Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Intermittent Training

Training has been rather sporadic for me lately. My jobs have picked up a bit and most day I've only got time to eat sleep and work. It's great to be this busy, but I'm definitely not working out enough. I have, however, been eating fairly well. I've been sticking to the 3 days of eating 1 day of fasting, and I have found my cravings for sugar have decreased. Not only that, but toward then end of the fast I feel myself go into survival mode a bit and become hyper alert. It's kind of cool. On the days I eat, I try to eat chicken and turkey in addition to 2 pounds of veggies, 2 apples, and some pineapple. Plus fats, almonds, olive oil, and fish oil. It's been treating me well thus far.

I haven't had time to further gather my thoughts on Avatar, but I hope to do that in the near future.

Workouts:

Friday 2/19
5 Rounds
Max Rep 275lb DL
Max Rep Chest to Bar Pull-ups

I liked this one. I think DL's were 11-10-9-8-5 and the pull-ups were 11-6-6-5-5 (not impressed). I was called out on bad DL form by another guy working out there and was happy for it. I haven't had anyone watching my form for almost a year (since Omaha) and I haven't been consciously keeping it honest. He called me out on the fourth set and I really focused on that for the final round. Pull-ups: needs work.

Sunday 2/21
10 Rounds
30 Seconds Treadmill Sprint @ 7% grade
2 minutes rest between rounds

Started at 11.5 mph and finished at 10mph. I'm going to start mixing in a few Endurance wods since I will be running a marathon is 2 months.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Catch Up

Well, hello again old friend. It's been a while since we've last met and quite a bit has happened since our last encounter.

To start with I would like to commend all those who participated and subsequently rocked the Midwest Crossfit Sectional! Awesome work there!

Proceeding from there, I do have a bit of news that has lightened my days. Last Wednesday I was accepted to the University of Minnesota Medical School! I was starting to get a little worried there for a bit. Now I'm extremely excited and relieved to know that I do have a future plan. As it stands now, I will likely be in Minneapolis for the next 4 years. Minnesota was one of my tops choices, and is in fact the only school to accept me as of now. Even if I'm not accepted elsewhere, I would not consider this to be a school I settled for. It is well ranked, and they are implementing an exciting new curriculum this next year that looks awesome. Not to mention, there is a Crossfit gym not far from the school. It would be great to workout in a proper gym again. More information will come in this in the future as decisions are made and plans set. Exciting times.

On a less significant, but exciting nevertheless, note, I am planning on running the Boston Marathon this year. No I am not registered which means I'll be running rogue. My friend, Paul as some may remember from previous posts, has decided to run the marathon and needed a running buddy for its duration. He asked and I accepted the challenge. He recently adopted POSE running (at my suggestion), bought a pair of five fingers, and plans on running the whole thing in those. Crazy, but in a good way. As for my long distance history, I have never run more than 6 miles in one go. This is going to be interesting.

The race is April 29th, and until today, I had not been to the gym for some time. This week I have a little more free time than usual, so I plan on at least doing something most of the days. In an attempt to prepare myself for the physical and mental rigors or the event, I added a little challenge to my workout today. A 2.25 mile run before and after the WOD. This might not have been the best idea, but I did it. I know it would have been better for me to spread these activities out of the day in the sense of physical training. But as far as mental toughness goes, I'm not sure it would have been tougher to separate the two. This is one of the reasons I chose to do it as a delicious sandwich. The first two miles were really hard (due to the long break I'm sure). The workout also was brutal and I slugged through it (see below for times and whatnot). The second two miler, really didn't feel as bad as the first (my pace was greatly reduced). I also attempted to refuel with Gatorade instead of water during the WOD. I'll plan on drinking watered down Gatorade on the marathon and eating a few clif bars. I'm not a fan of the soybeans used in Clif bars. Does anyone have any suggestions for energy type bar that would be good for a marathon? If you do let me know. That along with any tips you can think of for simply surviving.

WOD
2.25 Mile Run 17:43 (with ~5 traffic stops)

Rest/Warm up 10-15 minutes

3 rounds
500 meter row
12 135lb power cleans
15 95lb thrusters
~27 minutes (all rows under 2 minutes, minor cramping in legs)

Rest ~10 minutes

2.25 Mile run 20:34 (with ~5 traffic stops)

Rest day tomorrow and likely Thursday because of schedule. However I may try to do the CF Endurance WOD on those days.

And for the cherry on top. I just bought a new pair of skis for $400 less than MSRP. They are beautiful 189cm 2009 K2 Kung Fujas. I can't wait to get the bindings mounted and a nice coat of wax on those bad boys.

That is all!