Woo TUESDAY!

I swear I worked out yesterday, but it was so unmemorable that I forgot to even write about it just a little. Today on the other hand... I felt like a total boss. I'm giving a presentation at Boston Product tonight, so I had to shift my day an hour later and go to the 6:30am class instead of my normal 5:30am (yup, I'm a morning person). This meant I was able to see how many rounds everyone in the 5:30am class got and push myself to DESTROY EVERYONE. I feel like I should make a note here: Crossfit really works for me because I am pretty competitive. Mostly with myself, but sometimes I also just really want to try to be the best. This is why running also works... am I the fastest? No. But can I constantly compete with myself and improve my times? Yes! Plus, races are awesome. Anyway, here was our WOD from this morning:

1-2-3-4-5-6… for 15 min
Box jumps (24/20)
Wall balls (20/14)
KBS (24kg/16kg)

I was wearing my sweet new Physiclo pants and my quads were burning from the lunges that I did yesterday, but I managed to get out 12 + 8 (which would be up to 12 of each + 8 box jumps), as prescribed (RX!). Beat the other highest person by 5 reps! I was super winded afterward and took a minute to stop wheezing, but all was well in the end.

Since I was having a long workday and also missing my track workout, I decided to head over to the MIT outdoor track at 2pm and just do the workout myself. I ended up doing a 9:51 average pace (including the walking rests), which ended up being my fastest pace for distances between 4-6 miles! And that was wearing my favorite new exercise pants. If you live in the Boston area, I highly recommend checking out the Somerville Road Runners Tuesday Night Track. It's really well run and the workouts have helped me increase my 5K time by minutes.

End note: just in case you were wondering, I get paid by absolutely none of the companies or organizations that I linked. I just love them.

11 Mile Run + OHS PR

Today has been pretty interesting. We've got pretty crappy weather all weekend, so I decided to do my long run today. And due to impending rain, I decided to just go this morning. Of course, first, I had some overhead squats to do. Might sound like a weird thing to do, but I've been working really hard on my shoulder positioning lately and didn't want to miss the chance for a retest. I just looked through all my old PRs and I had never gotten over 50# at my old gym. Today, I did a one rep max of 85#. Considering I had a shoulder impingement (in both my shoulders) last May, I'm feeling really great about that improvement. Obviously part of the credit is mine, but I feel like a solid amount of credit belongs to the awesome trainers at my gym, Crossfit Somerville. They, more so than any other gym of which I have been a member, have done an great job of helping me improve my form and keep me from further injuring myself (something I excel at).

Speaking of injuring myself... I made it through my 11 mile run! It got a bit rough the last two miles... my plantar fasciitis started acting up a bit, which ended up making my knee hurt a bit. Luckily, I taped it up, so I think it lasted a bit longer than it would have otherwise. I would think this would be bad news, but considering the same thing happened at mile 7.5 two weeks ago, so I'm pretty happy that I felt good up to mile 10 here.

Tons of Rowing, But Two Days Without A Run

I got these awesome pants yesterday, but Boston weather has prevented me from testing them out today. The wind is out in full force and, since I have an 11 miler tomorrow, I decided to skip it. I did get to wear them to crossfit this morning and, while I felt they were awesome for squats, they were not so great for rowing (too much chaffing).

While I missed my run, I did still get a solid workout at the gym. Today we had two 12 minute EMOMs (Every Minute On the Minute). First one was a complex of 1 power clean + 1 front squat + 1 power clean. I stayed light and did 65# across. The WOD was an EMOM with 10 calorie row + 5 pushups. Apparently everyone else had issues with the pushups, but the row was what killed me. I was able to consistently finish all the pushups no problem, but the row kept taking longer and longer. I had to skip round 6 because I went over the minute in round 5, then did 7-12 at only 8 calories. I am not a sprinter.

Further review of my Physiclo compression/resistance pants coming soon, but so far so good.

Track Workout And Hanging From A Rope

Truth: I've had a rough few weeks. First, I got a new pair of sneakers that weren't quite right and I ended up getting some plantar fasciitis. Joy. Then my knee started hurting a bit. Which brings me to last night. I was doing cruise intervals at about a 8:30 pace and I ended up having to stop halfway through the last one because my knee felt weird. I'm working from home today, so I ran to crossfit this morning and had another knee twinge. But I had no problem doing wall balls and squats? Ugh. This is pretty frustrating.

My crossfit workout was a 5x5 set of deadlifts (kept it on the lighter end and ended at 165#) and then 5 rounds of: 10 wall balls (14#), 10 rope knees to elbows, and 30sec overhead hold (55#). The rope KTE got me more than I thought. Since the hang is different, I ended up using my biceps more than on regular KTE.

The real bonus of working from home is that today I got to feed my addiction to Kodiak Power Cakes and make myself some pancakes for breakfast. Delicious :D

Normally I'd do a run around 3pm today, but I think I'm going to take it easy. We'll see how tomorrow goes!

Why write this?

Currently, I have a coding/work blog. However, that's only half my life. When I'm not at work, the bulk of my time goes into training. I do Crossfit 4-6 times a week and run 3-4 times a week (usually ~20 miles). Why? I'm not an elite athlete by any stretch, but I get a great sense of accomplishment by pushing myself to constantly improve. In the past 6 months, I've lost 20 lbs of body fat, improved my 5K time by 3 min, and also started doing more workouts RX at my gym. My current goal is to complete a half marathon in 2 hours. Consider I am currently signed up for four over the next 9 months, I should have plenty of chances. Since this is such a big part of my life, I wanted to write about what I do every day... the successes and the failures (fingers crossed for no injuries!).