CFF Day 102 – CF Nasty Girl ‘Fran’

Thursday July 30, 2009 5:30 AM

No, not Hurricane Fran, but it felt like it!!!!

This is the workout that we were supposed to do on Tuesday when the mayor forgot his keys. He was nice enough to come in on his day off and have a make-up class. I felt like crap this morning. Yesterday’s workout was very tough, last night from 7pm on, all I wanted to do was go to bed! On top of that, I slept like garbage. But, always happy to be at the fort!

Warmup: 500m Row – I sprinted the first half and worked on form the 2nd, felt good.
WOD: “Fran”
21-15-9
Thrusters (30K)
Pull-ups (Blue Band)
Time: 9:35

Thoughts:
It just might be impossible to convey how hard this workout actually is through words. I finished somewhere around 6:20. I still have the ‘exercise shakes’ 5 hours later. Lets break it down.
21 Thrusters – Did these unbroken, felt great!
21 Pullups – Perhaps I should have used the green band for this one, but I was being stubborn. I did a set of 5s, then all 3s, 2s and four 1s to end it. When I couldn’t do more than 1 in a row, I really fought with myself to have Ryan set up the green band for me. Also, I was having great difficulties with the box being in the wrong spot, I kept hitting it on my way down.
15 Thrusters – Drained, I still repped out 5,5,5 – on my middle 5 my left knee started to go out, doing thrusters with one leg is pretty stinking difficult!
15 Pullups – Fixed the box and began with 4 good ones with the intention of doing 5,5,5 – it went way downhill from there. 4,3,2,1,1,1,1,1
9 Thrusters – knee still hurting, this is when I start to see the light at the end of the tunnel, 5,4
9 Pullups – really hurting, did 3,2,1,1,1,1
As you know by now, I’m competitive. I don’t like losing, I don’t like being the last to finish. I was last to finish this one, by a longshot. I don’t like that I have to use the band and everyone else is doing regular pull ups. Since I didn’t have a baseline on this one for myself, I compare myself with the other guys, and they whooped up on me today. I know, I have to keep perspective…I couldn’t do one pull up 3 months ago, and now I’m mad that I finished minutes behind elite athletes who have been doing it for longer, who are stronger and weigh less???? (Yes, Dammit, I am!!) My heart is mad, but my brain knows that I will get there, just have to keep pushing.

++Finished without having Ryan put up another band for me
—Keep my elbows up, they dipped a few times and that caused me to lose my form on my thrusters

Quote of the day: Me, about an hour ago to Q. “I’m too exhausted to even blog about that workout”

Crossfitter of the day: so many choices here, I’ll list what I’m thinking and let you weigh in…
The Mayor Zach – coming in and doing right by the GYG for the makeup Fran
Tommy Mo – Came in at 5:30 in the morning to CHEER for us, and take pics and video
The Garth Show – Came in to say hi, and then to Run a 9K with Brit and finished in 46 minutes
Brit – Ran a 9K with Garth (hopefully you had headphones LOL j/k Garth) -And finished in 46 minutes
Audra – Ran 3.7 miles – (she has gone on the record as saying she despises running)
Pete – Pushed himself so hard that he nearly passed out
Super Dave – took a minute + off of his Fran time, while doing 22lbs more!
Brandon – Also took a minute + off of his Fran time – extra props for doing it without much time at the fort lately.
Ryan – my partner, did a great job counting and cheering for me, also doing this for the first time, did full pull ups and was a sweaty mess afterwards!

CFF Day 101 – Filthy Fifty

Wednesday July 29, 2009 5:30

Mmmmmmm....Filthy Bacon

Up til midnight last night, up at 5am, ready to start the day much more awake than I should be! Came to the gym to see all the familiar friendly faces.

Warm up: 5 reps of each Filthy Fifty Station

WOD: Filthy Fifty

50 x 20″ Box Jumps
50 x Jumping Pull-ups
50 x Kettlebell Swings
50 x Walking Lunges
50 x 20k Push Press
50 x 10lb Wall Ball
50 x Supermans
50 x Burpees
50 x Double under attepmts
50 x Knees to Elbows

35:35

We accidently skipped the K2E so we did that seperately

Thoughts: Holy cow, this was tough. I had the option to scale to 40 reps, but the filthy 40 didn’t really have the same ring to it.
Box Jumps – normally I would have gone with the 24″, but Zach put a 40:00 DNF stopper on the workout and to scale properly. Given that I haven’t done this yet, I thought better safe than sorry.
Jumping Pull-ups – these get tiring very quickly – I did in sets of 5, not bad, just very tiring
20k Push Press - I liked these, went through them pretty fast
10lb Wall Ball – I dislike Wall Balls, a lot. I can’t think of anything that I am slower at than wall balls
Supermans - these were okay
Burpees - these were okay, I repped out the first 10, then did 8 sets of 5 after that.
Double under attepmts – I have to jump like 3 times to get one attempt down, good incentive to get them down – my lack of cooridination is really shining through here…I’m confident that I will get it, it will just take time.
Then we’re done…phew!!! Oh wait, we forgot the knees to elbows…oops!
K2E - I suck at these, very very slow, and my hands hurt every time I grab the bar, if they weren’t hurting, they were slipping off. Couldn’t really rep out more than 3 until the last 5 I did unbroken.

Crossfitter of the Day: Tommy Mo. Always intense and always pushing, Tom was cheering and in my face for all of my burpees and double unders, he really helped me push through and not take more rest than I needed. And, I was able to note that he is a K2E god! Phenomonal core strength! Wow!

Quote of the day: Tommy Mo while cheering me in my burpees: “you know its working cuz your a sweaty mess!!!!”

Want “Mohr” – 60 x 25M Sprints

++Pushed through a very difficult workout with no worry of DNF, now I have a baseline so I can make it harder!

—Keep working on Double unders and K2E, slowing you down a lot!!

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!

CFF – Day 58 – 50 times the pain

Well, after a decent nights sleep, this is what I come into at the gym. Originally the # of reps was going to be the same number of Broad Jumps it took you to go 200ft. I think we really lucked out in not having to do the broad jumps, and I think it may have taken me more than 50, so, 50 is just fine for me…
or is it?

- 150 Single Unders (supposed to be 50 x Double Unders, but 3xSU is the scaling)
- 50 Dead Lifts (60K)
- 150 Single Unders
- 50 Box Jumps (20″)
- 150 Single Unders
- 50 Ring Dips (Blue Band)
- 150 Single Unders
- 50 Calorie Row

I’m normally a sweaty dude after I workout. Today, my sweat was sweating, I litearally had layers on, it was awesome. So, going through each exercise:
150 Single Unders – I really struggled with the first set for some reason, just getting timing and intensity just right so I could go through them.
50 Dead Lifts – O.U.C.H. – these were really tough, I think I loaded my bar thinking I would do about 25-30, and thought about scaling midway, but pushed through them and was happy about it
150 Single Unders – Much Better 50-50-50
50 Box Jumps – I used the 20″ and really worked on swingng my arms up, which helped, if I did it over again, I would use 24″
150 Single Unders – Fast 50-50-50
50 Ring Dips – HA, you thought the Dead Lifts were hard….these were killer, even with the blue band! Sets: 12-8-5-5-4-5-3-2-2-1-1-2
150 Single Unders – Tired but okay 50-34-66 – pushed a little harder on the last 20 of the 66 with Tommy Mo cheering me on, thanks TM!
50 Calorie Row – This had me intimidated a bit, so I think I paced more than I should have – next time I have rowing at the end I’m going to go so hard that I will allow myself to stop if I have to and take a breather. Note on this: I stayed up cheering for Nate and OMFG, he really killed the row, it was really powerful, very impressive!

++ Got through a hard workout, was very happy with my jumprope, when I started here, I had trobule with the timing on just getting 20 in a row, its just jump rope, but it feels good
–Intensity on the Row – get after it, make that row your bitch!

No Weight Taken Today, but ate great yesterday for breakfast, lunch and dinner, had a few mini homemade oatmeal and raisen cookies from Krissy – they were y-u-m-m-y!! No softball last night as it was pouring.