Well, my 3rd and final day at Crossfit Connex was pretty awesome, because I got to work out with my Mommy again! It was just the two of us, and at 7 am.. fun times. We had to do the following:

12 min AMRAP
10 med ball cleans (14 lbs)
10 wall balls (14 lbs)
200 m run (Mom rowed instead of running)

I finished 3 rounds, yay!!

Day 2 of Out of Town Crossfit at Crossfit Connex

I took my 16 year old nephew, Mitch, to crossfit with me on Monday after I picked him up from school. He said the night before that he was interested, so I was super psyched to take him! How many 16 year olds are interested in stuff that’s legal, OR good for you? Come on.. I jumped on that opportunity! Now, this shit was pretty intense…  We had to do 5 rounds of 3 min AMRAPs with 1 min of rest in between. When we were finished, they totaled up points for the number of rounds that you did for each AMRAP.

Because Mitch hadn’t practiced power cleans, he had to do burpees instead, which he wasn’t happy about! I knew he wanted to ‘fit in’ and do what everyone else was doing, but I told him that he’d be glad he only had to do burpees by the time it was over. 🙂

The WOD was called The Chief:
5 Rounds, 3 min AMRAP
3 power cleans (85lbs for me)
6 push ups
9 air squats
1 min rest

My goal was 3 sets per round. I ended up doing, 3; 3; 2 + 3 power cleans; 2 + 3 power cleans, 6 push ups; 3 + 1 power clean.  Whew. Shit was HARD.  Mitch was BEAT but he killed it!! He said he couldn’t move his arms anymore when we got into the car.. from all the push ups! 🙂

The next morning, he ended up sleeping in, and missed the first hour of school. He almost couldn’t get out of bed! My sister gave him some Advil and I offered to take him to school, since it was my fault for him going to crossfit in the first place. 😀

Wee!! Surprise Crossfit workout with my Mommy and sister in Madison, Wisconsin! It was all a part of the Mother’s Day plan, and it worked out beautifully!! I flew to Milwaukee late Friday night and drove to Madison.. I stayed in a hotel, and the plan was to go to crossfit at Crossfit Connex for the Saturday morning workout, and have my sister Tori tell my mom that she wanted to go and try it out, since normally Mom doesn’t go to crossfit on Saturdays! Whew.. anyway, it WORKED! And I was there when she showed up and she freaked out, and was really really surprised, and it was AWESOME. 😀 YAY!

Fortunately, even thought I ate like half a loaf of Stella’s famous Hot and Spicy cheese bread on Saturday, and a piece of Kentucky Derby pie that I helped my mom make on Sunday, I still lost another pound! That’s cause I busted my ass 3 different days at Connex. YEAH!

Here’s how it went:

Day 1 Saturday, May 12th, 2012 – Surprise Workout with Mom
was different, not something I had done before, as far as the rotations went, but we did 3 person teams. 1 person would row for 500m, while the other two on the team would do as many rounds of the following during that 500m row:

10 push ups
10 sit ups
10 air squats

When the person rowing was done, you had to rotate. One person would keep doing their round of the above, and the other would switch. If you didn’t finish your round when the one person was done rowing and it was your turn to row, that round didn’t count towards your total #. I ended up doing 6 rounds total, but I don’t remember our team’s total! Either way, it was a surprise for my sister, who had never done CrossFit before. Was so proud of her for trying!

Then we went to the farmer’s market in Downtown Madison and proceeded to pig out on spicy cheese bread. SO DAMN GOOD. I brought 4 loaves home for the troops. 🙂 (Dave)

No benchmark WODs today, but that’s okay! My left trap has really been bugging me lately, probably from all the flexing I’ve been doing.. so it’s sore now, and I’m sure today’s workout didn’t help much, heh. ANYWAY, today we did the following:

For our strength WOD (warm ups) 4 Rounds:
8 rows
8 strict pull ups (banded)
8 PVC pipe pass throughs

For our WOD: 4RFT
10 Push Presses (75lbs)
8 KBS 1.5pd (53 lbs!)
80m shuttle run (suicides, for those of you who did sports in high school..)

I finished at 11:38. 🙂

Elaine and me – our signature pose. 😀

FIFTY DAYS OF CROSSFIT!!!! With some good news, too! Here’s what I posted on FB.

“Alright.. I’m feeling a little too proud of myself to not share this with everyone!! As of today, I am officially down 21 pounds, several belt loops, one t-shirt and dress size, and 1-3 pants sizes (depending on the store..) I feel SO good, and I owe it all to CrossFit Inertia and the Erins, Erin Mouser and Erin Riddell- Carter. I have the most incredible support system and having everyone compete and struggle and get through it right there alongside me has made this journey that much more amazing! I’m so looking forward to everything else that’s headed our way. THANK YOUUUU!! ♥”

We’ve been working on benchmark WODs lately, which although hard, is really cool to me because at some point, we’ll come back and do these, and see how far we’ve come!! I’m kind of excited to see where I’ll be in a few months, or next year even!

On Wednesday, we did Jackie. Jackie was HARD.. but, looking back on it now, it’s like eh, that really wasn’t so bad?

First we started with our warm ups, and today was Strict Press. I PRed at 95lbs. My last weight for presses was 90 lbs back on March 16th.  I REALLY struggled with 95lbs so I didn’t try to go up in weight.  I also strained my back a little to try and get under the bar.. Since we can’t use momentum to press on a strict press, I felt myself using my back instead, and strained the right side. Fortunately, when we stretched out, we did something totally crazy during the cool down that completely released that muscle.  Had we not done those, there would’ve been some serious problems, I gather!

Anyway, Jackie! Jackie is
1000m Row
50 Thrusters (45lbs)
30 pull ups (jumping pull ups for me)

My last Row time was 4 min 42 sec, so I tried to beat my own time on this.  If I recall correctly, it was right around 4 min 30 sec this time! Weeee.

Elaine and I finished “Jackie” at exactly the same time, 13:51! Pretty cool to call time together. 😀 She was doing banded pull ups though, so she had more intensity with hers.. Even banded pull ups for me, man.. I can do a few, but then my arms just physically aren’t strong enough to pull me up past a certain point. It’s frustrating, but I just have to keep working at it.

Today we tackled Kelly… I’ve never done Kelly before, but man… that was pretty intense! So.. Kelly is the following:

5RFT with a 30 min cap
400m run
30 box jumps 20″
30 wall balls 14lb

I got through 3 rounds exactly. I had about 15 seconds left over when I finished my wall balls, but there was no chance in hell I was gonna go run 100 feet and then come back in, so I collapsed early. If that sounds lazy, I’m sorry! Not meant to be that way.  This was one of the harder workouts that I’ve done.. one of those ones where you feel like you’re going to throw up, you’re really really red and hot and you can feel it, and your heart is pumping wildly fast.  As I was laying on the ground, trying to catch my breath, I checked my pulse and it was at 150 bpm, hah. I normally have a pretty high resting heart rate of 90ish or so, so I suppose 150 really isn’t that high, but MAN we were all burning up and red-faced at the end of this one!

After our cool down stretches, which ended in some figure 4s on our backs, Scott (coach!) said alright guys, you’re all finished! And nobody moved. That doesn’t happen very often, but once we realized that nobody was moving, we all started laughing. 😀 Good times! I love Crossfit!

Because of the SE Regionals, we didn’t have crossfit on Monday, so lots of us (well 2 of us) opted to do 3 days in a row, which, is badass.  What’s even more badass is 5 days in a row, but that’s realistically rare (even though I WANT to do 5 days in a row! There just isn’t a 5:30p class on Fridays.. grr..)

Anyway, 3 days in a row.. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  On Tuesday, we did Fran. Wednesday we ran 1 mile and rowed 1000 meters, and on Thursday, those who weren’t there on Tues or Wed, did whichever workout they missed, and those of us who were there both days (Elaine and me) did Karen. Elaine wanted to die, and I was like, give me Karen any day!! You can run and row, I’ll do wall balls. haha

Here’s the breakdown:
Tuesday, May 1st, 2012

Fran:
21-15-9 Thrusters (65lbs)
Pull ups (jumping pull ups, but I had to practice banded ones this day, too. Those SUCK.)
My Fran time wasn’t so bad! 7:36. I was pretty happy with that. 🙂

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012 (ignore the date on the board..)
1 mile run
1000 meter row

I finally ran a mile in about 12 minutes! It was a little over, but I was still pretty happy about this! Considering how much I loathe it, and my row time was decent at 4:42.

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
For those of us who were at the gym Tues and Wed, like I said before, we got to do Karen. The rest of the peeps got to do the workout that they missed on either of those previous days. 

Karen is 150 wall balls. 14 lbs for women
Elaine and I tackled this together and I stayed motivated to keep going by motivating HER to keep going! We did our wall balls in just over 10 minutes. 🙂

Also got an AWESOME compliment from Erin M! Basically said I’d been kicking MAJOR ass this week and really just attacking all of our workouts. Such an awesome thing to hear from your trainer!  I feel like I’ve just been going balls to the wall, trying to do the best I can, and be as positive as possible. I say this now, but of course I have no idea what’s in store for me this week! Hah. Hopefully I can keep the same attitude and drive!

SLACKER! I keep saying this and it won’t work as an excuse for much longer. We had the pleasure of going to the Crossfit Regionals South East last weekend in West Palm! It ended up being one of the most fun weekends ever, especially because I got to hang out with my girls!!! Erin M and Elaine and I spent all 3 days together, and we had so much fun!! From watching Erin C compete, to going downtown and checking out Clematis, to taking them on the Palm Beach Tour for people who have never been to Palm Beach, to having an incredible cheat treat at Jaxson’s in Dania Beach, it was an all around AWESOME weekend. BESTIES! hahah

Aren’t we cute?!

I’ve got 3 days’ worth of Crossfit posts that I’ve neglected to put up! Thankfully I’ve got pictures of the board from each day to refresh my memory.

I was going to combine this with yesterday’s post, but I started rambling to the point where I felt like this one deserved its own post.

Crossfit Day 45 – 4/25/12

Today’s workout was tough. I’ve been elsewhere mentally, especially with having a rental car (sounds so stupid but its not MY car.. not my stuff, not comfy, hurts my tailbone to sit, makes weird noises, sits low to the ground, blah blah blah blah..) and thinking about this upcoming weekend because we’re going to West Palm, and the measurements from this morning.  They were all wonky because the last time I was measured, it was done by my other coach Erin M, who does it a little differently, so I have no idea how accurate they are now.. or how far I’ve really come, except that I’ve lost 15 lbs.  I have so much more weight to lose and I feel like I’m stalling.  Am I not doing enough?

I’m sore and beat up, and tired but when I’m not working out, I feel like I’m not doing enough.  At work, there’s only so much I can do, and we have so many great people who we’ve trained to do the job, so for the most part, I don’t even need to be there. My only real sense of fulfillment (maybe that’s the wrong word?) right now is what I’m doing in crossfit and how it’s changing my body and the way that I feel.  That sounds so awful, I know.  What happens when I reach my goal? What IS my goal? Then what? I feel like my first month I saw so many number changes, that shit was happening fast, but then this month, it’s been slow, but the physical changes have really started kicking in. But with the stall in numbers, how long is this going to take?  I have no doubt in my mind that this is what I want to do for a LONG time into my future, so it’s not like I’m going to reach a goal and then stop. But will I feel accomplished and fulfilled then? Or will there still be that certain feeling that I’m looking for something but haven’t found it yet? and WTF is wrong with me?  I have everything I could possibly want, why would I feel unfulfilled in any other aspect of my life?

Maybe I’ll hoop a little tonight. Haven’t done that in awhile.

So anyway, I want to get away from this emotional ^ shit, and just post about today’s workout.  Was a great group today! Hard workout, and not because of what we had to do, but because of what it did to my body. For the last 2 workouts, I had my feet flexed which aggravates my shins, but I had been okay up until this point. Well, we did the powerlifting seminar this past weekend, where we worked on our form, and Billy showed us how to dead lift without it hurting our lower backs.

For today’s workout, we had deadlifts (115 lbs for me) 21-15-9 reps, and 21-15-9 box jumps and then 3 x 300m run with 1 min rest in between each 300m. The way that I had learned to hold myself; keep my chest up, sit on my heels, and do the deadlifts changed the way my body lifts weight. In doing all of the above, I kept my feet flexed, my toes pointed upward, thus straining my shins and the muscles around them.  Not usually a big deal, except they were already fatigued from the last 2 days. 

So after I finished my first 21 reps of dead lifts, I went on to do my box jumps. I got set up to jump, and BARELY cleared the 20″ box. WTF? I was so puzzled. Why can’t I do this? Why is this hard? I had no control over my legs below my knees.  I set up for the 2nd one, and by the grace of God, I made it and didn’t scrape my shins on the edge of the box. Not sure how I cleared it. What the hell.. so when I realized I had no control over picking my feet up by way of jumping, I opted to step for the rest of my reps.  This happened again into my 15 reps, because I tried jumping again, and same. I felt like I was going to completely fall. Because of this, I finished last at 7 min 42 seconds. (Fucking sucks, I hate finishing last. What happened to being strong and getting stronger here?)  But it wasn’t over yet. We still had our 3 x 300m runs to finish.  This really hurt because my shins were so sore. Running only made it worse, but I didn’t want to quit or complain (and here I am complaining about it.)  I did them in 1:33, 1:27, 1:20, again, worst times out of everyone. For someone who’s been doing this for 3 months now, I personally expect more from me.

I feel defeated today.

The days are blurring together this week. I had every intention of finishing this post last night but I apparently went to bed. I didn’t even take a picture of the board like I usually do, wtf.

Yesterday’s workout was.. a LOT. We ran for warmups, and my shins were all busted up and sore from Monday’s sandbag relay race and sled pushing, so yeah Im hurting pretty badly.

For the WOD on 4/24 we did 3RFT of the following:

20 pull ups (jumping ones for me)
30 push ups
40 sit ups (with the skin on my tailbone/butt crack missing I opted for knees to elbows)
50 squats

I got through two full rounds, 20 pull ups, and 5 push ups. Something like that anyway.