30 March 2009

1800 WOD:

Three rounds for time:
Run 800 meters
21 Toes-to-bar – really ended up doing knees to elbows (if that…)
21 Deadlift, Bodyweight – scaled to 85lbs
Post time to comments. – 27:00

Today was my first time doing a bodyweight deadlift WOD. I scaled it to 85lbs. I had 125lb on there, but after lifting it up, I realized there was no way I could pop out with more than a few at that weight. Lots of room to improve! I probably should have gotten the little fives to add another 10lbs on, I think I could have handled that. Nevertheless, the deadlifts were still challenging.  The key to these workouts is really breaking them up into little chunks. Talked to Allison after the WOD and she mentioned that the kipping helps get your legs up for the toes to bar. I’ll try that next time. Most of this WOD was more like knees to elbows. All in all, a good first day back after four days of debauchery:-)

FOOD: I’m going to experiment with the straight 11 Block zone this week. I started off the day with 10 in mind, but I think 11 will be better for me.

1000
2/2/3 – Quiche w/chicken sausage, cheese, green peppers (2P/1F),1c
blackberries(2C), coffee w/ creamer(2F) – I miscounted the quiche zone blocks
(cut too many pieces) when I made it last night (it was late!) and initially thought it was going to be 3 P/1C per piece. I did the math more rested this morning and realized it after I was at work.

1330
3/3/3 – Chef salad – 3c lettuce(.5C), 1/2c squash, zucchini and bellpepper
(.5C), 1/2 apple (1C), 1 archicoke (1C), 1.5oz turkey (1.5P), 1/5 oz turkey
meatballs (1.5P), balsamic vinegar, 9 peanuts (3F).

1600
1/1/1 – 1oz turkey, 11/4c zucchini, greenpepper and , 1/5tablespoon hummus

1700
1F – 4 almonds

2000  1P – Turkey Jerky snack

2100 – 4P/3C/2F – Chicken Paremesian with greenbeans, 1 tsp almond butter.

Total: 11P/9C/10 F

Sleep: 7.5 hrs

26 March 2009

Bodyweight WOD today:

3rounds of 50 pushups, 50 situps, 50 squats.  18ish minutes. 

This took way longer than I thought it should have, although I guess I’m setting the baseline now, so hopefully will go nothing but up.  I finished the first set in about 4 min and slowed way down after that. For some reason, my knee kept ‘cracking’ during the situps and it was a little painful at times. It seemed to be the angle it was bent and me trying to hold my feet on the ground at that angle was irritating it. The last 35 situps or so, I ended up putting my right leg down straight for the situps, wierd, but it seemed to help the knee. I don’t know what is going on with that, but hopefully just a fluke.

Identified with Jen’s blog I just read on “don’t cheat your pushups, sucker”. This was def my weakest link in this and I was pretty spent after the first set. I will start doing pushups more regularly to build my upper body strength and hopefully see improvements in other upper body moves.

Food today: I ended up out with one of my college roommates here in NC and “toured” about 4 microbreweries tonight…so in the end, good straight zone day until my splurge on good local beer after 600…

25 March 2009

WOD:

“Karen and Grace’s Playdate”
AMRAP 15 minutes:
3 Clean and Jerks, 135/95 lbs — Scaled: 1st 2 rounds at 85, then went to 75.
15 Wallball, 20/16 lbs –rx
Post rounds to comments — 8.5 Rounds

Went to 930 WOD before leaving for NC.  Not much love on the double unders during the warm up today Clean and Jerks suddenly became a LOT harder after the second round and I kept failing  w/ 85 so took off 10lbs to make it through the WOD. This was my first time doing clean and jerks in a WOD outside of foundations without actually scaling the movement itself (because I couldn’t get the form down last time), so I was okay with the result today.  By the last few rounds, I was doing about 4 wallballs at a time to get through the set.

On the road for 8 hours today (which explains the zone bar overload). Overall, not too bad as far as blocks go, but I wouldn’t exactly call it nutrious. It is amazing how much more satisfying a meal can be for the same amount of blocks than a zone bar.  Also, on my non-traditional or non-work days (like today) really need to focus on eating when I first get up. I’m good about this during the week, but once the weekend hits, i don’t think about eating first thing in the morning and often don’t think about it until lunch or after. Today was one of those days I was running around…

100- 3oz turkey, 1 apple, 15 almonds, 1coffee – 3P/2C/7F

500 – 1 zone bar , beef jerky, almonds  (I thought I bought the turkey, wasn’t impressed with the beef) 4/3/7

830 – 1 zone bar, almonds  3/3/5

1000- 5 tortilla chips and salsa

24 March 2009 (Tues) – On the road WOD suggestions w/out equipment?

Tues - VTC mtg w/  Okinawa, Japan started at 500p and only supposed to last one hour. We were there until 7:20. I was bummed to miss the WOD again, but that’s the way it is sometimes. I’m headed to North Carolina for the rest of the week tomorrow so hope to get a morning WOD in before leaving and then vist the box again on Sunday night.

I think I remember seeing a post on one of the BLOGs about ’at home/travel WODs’…does anyone have any links, suggestions? I figure I can do a Cindy (sub burpees for pullups) and do a couple tabata runs, but I’ll take any other suggestions.

Food: It is really late now and I’m getting up for the early morning WOD tomorrow. 

Plan for the week - I’ve got some paleo/zone friendly snacks for the car ride there and my stay during the week. My goal will be to stick to paleo/zone by eyeball (which I think I’ve gotten okay at) and maintain my daily journal (keeps me honest about how much I take in). I don’t believe this should be too hard since I’ll be staying at my friends’ house and I can buy myself some groceries and cook my own food. They eat pretty healthy, anyway, so I think most of what I need will be there to start me off. Of course, once the weekend comes, I may splurge a bit, but I should be able to maintain.

Plan for next week is to re-focus into my daily WODs and measuring. Was a bit thrown off the last few days, mostly due to the race, but overall, didn’t do too badly, I think. I look forward to getting back to a schedule next week.

24 March 2009 – Update

It’s been a few days since I blogged. Our internet stopped functioning over the weekend and it took a while to get it back up. Unfortunately, I can’t view blogs at work, so haven’t been able to log in. 

I won’t post the past few days of food, but I’ll summarize – totally paleo, not so totally zone. My portions were off, especially on the weekend. I was mostly eyeballing the last few days. You will notice my Saturday event forced me into two rest days on Sun and Mon …

Friday – gtg to the end of the day, but shared a piece of tiramisu w/ Keith. It was delicioso! I was also super hungry on Friday and ended up eating my afternoon snack with my lunch. I don’t think having just dairy in the morning (cottage cheese and ricotta cheese) or for my snack does much to satisify my hunger

 Saturday: I was WAY off on Saturday, particularly on the fat. I noticed over these days that my body wanted fat and so I gave it fat – esp on Saturday – lots of peanut butter/almond butter.  I also ran in the national marathon Saturday at the but-crack of dawn (I can see you fuming Brian). Yes, I know, ‘jogging’ makes me slow, fat and injured. But, I had signed up, paid the fee long before starting crossfit and committed to running it with my friend who’s gearing up for her ironman. Anyway, we ran it with no time/objective in mind, which was interesting in itself for us. I was so unfocused on it, in fact, that unlike past triathalons/marathons, I didn’t have anything ready from the night before (which is not a good thing for me at 430 am), couldn’t figure out what to wear since it was a little colder than I thought it would be and when my friend picked me up I realized I had totally forgotten to eat breakfast. Oops. Not good. Very unlike me, as I’m usually pretty meticulous on the planning for races and even my daily food intake.  I settled for some stale pretzels my friend had in her car to tie me over for a bit -  but it didn’t really do the trick. Later in the run, I wished I had eaten something more substanital and after the race I had a bananna and 1/4 of a bagel to hold me over till I got home. So, there go my zone carbs for the day — eaten without any protein, mostly due to my poor planning. Of course, I had some more carbs later, but was pretty focused on the fat and protein my body craved after the run. Went out that night and got a little further off the zone…

What I learned from this run: I’m glad I was there to run with my friend and enjoyed the scenery and all…but only for about the first 4-5 miles. I was so freakin’ bored..and I’ve run much, much longer races than this. I think this confirmed that I’m done with road running. I had turned to running trails a while back which is better, but this just really sucked (performance and experience-wise). I was feeling that before I started crossfit, but this just really solidified it. I won’t say never, but I will say not anytime soon… I need variation and the straight endless (uphill) pavement roads through the city were driving me crazy, literally. If I weren’t running with Christine, I would have turned around and walked home about mile 5. Interesting, because I’ve never quite felt like that before. Not to mentioned that I was still feeling the 4 WODS earlier in the week (again, the planning factor, or lack there of, comes into play).

And as for the after effects of not training for a run and not running in months –  my knees hurt a LOT after run – they felt like they used to feel after I ran marathons and ultras, which made me feel kind of wimpy, but I figure its because I’ve barely pounded the pavement since fall of  last year…or some have said it could be me reaching the 30 year mark when “funny things happen”(but I’ll keep denying that). Next day, knees were fine, but  Sunday and Monday, my right lower calf/achilles was super super tight and sore so, unfortunately, I forced myself into a couple rest days. I guess a positive note would be that no other muscles were sore at all. Quads, hamstrings, back and other calf were totally fine. I think what I felt afterwards in my knees and my calf was due to the trauma my body took from the pavement – it can’t be good for me and I don’t plan to do it again anytime soon. 

Sunday, food, stuck to paleo/zone and rest day – not measuring. 

Mon — gtg on paleo, not on zone part – I was over on all in the evening – directly attributed to my extreme hunger from missing my afternoon snack. I simply forgot to pack it in the morning and by the time I realized it at work, it was after 4 and the little shops had closed:-( I’ve been a little off since Thursday, but back on track today.

So: lessons learned from the last week– (1) Need more substance in the a.m. to hold me over (2)Don’t skimp on fat during regular meals. I felt like maybe it was too much fat I was taking in. But, after decreasing my fat intake earlier in the week I think my body craved it and compensated for it over the weekend. I’m not sure how it affected my performance yet, as all this is still pretty new. (3) Fibrous carbs really do help (4) May need to experiment taking zone protein blocks 1/2 up, as I was regularly craving more prtn throughout the week (may try 11/5/28). (5) running is boring, takes too much time  and it makes my knees hurt:-)

Wow- that was really long.

19 March 2009

AMRAP in 15 mins
5 Ring pushups – scaled to knees
6 Medball cleans, 20/16 lbs  – 16 lbs
15 Situps
Total Rounds – 12 even plus a few extra situps

I had a good day today!! I’m glad I sucked it up to come in today, despite my very, very sore upper body. 

Big break started in the warm ups – did at least 15-16 double unders!!! I did them separated by a few single jumps, but was able to do about 3-4 of those in a row by the end of the warm up! I had only done 1 double under before, last week sometime, so I was VERY VERY excited today when I busted out with it!!! It’s true- it happened when I wasn’t really too focused or trying hard at it:-)

WOD -I don’t really know if I was doing the ring pushups correctly, but Dan didn’t say anything so I was just making sure to get the full range of motion down and then get myself up however I could like he said at the before the workout. I had the paralette bars there ready just in case, but didn’t have to use them. This is the first workout I used the prescribed medball weight for cleans. These got challenging by the end. And the situps. I didn’t think of this as an ab workout, but they were tough by the end. All in all, happy with the WOD today.

Food: Overall good day. I was starving by the time I had breakfast, had a morning mtg that lasted longer than it should have, but I should have grabbed something earlier. B, L were fine before and after. But, I was hungry less than 2 hours after lunch today. My afternoon snack did the trick though.  Was still a little hungry after dinner, so had another ounce of protein. I’ve been consistently having about 11 blocks of protein, vs the prescribed 10/5/25.

19-Mar
800			coffee w/ creamer			4
1000		2	eggwhites	1
		4	turkey bacon slices	2
		1	peach		1
			coffee w/ creamer			3
1300		2c	lettuce		0.5
		.5c	cucumber		0.5
		.5c	eggplant& zucchini medly		1
		3oz	chicken	3
		21	almonds			7
1530		2c	celery		1
		1oz	turkey	1
		2tsp	almond butter			4
2100		1.25c	okra		1
		4oz	lean pork chop (w/cut out fat) marrinated in balsamic vinegerette	4		4
		6	almonds			2
				11	5	24

18 March 2009

WOD:

For Time: 16:00
21-15-9
Squat Cleans, 95/75 lbs – scaled to 65lb – thanks to the coaches for helping me out on my form. I felt like I was getting better at these and they were more smooth as time went on. This was my first time doing these out of foundations, so I was fairly happy with it.
L Pull-ups – scaled to regular pullups, blue band (10 or so) then green band. I felt very, very weak in these. Upper body needs work, but I was feeling the last two days’ workouts in my upper body today and even the green band got very tiring. After workout tonight — I am really, really sore and exhausted tonight.

Food: Felt pretty energized all day. I”m starting to notice now when I eat more carbs I can feel the effect- usually I feel tired and sluggish. Not craving carbs like I used to or the sugar, sweetness as much, although I still love my morning sugar free french vanilla creamer with my coffee:-)

Date & time		Amt	Food	P	C	F
GOAL				10	5	25
730		1oz	turkey	1
		2tsp	almond butter			4
900		4	eggwhites	2
		1	peach		1
1230		3c	lettuce		0.5
		3oz	chicken	3
		1c	zucchini and eggplant medley		1
		21	almonds			7
400		2c	celery		1
		1oz	turkey	1
		12	almonds			4
		9	almonds (forgot them from breakfast)			3
830		3	turkey meatballs	3
		1c	greenbeans  w/ olive oil		1	7
			1/4 c protein shake	1
				11	4.5	25

17 March 2009

WOD:

AMRAP in 10 mins
Kettlebell Power Snatch, 24kg/16kg – scaled to 25lb
Total Reps – 121. Maintained between 8-12 reps on each arm before switching. Dan recommended I go up next time, even if I get less reps in. He indicated the goal should be about 100 reps for this workout.

Food:  I was not hungry during the day at all today, a lot going on at work.  Nevertheless, I got most of my blocks in, even if most of them were after 1600. I had a zone bar today bc didn’t have time for lunch–added a few hard boiled eggs to it for some extra protein. I looked up online that they are 3 blocks even (P/C/F).  I find it interesting that the zone blockage is not listed on the label. 

Question: Is the following math correct in computing blocks based off of the nutrional info (based on 1 Zone Block = 7 grams protein + 9 grams carbohydrate + 1,5 grams fat):  #C/9, #P/7, #F/1.5???

Date & time		Amt	Food	P	C	F
GOAL				10	5	25
17-Mar
800			creamer with coffee			4
1200			zone perfect bar	3	3	3
		4	eggwhites	2
1600		2tsp	almond butter			4
		1c	celery		0.5
1730		2oz	turkey	2
		.25c	strawberries		0.3
		15	almonds			5
		2	almond butter			4
			broccoli		1
		3	turkey meat balls	3
				10	4.8	20

 

 

16 March 2009

WOD:  Scaled a lot for this WOD, but I felt pretty good about it. Great breatkthrough for me: I finally did a Double Under! Yes, just one, but hey, it’s a start! There is def incentive to learn it quickly, as I really disklike the 25 knee to elbow jumps I had to substitute in for this WOD after single jump ropes. Started with hand stand pushups, so I was very, very tired by the regular pushups. I only made a few without dropping to my knees

Time: 17:13

• 50 Handstand Push-ups   – scaled to box with 45lb weight on it. Did first 30 or so prett quickly, then started to wear out, only 5-7 at a time.  
• 50 Double Unders
• 50 Ring Dips – blue band – first 10 consistent, after that was able to get between 4-6 at  a time.
  50 Double Unders
  50 Push-ups – these were hard by this point. By the end I was getting 3 or so in at a time.
  50 Double Unders
  Food: Felt good today; energized. Never got really hungry before meals and after I was fine. I think  I do need to start packing my lunch the night before again, as I get rushed in the morning and have a hard time counting almonds. ..

16-Mar
900			Creamer			5
		1oz	Turkey	1
		4	egg whites	2
		1	peach		1
		6	almonds			2
1230		2c	spinach		0.3
		2c	lettuce		0.3
		1c	cucmber		1
		1c	zucchini and eggplant medly		1
		3	turkey meatballs	3
		1 tsp	olive oil			3
		12	almonds			4
1530		2c	celery		1
		2tsp	almond butter			4
		1oz	chicken	1
2000		1tsp	peanut butter			2
		2tsp	almond butter			4
		.75c	egg whites & olive oil	3		1
		1c	zucchini & eggplant & squash		1
				10	5.5	25

14 March 2009

1200 WOD

• Row 1min
• Push Press 1min RX 95/65
• rest 2 min

Post total calories and  reps

• 1-17/12 – 55#
• 2-17/8 – 55#
• 3-15/9 – 45#
• 4-15/7 – 45#
• 5-16/9 – 45#

Total: 125

This was my first WOD w/ Rows. Need to keep my strides longer and remember to push with my feet and pull all the way back. I felt I must have been doing it correctly the last 3 rounds since my legs were starting to get tired and also felt more efficient (less times going back and forth, more calories expended). Started with 55# and 2nd round very difficult so went down in weight. I could probably keep it at 55# next time. Last round, got a slight burst of energy and pumped out a few extra  push presses. **Question: Is it better to max out on weight in these, possibly getting fewer reps or lifting slightly less in order to maximize reps?

Food:

Overall, not too bad. Total: 10/7/22 but this is an estimae since we had dinner at friends house (Goal is 10/5/25). They made a really nice pot roast so I was able to stay mostly paleo, but I still haven’t quite figured out how to estimate the fats on certain meats. So, the Total for day: 1

• 1200 WOD
• 1300   4/3/3      – 3/4 c eggwhites, 1/4 c pinneapple, 1/4 c  mellon,1tsp smart balance,
• 1500 2/1/5  – 2 oz chicken, 1 c cooked greenbeans, 1 tsp peanut butter, olive oil (w/greenbeans)
• 2000 4/2/10 – beef roast, 1 tsp horseradish, greenbeans, 4oz -ish wine. ** Question: is there a generic fat count for beef? Not sure what kind it was, but wasn’t very fatty –  had the “palm” porportion. **
• 2200 -  1c/4f – Half piece Gluten free, but not butter or sugar free, chocolate cake. Had to be nice to have some as my friend slaved over it:-) This is an estimate too…