CFF Day 103 – Revenge of Nasty Girl ‘Helen’

Friday July 31, 2009 5:30 AM

Filthy 50 + Fran = A man not prepared to battle Helen!

Came into the gym today lethargic and tired. Muscles were still very sore from the past 2 days of CFF. Once again, I didn’t sleep well last night. This is a bit concerning, since I’m always able to sleep well, and 2 nights in a row does not make sense. My weightloss has slowed to a stop, so I’m trying intermittent fasting today. It is basically where you fast for 14 hours, and then eat all of your calories in the next 6 hours, and then give your body another 14 hours to digest, and heal itself. Basically giving the body a longer break from digestion so it can work on other stuff. I’ll let you know how it goes, not sure how I like it. I’m going to try to do it all next week and see how it goes.

Warmup:
Sprint 150M x 2
Backwards Sprint 150M x 2
10 Handstand Push ups
10 Pullups (Blue Band)
5 Overhead Squats
Kettlebell Swings

WOD: Helen
3 Rounds:
- 400M Run
- 21 Kettle bell Swings (16K)
- 12 Pull-ups (Green Band)

I don’t remember the exact time, but I think it was 12:18, perhaps super dave could help me out here…

So, I didn’t have Helen marked in my book so I didn’t have a benchmark while doing it, but I did do it before, because I blogged about it here. So, going through it: Run, I went out very fast on round one, which I think hurt me in the long run, I got back in 1:38, which I think is pretty good, I don’t have a pr for a 400 but that can’t be too far off. I was breathing pretty hard. I had some Kettlebell trobule in that the one I thought I set out was too light, so I had to take 10 seconds and find the right one. GRRRR. KB swings were okay, I did all of them unbroken. I had debated giong to the 24K, but held off b/c I wasn’t feeling strong this morning. I reverted back to the green band for the pull-ups for the same reason. I did 4×3 all three rounds. If I had used the blue band again, I would still be there right now. My Pull-ups haven’t felt as strong this week, prolly from the week off, but its still frustrating.

If you looked at the prior post, you would see that I’m slower by a minute+ from the last time I did this one. Had I paced myself better on this, I think I could have gotten into the 11’s, but today, the PR was not going to be reachable for me.

After CFF, I was able to go play volleyball for a bit with some old friends that I used to play VB every Friday with. It was a great time and I will look forward to doing that every Friday from now on! My timing is still way off….patience grasshopper!! Oh, and I did commit to doing the Grayslake 5k and ‘muddy buddy’ with Joe and Mike next year – that should be interesting! And I put it out there that I want to be at 20:XX by then in the 5k. So I better get a lot faster!

Terrapin 5k

First off, happy birthday to Julie- I love you lots and am so happy you picked me to spend your life with!!!

Happy Birthday!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wicking Tie-Dyed shirt?! Awesome!

I have mentioned that Bones, Q. and I were going to run the Terrapin 5k, not because we love the Dead, or necessarily love running, but mainly because we like hanging out together, and love cool-ass swag. This race has the best that I’ve seen. The company that put it on is RAM racing/multisport. They did a great job organizing it and Q. said they have a nice store in the city. If you have a chance to do a race with them, I would suggest it. I had a really good time running this race. I’ve been Crossfitting very hard for a couple months and it felt good to use that training to some sort of end. Bones, Q. and I roll up to the starting line about 4 minutes before the race started. The weather was a bit ominious, but the rain held off and it turned out to be beautiful, about 20 degrees cooler than it should have been in the middle of July – score! When I say starting line, I really mean starting LINE. Since they didn’t close off any streets, the course was like 10 ft wide the whole way. There was 1693 people in the race, and roughly 1687 of them were in front of us. So, the gun goes off, and 3 minutes and 38 seconds goes by and we are starting the run. I take off as soon as we hit the start and start doing what I do best, weaving in and out of traffic to pass people. Certainly a colossel waste of energy, but it’s fun nonetheless. Honestly, we should have started considerably closer to the front because we ran in traffic the whole time. That is really the only beef I had with the race, everything else was great! So, weaving and bobbing, bobbing and weaving I am running pretty hard but able to keep my breathing in check, I get to the 1 mile mark at 8:10 exactly. Uh-oh….8:10 is the mile time I put in at Crossfit when I was just running a mile. My plan for this race was to go out hard and try to hold on, not really the best plan in the world, but I didn’t want to leave anything on the table. So I guess I’m on plan. This is about when the field thins a bit and I can start running in a straight line for more than 5 steps in a row. The water station was a little bit past the halfway point and I don’t really need the water, but try it anyway…BIG Mistake! As some of you know, our hero isn’t the most cooridinated person in the world, so drinking and running is not a skill I have developed. My first drink, I got 90% air and 5% water and 5% water down the wrong tube. So now, I’m running and coughing with a huge air bubble in my throat. This sucks! After about a quarter mile, I finally am able to work out the air bubble and the coughing stops. Grrrr….more wasted energy on something I really didn’t need! Not too long after that I see the 2 mile marker. The second mile was somewhere around 8:23. Again, pretty happy, but beginning to lose a little steam, the path is narrowing a bit and I don’t have the energy to go around people as much anymore. Right after the mile marker, I got stuck behind a group of 5 girls, that seemed to be taking up the whole path, I kept waiting for a break, but couldn’t find it. With a clap on my shoulder and a the smallest of openings, my knight in shining armor came to my rescue and cleared the way for me! Bones, won’t you be my Matt Suhey? So now I have my reptile buddy and he is setting the pace, I’m just trying to keep up and save FAAAce at this point. It was a rough half mile, by the time I began regaining my steam, he was losing his, so I was setting the pace for the last quarter mile. Not really knowing where the finish line was, we began picking up the pace when we heard the hippie music. The finish line came into view with about 200M to go so we booked it to the end and finished together. We even posed for what I hope was the official camera and not some creepy dude. It was an awesome way to finish with PR’s all the way around. We both finished in 26:06!! Very happy about that! That is nearly 3 minutes faster than my time from Tuesday and for Bones it was 2 minutes faster than his PR from a couple of months ago! I think it is safe to say that we are very good running partners! I look forward to the rematch! Q. came in at the exact time that he wanted to as well, he is marathon training and he was doing fartlickers or something like that, and ran awesome! Here is a picture of our 3 heroes of the day!

Reptiles rocking hippy face

The next time I run one of these I’m going for sub 25 minutes, with a little more training, not as much weaving and no water foul, I think that is attainable. That was my “unattainable goal” this time, I’m not sure what my “unattainable goal” will be next time, but I will be sure to post it up so its in the books. Good run!

Crossfitting notes, I’m off today and busy all weekend, so I’ll start back up next week, not really looking forward to that first WOD after not lifting any heavy stuff for awhile, but I gots to do what I gots to do!

CFF Day 93 – CFF Nasty Girl ‘Jennie’

Tuesday July 21, 2009 5:30 AM

Came to the fort in a good mood, awake on a nice sunny morning. Zach pulled up with the bike on his trunk and I should have known something was up. Last time he did that, we ran a mile as part of the WOD. He told us to go warm up, double unders or rowing. I chose rowing b/c I need to get more powerful. I set to go 1000M, but only ended up doing 500 b/c it looked like we needed to get going. Get going to what? The 5k…the what?????? But but but I’m doing that on Thursday!! We had to partner up, I wanted to choose Season, we did the mile on the same day and she paced just a little slower than I did. But Super Dave had already partnered up with her, so Nate and I partnered up. This was a partnership that I was unsure about, I know Nate runs a lot, and we are pretty competitive with each other. Those are the ingredients for our hero burning himself out before the first step of the Terrapin 5K. Alas, because of his running experience, Nate was an expert pacer, we set out on a 10 minute mile pace and kept it the whole way through. When Pete and Zach passed us about 2/3 of the way through, I turned into Scrappy Doo, “C’mon Nate, let’s get ‘em, c’mon c’mon c’mon!!!” He had the cool head and we kept our pace. We really picked it up the last 400 and finished with a sprint. It was a great run and I felt great afterwards. We finished in 29:50 – Great pacing Nate! It was a PR for both of us! Had it been me by myself, I’m sure I would have gone out too fast and died at the end!

Let me at 'em, I'll splat 'em!

++Until the sprint, I was not winded at all. Wow, I’m really happy about that, was even able to hold a conversation.
—No Negatives today, great workout.

We were going to try to keep the workout a secret from Jennie, but she already knew it. Background is that she is a terrific athlete, but has a strong distaste for running. It would have been fun keeping that secret from her all day! But, Tom thought of something even better. Check it out!

Crossfitter of the Day – Coach Zach – we pressured him into doing the workout with us by using everything from asking, begging, cajoling, and eventually straight up taunting – regardless of what he was or was not wearing, he did great, we ran behind him for the better part of the workout and he developed a pretty good limp by the time we got back onto Wegner. He totally gutted it out and increased his pace all through the last stretch, it was very obvious he gave it all he had by the end. Great job Zach, the best way to lead is by example, and you’re doing a fantastic job!

CFF Day 86 – Not Giving up the Belt Yet!

Tuesday July 14, 2009 5:30 AM
Woke up and told myself that I was going to take a rest day. I somehow even justified it in my mind and tried to go back to sleep. But my inner crossfitter wouldn’t let me, he dragged me out of bed and to class, I hate that guy, and I love him. Big Class this morning so the WOD was converted into a team workout, which only affected me in a positive way…will explain later. Had a long warm-up with lots of OH Lunges, some double under practice and some mobility drills. Then, straight into the WOD

WOD – Teams of two
5 sets of:
Row 500M
Run 400M
One person starts the Row, the other Starts at the Run. You can’t start the other activity until your partner is back.
TIME: 26:07

Thoughts:
My partner was Tommy Mo, he is a running and rowing beast, so I had to do my best just to prevent him from having to wait around too much. We had a lot of really good competition in Super Dave and Garth, Nate and Brandon, Season and Audra, and Leslie and Lisa. I started out running and immediately was behind Nate and Garth. I did my best just to keep Nate within 10 seconds so I could try to get him on the row. I couldn’t do anything about Garth, as he is crazy fast. I was able to catch Nate by midway through the 2nd Run, he doesn’t know it, but he pushed me the whole way, I know how fast he can be so I was very worried about him catching me. Garth was doing something crazy on the rower which was allowing me to nearly keep pace with him, he wasn’t strapping in his feet. It took me about 5 extra seconds to do that, but it was definitely worth it! The last run was really hard. I got out before Garth and foolishly tried to keep pace with him over the first 150. That gassed me for the last 250. The last row was about as fast as the first one because I knew Super Dave was coming around the corner any second. I sprinted the whole thing. I had a great advantage – I had a clear vision of the entrance to the fort and would be able to see him coming. I was able to finish about 4-5 seconds right before him to give Tommy Mo and I the win! I’m continuing to feel really good about my running, I think that definitely carried me today. I need to get better at rowing, perhaps I will alternate my warm-ups with double unders and rowing from now on. Since I never had to wait for my partner on any of the exercises, our time was my time, which I’m proud of, I don’t think I would have got there if it wasn’t a team workout, but that is the beauty of crossfit- there is always reasons to keep pushing, keep going!

5k with a bunch of Dead Heads...wonder if I should run with a Hepa Mask?

Other Stuff:
Glad my running is coming into form because I’m doing a sweet 5k with my buddies Bones and Q. (maybe Krissy) a week from Thursday. It’s the Terrapin 5k in Grant Park. None of us are dead heads (my wife is though), but they have a very sweet wicking tie-dyed shirt as swag, which is awesome. I’m not really sure where or how I want to finish. I think I would be happy if I could somehow come in 27-30 minutes. I’m not sure if I’m setting my goal too low or high, but I don’t really have a good benchmark on this run. I will after this!! I’m not going to have my gps watch to help pace me, which sucks, but hopefully I’ll find it next weekend when we clean the garage.

Weight:
After the disaster that was my weigh in yesterday, I ate really good and had a great workout. I was rewarded with my new low!!!
202.3! I’m pretty psyched. I’m thinking by the end of the month at the latest I’ll be going down to Papa Joe’s and eating some tasty tetrazzini!