Tag Archives: wods

Just trying to stay afloat here..

I feel like every new post has a little more despair than the previous one. I get up, drink my coffee, answer emails, go to the office, drink more coffee, deal with whatever, come home, drink another coffee, go work out, come home, and crash. It’s this monotonous cycle, but I’m okay with that. I have always been one to favor consistency and repetition, thanks Dad.

My real issue right now is, I miss our fucking dog. I can speak of her fate in so many different ways. I can choose to be eloquent, to be blunt. I can opt for flowery terms. Sammi’s gone. We had to put her down. We helped her cross the rainbow bridge. We couldn’t save her, we couldn’t fix her, we couldn’t stop her internal bleeding. She’d feel better for a few hours, move around, go outside to use the bathroom, and collapse from exhaustion. I’d have to carry her back in, or just let her lay in the grass for a few minutes til she caught her breath and then help her back inside. It was sheer torture for us, and probably even more so for her. We couldn’t tell her what was wrong, she was likely so frustrated that she didn’t have the stamina to stand up and pee, or play, or just walk. She’d be so determined to move around though that she’d do it, and then she’d frantically aim herself towards the nearest dog bed (they were all over the house) and collapse.

I never thought I’d ache so much with her absence. She was such a pain in the ass, so loud, so barky, would never listen when we wanted her to stop barking! omg. I used to joke about how I wanted to give her away. I used to say tell people I’d make them a great deal if they took her off our hands. I hate myself for this. I hope she never felt unwanted by us, or unloved, or unappreciated. I miss her personality, her presence. She forced her way into our lives, there was no stopping it. If we were there, she was there. I miss the sounds of her breathing, the sounds of her dreaming. Of her sleeping on her back and scraping her nails against the wall while she was running in one of her dreams. When she got excited and literally couldn’t contain her whining. She literally could not stop herself from freaking out when she got excited. She’d knock down everything in her path on her way to the door, because she was so excited to be going somewhere. She was so excited to get to the office, so excited to go outside, so fucking excited to do anything with us. Anything. She didn’t care, she just wanted to be with us. And now she’s gone. In an instant. Talk about PTSD. I will go into more detail on her site if you want to read more about it, I don’t want to write it out twice, and I don’t want to cry any more about it than I have to. I’m so sick of crying..

My last few moments with Sammi

 

Gym life. Between holidays, trying to mend my dogs, trying to keep shit going at work (so busy with local jobs, it’s absurd. It’s awesome, but it takes so much out of us!) the gym has been an afterthought. I’ve been going, but not as often as my mind would like. When I do go, I find myself just there to do the workout and leave. I don’t care so much about the social aspects, at all, anymore, whatsoever. In my mind, nobody can relate to what I’m going through, I don’t feel like explaining, I don’t want to deal with small talk, I don’t want to smile and say the fake niceties, I just want to go in, work out, and leave.

It’s my own fault I don’t have time. I need to make the time to do the things I love. It is my responsibility to make time for the things that make me feel better. But… I will complain for a minute here. I really have been hating the WODs that we’ve had. I’ve always been our gym’s biggest advocate, but jesus fuck, I really hate the WODs lately. I just want to lift weights and do like, a little cardio. Maybe, power cleans, push ups, wall balls, and I don’t know, deadlifts? That’s a good one. Or, just power cleans and push ups. Or just power cleans. Or power cleans and wall balls. Ooph. Every day. Trap city. Quad city.

But you know what? Again, it’s on me. If I want to do nothing but power cleans and wall balls, and maybe a few push ups here and there, that’s on me. I need to make that happen. I could go in and do those. I could even go in the garage right now this very second and do goblet squats, jump rope, and push ups right now but instead I’m wallowing in my misery and complaining about the programming. Maybe I will go do that. I am sore from yesterday’s wall balls and it feels so good. It feels good to hurt from something that I did intentionally to myself to help myself get stronger, better.

It’s interesting how some hurt we crave, and other hurt we despise. I love the “sore muscles” hurt. I hate the “my beautiful dog is gone and won’t ever come back because she had incurable cancer” hurt. Do I put those in quotations? Italics? I don’t know. I just spent too much time trying to format that and then realized I don’t care enough to research it.

I love being busy. I hate being overwhelmed. But it’s such a minuscule line between the two. One phone call can take me from being busy and productive to wanting to rip my hair out and give up on everything. Why is that? I love projects. I love completing projects. I love seeing the end result. I hate ongoing projects. I hate unfinished business. I hate loose ends. Tie that shit up. I hate things that are out of my control, even more so.

Maybe that’s it? I don’t mind the hurt that comes from things I can control. I did 115 wall balls yesterday and my quad are sore as a result. I did that to myself, on purpose. I knew what would happen and I went balls out, anyway. I hate the hurt that is a result from things I cannot control. When I’m out of control, I don’t know how to stop it, I don’t know when it will end. I can’t prevent it. I have to let it happen. I have to experience the anger and pain and hurt until the universe determines that I’ve had enough.

Okay, Universe. I’m ready for a good year, please.

3 Rep Max Power Clean PR – 9/29/16

Just like it sounds, we had a 3 Rep Max Power Clean, and I PRed it! I went back and tried to find more info on the last time I did Touch and Go cleans, 3 in a row, at this weight and I don’t know that I’ve done it before. So. PR for me! 155lbs.

The rest of the WOD was awful… double unders. But. I can do them, but I’m terrible at them. And the more tired I am, the harder they are for me.

This time though, you couldn’t just sissy out and do double singles, or even triple singles. Nope. You had to do burpees.. and you had to do a certain amount of burpees based on how long you had been doing CF. Me, being a seasoned veteran, had this ridiculously high amount of burpees to do, so I tried so hard to do my DUs.. I tried, and failed. Kept trying. I’m pretty sure I did some damage to my feet, but I kept going.

There’s absolutely no way I did the RX amount of DUs, but I tried. And that’s definitely one way to get us to do more of them! Nobody wants to do burpees…

As many rounds and reps as possible in 14 minutes of:
5/10/15/20/25/30/35/40… Hang Power Clean (115#/75#)
30 Double Unders

I finished 6 + 6.

Even though it was a great power clean complex, the WOD really set me off and furthered my little downward spiral that you’ll read about next. Might I also add… that I had absolutely wrecked my traps from these last couple days.. Traps, neck, shoulders. This was kind of the beginning of the mess I was going through in my head. A defeating WOD, (double unders or burpees? Neither..) It just chipped away at my self esteem, and it was awful.

so sore.. I was so sore that I couldn't even flex for this picture. Seriously sore.
so sore.. I was so sore that I couldn’t even flex for this picture. Seriously sore.

Okay, I’ve waited too long to update. 2/20/16

Yeah so it’s been about 2 months now. I’m just going to throw in the towel on trying to play catch up and just note a couple of my PRs I’ve hit and exciting events since then. 🙂

2 months in review:

Back squat PR: 295 ~12/19/15

Front Squat PR: 245 2/3/16

Running 400m and then another 400m 2/9/16 FIRST TIME since I broke my foot!

I started going to 6a CF 2/2/16 with my friend Lisa. Because accountability works. I’ve been so busy lately at the office with two of our former employees now gone, that it’s been complete insanity trying to manage both of their roles mostly on my own. Thank god for my other two guys who have totally stepped it up and jumped right in to help. They are a godsend. The 3 of us together totally get it all done, and it’s really awesome, but it’s ass-busting work. By the time I’m done in the late afternoon/evening, the last thing I want to do is work out. So, if I go at 6a, there are no excuses.

I began stringing kipping pull ups together. 1/30/16 Did a set of 4, and then 3 or 4 more sets of 5.

Mom came with me! 1/30/16

My 4 year CrossFit anniversary 1/24/16

Birthday cosmo was delicious.

In a total moment of sheer stubbornness, and Dave was out of town, I moved my old king sized bed from upstairs to downstairs at our old house, in an attempt to ‘stage’ the house for buyers. Then the guy who was interested made an offer, so now we’re under contract. Fingers crossed closing moves forward without any issues! Supposed to close within the next month or so.

 

Enjoy the pictures. 🙂