My back hurts. I probably shouldn’t have worked out yesterday, but I did. It’s sore and tight, and I’ll be taking more meds tonight to help it relax. Of course I’m working out again tomorrow at 11a.. I’m sure moving shit around in the garage was super helpful, too. Hah.

On the bright side, the Denali now fits in the garage.The garage definitely needs some more work, but it’s a start!! I’ve been putting this off for 3 months now, and I finally decided today was the day.

Also, a new face comparison.  I promise, after this one, I will take straight pictures! haha I’m so used to turning the camera at an angle to get my whole face, because my arms aren’t long enough to stretch out that far in front of me. Silly, I know.

Another progress photo

I didn’t think I would be able to do it, but I did it. I went to crossfit today!  Why didn’t I think I would make it? Because of how badly I strained my back from Monday’s workout! Holy moly. I was hurting. All the way up til this afternoon, really.  Marisa and I drove to Orlando to partake in this United Way thing with Kathy Ireland as the speaker that UPS invited us to, and I decided that the two hours sitting in the car would be complemented quite nicely with my seat heaters on. It was like, built in heating pad on my back for the whole ride down, and then back.  Whatever happened, it worked, because as soon as we got to the hotel this morning, I was like, huh.. weird.. my back doesn’t hurt NEARLY as much as it did earlier!

I made sure I had the heaters on for the ride home as well, and sure enough, we got back with plenty of time for me to head over to Crossfit tonight! Before this afternoon, I was convinced of two things. a) I wouldn’t make it back in time to go and b) even if we did make it back in time, there’s no way my back pain and strain would allow for a workout to occur today!

BUT, we made it back, AND I felt good enough to work out. Big time awesomeness. Our workout today was a little different than usual, starting with a more heated warm up. Our warm ups consisted of the following:

2 rounds of:
10 Good Mornings
10 Romanian dead lifts
10 front to backs (I think that’s what they were called, anyway)
1 lap around the building.

I completed all of it, and used a 35lb bar.

Then we worked on our thrusters, and did 2 every minute, with the remainder of the minute as rest. Did 5 of these in 10 minutes with 65lbs, and then moved into our WOD.

WOD was:
4 Rounds of
10 squat thrusters (45 lbs for me, since my back was still sore/tender)
10 chest to bars (jumping pull ups for me)

I did each set in just over a minute each time, ranging from 1:07 to 1:11.

Then we pushed the prowler thing back and forth across the parking lot. Honestly, I think this is what aggravated my back for tonight. Being bent over and running and putting all my weight into shoving metal across asphalt was probably not the smartest thing to do. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow when I wake up. 😀

I’m excited because of a few things: I made it to my workout today! I’ve been doing really well with Paleo and The Whole 30.  Mom and John have been cooking for us every night this week, so eating dinner has been a delight. and… umm, well that’s about it!  Things are good right now, I can’t complain. Pretty happy up in here.

WEIRD. Up until this point, I’ve always pushed through and gone to my classes, but MAN, I am hurting from yesterday’s workout! From the lower back pain caused by the dead lifts and kettle bells (and most likely my own fault, improper movements) to the skin that’s been rubbed raw off my tailbone/butt crack area from the 100 sit ups, I am just not prepared for another workout quite yet. hah. I feel terribly about missing it! Slacker.

Tomorrow, Marisa and I are going to Orlando for this Women’s Luncheon thing with UPS and Kathy Ireland. Woo! Should be interesting. Point being, I’d like to try and make it back in time for tomorrow’s workout at 5:30p with the boys, otherwise, I’ll be trying to catch up on Thurs and Friday.

The rest of my body feels pretty good, but the scabbed up and raw skin and sharp lower back pain really limits my movements. hah. Tomorrow will be better. 🙂

So today was awesome. I LOVED it. Today was my 25th day of Crossfit since January whatever, but it seems like it’s been so much longer! But I still feel like such a new person to the whole thing. Anyway, whatever, that’s not the point.  Today was my first 5:30p class in a long time. We switched over to the afternoon classes (we being Nick, Mitch and me) for our Dali workouts, because the 7:30a one just didn’t make sense for the gym, as we were the only ones attending. I expected more of my employees to be excited and into the idea of going, but they dropped off quickly after trying it only once. (“It was way harder than I expected!!”) So anyway, Monday-Wed at 5:30p is our new Dali schedule, but it was cool because there were others there too! It wasn’t just us.

We had a nice little warm up, a lap around the building, and we moved right into our WOD. It was a longer length of time today, 25 min limit, so no strength training or anything in between.

It was the following:

5RFT
7 dead lifts at 75% of your 1 rep max (my 1 rep max was 155lbs, thanks Erin C for keeping track for me!) So I did 115lbs today.
20 push ups
20 KBs (35lbs for me)
20 sit ups (my rest period, basically. This was the easiest part for me.)

So, 5RFT was the goal.  I hit 25 min and I was on my 6th sit up.  Erin M. pushed me to go until I finished, since I was so close!!! I got 26 minutes flat for my WOD. AWESOME!!!! This shit was hard. It was so invigorating though, I LOVE these kinds of workouts! I leave bouncing off the wall and exhausted to all hell at the same time. Very weird combination.

The guys did great too! It was their first workout like this. Previously, there had been more cardio, more running, jumping, etc. So it was good for them to see the range of stuff that we do. Mitch even texted me when he got home, to let me know that he neither blacked out nor puked on the way home. So proud of my boys. 🙂

Nick working on his Dead Lifts. Anne dying in the background.

My workout schedule this week is the following:

Monday 5:30p
Tuesday 5:30p
Wednesday Marisa and I will be out of town for the afternoon
Thursday 5:30p
Friday 11a

Saturday I’m not sure what the plan is yet, so there may be a free workout, or I may be going along to cheer at their competitions, but I’m not sure yet. We’ll seeeeee!!

Total slacker, yes. I didn’t post for my last two workouts! I’m not even going to remember them very well, Geez.

We’ve been doing this stupid home show.. Thursday through Sunday. Yeah, it’s fun when it’s busy, but it’s so time consuming! We spend pretty much the entire time there unless we’re eating (no paleo-friendly food at the convention center.. who knew?)  Today was great because we were so busy all day. It went by so fast! But Thurs and Fri, oh man. I don’t even know why they bother with those days.. anyway, enough complaining!!

My Thursday workout was lots of running!! But because I had messed up my foot from the running on Wednesday, I tried one lap around the building and yeah, it wasn’t happening. Something with my arch, but mainly my whole LEFT foot (the one that’s usually fine) felt all cramped up and whatnot. Weird. So, to start with, Nick, Mitch and me worked on Push Cleans and Push Jerks. I got up to 135lbs!!!! Last time I did anything similar, (shoulder press) I got up to 85lbs. Little different, because there’s momentum coming from your legs and knees with these, and not the presses, but still!! I was super happy with that.

Our WOD for the day was ALL running.

4 rounds of 1 400m run, with rest in between each set.

Basically, about twice around the building. I went once, and my foot was just killing me, so I came in and rowed  4 rounds of 500m each.  I averaged about 2:30 per 500m.

For yesterday, it was awesome! My kind of workout. Was sad though, because yesterday was my last 11a workout with Charlie, Kyle and Will. 🙁 I’ll be switching to Mon-Thurs at 5:30p from now on. I’ll definitely miss them!

Anyway, we worked on back squats, and I PRed!!! at 165lbs 1 rep max. YAY! I even went back and did a 2nd one because I asked Scott to take a picture of me. Stuff like that I just don’t have pics of, and I wish I did! Everyone’s always so busy though, I hate asking for pictures. 🙁

Our WOD was a 1/2 Nancy. We had 10 minutes to do AMRAP.
5 pull ups
10 push ups
15 air squats

I completed 6 rounds, 10 push ups and 8 air squats. So happy!! I loved that workout.

It was my first planned 5 days in a row of Crossfit! Definitely sore from it, but I’m also sore from standing for 3 days straight at the trade show. That gets pretty old quickly. Hoping my foot starts to feel better soon. I’ll be back to a new, normal routine come Monday!

Holy running today! I am not a runner, I was not born to run, I don’t run, I don’t want to run, and I don’t LIKE to run.. but that’s what we did today, and lots of it. Today, I walked in and saw the board, and was like, okay… alright, we can do this. Oh man.. alright. Here we go.. haha

Warm ups were nice and easy, good stuff, and then we grabbed the weights and took them outside cause, well, it’s easier to do front squats and run around the building when you’re already outside. None of this wasting time walking out the back door stuff! Pshhh.

WOD today was!

8 Sets of:
max # of front squats (65lbs for me, 95 for the boys)
200m sprint (this means, I just make it around the building.. there is no such thing as sprinting after max # of squats..)
2 min of rest.

And this max number of squats deal, what is this?? Well, this basically means, you do front squats until you can’t do front squats any longer.. yeah, I prefer having an attainable goal to work towards, and not just an “Okay GO!” sort of deal. So after a discussion with Erin C, I set my first goal to 20.

 I made my 20, and then put the weights down, and if you want to even call it jogging, I jogged around the building. Once around the building is cake now, if you haven’t exhausted all the strength in your quads from 20 65lb front squats. Yeah, this was crazy!!

I’m totally complaining today, I’m sorry.

Well, we made it through 6 sets by the time our time was coming to an end for the workout. Not bad, I don’t think! I will post a picture of my scores later so that they’re shown here. Yay!

3 days in a row down, 2 more to go!

Today was my 2nd day of the 5 days in a row Crossfit challenge, haha. Off to a good start, so far, and today was HARD. Not sweating my ass off hard, but the skin on my hands is going to rip off if I keep walking with these damn kettlebells hard! I’m honestly surprised I didn’t break skin after today’s WOD, that stuff was insane.

My Dali kids accompanied me this morning.. that is, George (yay first time!), Mitch and Nick came along! So proud of them!!  We did a nice long warm up, and then a 400m run, and then practiced various movements, more so for them, but we all took turns..  Our WOD today was crazy!

200m farmer carry (35lb kettlebell in each hand, then walk around the building carrying them. Harder than it sounds!)
20 overhead squats (35lbs)
30 pull ups (with box)
40 dead lifts (95 lbs)
50 sit ups
30 pull ups
20 overhead squats
200m farmer carry, again with 2 35lb KBs.

I think I got that right!! I finished in 28 minutes, I believe. Would’ve been faster but my hands and forearms hurt so badly from walking with the KBs around the building. Who knew?

Mom and John went today too!! They had the same WOD, which is pretty intense! Proud of them for pushing as hard as they could today. 🙂

I got a call from my Doctor today with my initial blood results. All my levels he said were normal/optimal, but for comparison purposes, he said my HDL was 40 and my LDL was 82, I believe. I need to work on raising my HDL, which should come with diet, weight loss, and exercise. I’ll be going back in 2 weeks to get another round of bloodwork done, so I can see how it compares to before. Interested to see!

TWENTY DAYS OF CROSSFIT!!! Today is the beginning of my 6th week of this incredible shit, and I feel amazing. Things didn’t start changing really til I started doing the Whole30 challenge with Paleo. I really don’t even crave crappy foods. I know I need to make the right food choices and decisions, and for the first time in a LONG time, I’ve really stuck with something amazing. I love it. I love how I feel, how my body is changing, how I’m getting stronger, it’s all awesome.

What’s new to me is the people noticing how I’m changing. Not just here and there, either, but quite a few people are making comments about my appearance, how they can tell. I’m definitely not used to this! People I see every day notice changes in my face after a weekend, stuff like that. Crazy! I’m so anxious to do my measurements again and to see how much I’ve lost. 15 more days for that!

Dave and I went mountain biking yesterday, which was so much fun!! We only went for about 20 minutes, up at Hanna Park, but it was still a good time. It was hard, but my endurance was incredible! I would’ve kept up with him if I wasn’t so cautious around the sharp turns and crazy tree roots on the paths. When we were done though, I could’ve kept going. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to (or would’ve been able to) stay out there and keep riding, but yesterday, it would’ve been totally possible.

My muscles are starting to become more defined, too.  My legs have always been strong, but they’re leaning out now, and my thighs/quads are becoming slightly impressive now. haha I also have this part on my upper mid section where the top of my stomach muscles are starting to become more defined. I made Dave touch them the other night as I squealed about them. He was like, “yeah, I can see them!” (He is SUCH a good sport with all this stuff, oh man..) AAAND I went down one belt hole! Pretty cool.

SO, moving along.. today’s workout was awesome. We practiced our handstand push ups some more, and I actually was able to bend my elbows this time and lower myself down a bit.  Lucky for me, we had to do 30 of these in 10 min (3 every 1 min).  After that, we did Grace for our WOD, which is just 30 clean and jerks with weight.  I had 85lbs on the bar, and man did those get hard towards the end! Finished in 5:38. Ran around the building a couple times, and yeah, that was that. Not too bad.

This week and next week, I will be doing Crossfit 5 days a week, unless something crazy comes up! Looking forward to seeing how I feel after these 10 days fly by.

Went out to support my people today, it’s so awesome watching them compete!! They say we’ll be the ones competing next year, but we’ll see about all that, hahah.

Anyway, the girls weren’t happy with their Snatch scores, so we headed back to the gym so they could redo their sets. Crazy! Yeah, they’re incredible. (www.inertiacrossfit.com) Anyway, we got back there, and I was determined to just watch and not do anything, but I ended up getting my shoes out of the car, and doing snatches with the bar for a bit. I got up to 35 with the 35 lb bar and figured my support was more important than my abilities today. Plus my arms and butt are still sore from yesterday’s WOD! Nothing I’m not used to, but rest already, geez.

They both did 89 snatches. Starting with 30 45 lb, then 30 75 lb, then 30 100lb snatches, then as many as possible of the 120 lb. They killed it!!! Nice job, Erins!!!

Erin Riddell – Carter and Erin Mouser of Crossfit Inertia.

Scott did a great job too!!! So cool to watch him compete and get better! Here’s a quick video I took of him today.

I also took it upon myself to practice my handstand push ups again. It’s one of those things, kinda like box jumps, where I just want to go around doing them everywhere! I was happy that Anne had her camera today, because she took a few shots of my handstands. It looks like my feet are on the wall, but I’m not using the wall for support, it’s more like a guide.  I can hold a handstand for quite awhile, it’s the push up part that I need to get better at. Right now I can only do one push up (very slowly) before straightening out, and then bringing my feet back down.  I love it, though.

Paleo’s going great! Workouts are going great.. this coming week will be crazy, since we have the Jacksonville Home and Patio Show Thurs through Sunday. I’ll still be getting all my workouts in, but it’s gonna be a crazy week overall.

Ideally, I’d like to push for all 5 days this week. MWF at 11a and then Tues and Thurs at 7:30a with the Dali kids. Spinning has officially taken a back burner and isn’t even a priority anymore. (crazy, because I love it so much, but I get so much more out of this!) Tomorrow is my day of rest, although if I find an empty wall, I might try some more handstands. 🙂

YEAH. Awesome workout yesterday!!!! Of course, I should have written this last night when I it was fresh in my mind, but I didnt. I had been watching videos with handstand push ups in them the last couple days, and went in yesterday wanting to learn how to do them. WELL, turns out, they were a part of our WOD! I was so excited!!!! I love doing them (the handstand part anyway) and I need to work on the actual push up part, but it’ll come with time.

Yesterday’s workout really beat me up. Of course, Anne was there right along with me, and yelling at me, which is why I did as well as I did. Without her support towards the end, I would NOT have done nearly as much. Thank you Anne!!!

I even took a picture of the board to show my workout and warm up. So much easier than trying to remember a day later. 

So my handwriting sucks after I work out.. I have determined this. The WOD yesterday was:

3RFT
5 handstand push ups
10 KBs (35lbs)
15 burpees
20 wall balls (14 lbs)

I did almost all 3 rounds! I was 2 wall balls short of finishing, and this is only because Anne was in my face yelling at me to keep going. Usually that sort of thing doesn’t work for me, but she kept me going yesterday.  Thank you, Anne!!!!