there were 3 lanes. The REALLY fast lane, the FASTER lane and then my lane. (YES me with my spastic puppy swimming) The first two lanes were made up of people who actually knew the drills the coach was talking about and then there was me and my lane who contained a variety of knowledge, I won't speak for the other three people in my lane, but it didn't seem like there was whole lot of drill knowledge between the four of us on anything but freestyle. And considering we were doing 100m IM sets...only being familiar with freestyle drills only gets you 1/4 of the way through these things. So there was a lot of: What does she mean by that? Um...what? I'm just going to do freestyle. Now granted in undergrad I did take two semesters of 'swim class' so I'm not a complete newbie to doing drills and such, but but that was...gasp...over 10ish years ago when I actually took those classes. So this was me during the class:
Uh...what is the order of the strokes?
Uh...what if you can't actually DO the butterfly? (For the record...I do more of a butterflop) And you want me to do WHAT without choking on the water? And after explanation of one of the drills...this what went through MY head: how exactly am I to do a dolphin kick with breast stroke arms and not find myself at the bottom of the pool?
Uh...what do you mean by a breast stroke drill?Practice the leg part on my back? (what is this lady talking about)
Uh...backstroke drill? You mean you actually want me to do the backstroke in a straight line and not hit the other 3 people in my lane. Funny lady.
By the end of all our IM drills, I actually did attempt to do the butterfly for a couple of the 25m...one time I was doing actually ok (granted it was more of a moth than a butterfly...but the flailing did seem to be in the correct timing of the stroke) and THEN my calf cramped up and I nearly drown. So I went back to flopping around in the water. I think in total I made it once about halfway down the lane before I started to hyperventilate.
I was just happy I made it back to masters without coming up with a zillion excuses. YEA...swimming goal at the moment is to go to masters once a week and an open water swim once a week. I'm just trying to swim more and not worry too much about my pathetic slow nature in the water. Consistent swimming will help, even just increased endurance in swimming will help with my speed. I just need to get to the water on a consistent basis.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Speedy is IN!
And she crossed the line in 12:24! SpeedySpeedracer just finished the Vineman full course today! Woohoo! Send a congrats to her and for an awesome accomplishment!!! Great Job Claire!
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