Monday, December 15, 2008
Power = Work / Time
So this equation pretty much sums up CrossFit (this is a pretty simplified version, see here for the more accurate version). The aim is to maximize the amount of work completed and minimize the amount of time it takes to do, thus maximizing power. As the amount of time it takes you to do a workout decreases, your generated power will increase accordingly. Pretty cool stuff.
So let's see, since last week what have I accomplished...
Last week I did some sort of push-press/squat/row 250 m combination. My times are getting better, which makes me think I'm making some strides in the cardio department. I'm not sure how my strength is doing.
On Saturday I did the WOD from Friday that ended up being pretty rough. I scaled to the following:
-Box jumps at 25
-Deadlift x 15 @ 135 lbs
-Jumping pullups x 15
for a total of 3 rounds.
The last round of box jumps was at a more significant height than the first two because some dude took my box to use for something else while I was on deadlifts. I can't remember the time it took to complete.
Sunday was a rest day. I grabbed lunch with Qua at BWW in Plymouth which is always a good time. Capped it off with an epic game of Big Buck Hunter. I think I won by less than 100 points. Also watched my fantasy team do alright. Pretty much all my players played in the early games which was kind of unnerving, but they ended up doing well enough to put me in the PFL super bowl next weekend. Good news is I'm in the money now, runner up gets 75 with potential to get 200 if I can pull off an upset. The big question is the following: Do I play Donovan McNabb or Kurt Warner next week? Warner has been falling off a little lately and McNabb has heated up. Yes I'm soliciting advice.
The rest of the day was spent watching the first half of the Vikings game, sleeping the second half, doing laundry and eating sushi for dinner. The typical do-nothing Sunday that I appreciate so much.
Today kicked off the last full week of work for the next 3 weeks. After this week, we've got Christmas vacation, then the following week, New Year's day, and the week after that is Park City already. Hard to believe it's coming up that soon. Unless the weather changes I won't be getting a chance to get out on the slopes around here before we get on that plane. Ah well, it will be interesting to say the least.
Hit up the grocery store after work and stocked up. I was surprised I spent over 80 bucks on basically produce! What the heck. Maybe that's not entirely accurate, but it felt like I didn't get a whole lot for that 80 bucks.
Hit up the gym afterward and did the WOD for today. I scaled it as follows:
-Deadlifts @ 165 x 5 reps
-10 burpees
for 5 rounds. My time was 7:29. Man my heart was pumping afterward. I'm sure everybody else around me was wondering what the hell I was doing. Kind of funny. Did a few Tabata sprints on the treadmill after that. There was a super cute girl a couple machines over that I'm sure I frightened with my near falling off the treadmill by the final set. Haha. Finished up with some ab-work and worked on some skills. I just cannot get the kipping motion down. I was just trying to swing back and forth on the bar and couldn't do it. I don't think it's a matter of strength I think it's a matter of coordination or lack thereof. After a while I got frustrated and attempted a few Knees to Elbows. I was pretty happy that I was able to do 5 of those without too much trouble. Man that is an ab/back killer. I need to start slipping some more of those into my workouts. Went home in the -whatever degree weather and cooked up some chicken breast and peppers. I threw some salsa on top and a little cheese. It was sort of fajitas sans tortilla. Finished things off with a bowl of diced apple and some berries. The good news is I now have mostly pretty healthy stuff at home so hopefully I'll be able to slim down a little bit more. I think I can be both strong and lean at about 170, maybe a little more. I'm currently around 177 or so.
Well after deadlifting 2 out of the past 3 days my shins are hamburger. They are sore to the touch, but apparently that means I'm doing something right according to everything I can find on the internet. I think I tweaked my back a little bit towards the end of the workout tonight. The bad part is when you get tired with the deadlift, your form suffers and that's when problems can arise. I'll see how I feel in the morning. The good news is that I won't have to do deadlifts tomorrow! Yay! Tomorrow's WOD is a strength day, so that will be a nice break. I'll probably jump on the C2 rower for a while too to get some cardio in.
Joel is headed home on Friday for Christmas so the whole family is looking forward to that. Hopefully this time I'll see him for more than a few hours (his doing, not mine). He always spends a lot of time with his friends, which is important, but it'd be good to hang out too.
I still have a lot of Christmas shopping to do. So that's still on the docket of things to accomplish in the next 9 days. I can't believe Christmas is already that close.
The rest of the week will be spent at work during the day, at the gym at night, and who knows after that. Everybody I know is finally done with school this week, so hopefully people will be up for stuff next weekend.
Also check out the following two joints:
Cafe Maude
moto-i
I checked out both these places this past weekend. On Friday, Dave, Mark and I went to moto-i and got some home brewed sake and awesome Japanese bar food. I highly recommend it. Saturday morning I met Jamie and one of her friends at Cafe Maude for brunch. It was phenomenal. I splurged and got the Eggs Benedict with spicy lamb sausage. Totally delicious.
Hopefully this week Girtz and I will make it to Buster's. I have heard good things. I think he's looking to celebrate being done with the semester. It sounds like it was a pretty taxing one.
Anyway, until next time, thanks to Zach for the current recommended track:
Austin Lucas - Go West (demo)
So let's see, since last week what have I accomplished...
Last week I did some sort of push-press/squat/row 250 m combination. My times are getting better, which makes me think I'm making some strides in the cardio department. I'm not sure how my strength is doing.
On Saturday I did the WOD from Friday that ended up being pretty rough. I scaled to the following:
-Box jumps at 25
-Deadlift x 15 @ 135 lbs
-Jumping pullups x 15
for a total of 3 rounds.
The last round of box jumps was at a more significant height than the first two because some dude took my box to use for something else while I was on deadlifts. I can't remember the time it took to complete.
Sunday was a rest day. I grabbed lunch with Qua at BWW in Plymouth which is always a good time. Capped it off with an epic game of Big Buck Hunter. I think I won by less than 100 points. Also watched my fantasy team do alright. Pretty much all my players played in the early games which was kind of unnerving, but they ended up doing well enough to put me in the PFL super bowl next weekend. Good news is I'm in the money now, runner up gets 75 with potential to get 200 if I can pull off an upset. The big question is the following: Do I play Donovan McNabb or Kurt Warner next week? Warner has been falling off a little lately and McNabb has heated up. Yes I'm soliciting advice.
The rest of the day was spent watching the first half of the Vikings game, sleeping the second half, doing laundry and eating sushi for dinner. The typical do-nothing Sunday that I appreciate so much.
Today kicked off the last full week of work for the next 3 weeks. After this week, we've got Christmas vacation, then the following week, New Year's day, and the week after that is Park City already. Hard to believe it's coming up that soon. Unless the weather changes I won't be getting a chance to get out on the slopes around here before we get on that plane. Ah well, it will be interesting to say the least.
Hit up the grocery store after work and stocked up. I was surprised I spent over 80 bucks on basically produce! What the heck. Maybe that's not entirely accurate, but it felt like I didn't get a whole lot for that 80 bucks.
Hit up the gym afterward and did the WOD for today. I scaled it as follows:
-Deadlifts @ 165 x 5 reps
-10 burpees
for 5 rounds. My time was 7:29. Man my heart was pumping afterward. I'm sure everybody else around me was wondering what the hell I was doing. Kind of funny. Did a few Tabata sprints on the treadmill after that. There was a super cute girl a couple machines over that I'm sure I frightened with my near falling off the treadmill by the final set. Haha. Finished up with some ab-work and worked on some skills. I just cannot get the kipping motion down. I was just trying to swing back and forth on the bar and couldn't do it. I don't think it's a matter of strength I think it's a matter of coordination or lack thereof. After a while I got frustrated and attempted a few Knees to Elbows. I was pretty happy that I was able to do 5 of those without too much trouble. Man that is an ab/back killer. I need to start slipping some more of those into my workouts. Went home in the -whatever degree weather and cooked up some chicken breast and peppers. I threw some salsa on top and a little cheese. It was sort of fajitas sans tortilla. Finished things off with a bowl of diced apple and some berries. The good news is I now have mostly pretty healthy stuff at home so hopefully I'll be able to slim down a little bit more. I think I can be both strong and lean at about 170, maybe a little more. I'm currently around 177 or so.
Well after deadlifting 2 out of the past 3 days my shins are hamburger. They are sore to the touch, but apparently that means I'm doing something right according to everything I can find on the internet. I think I tweaked my back a little bit towards the end of the workout tonight. The bad part is when you get tired with the deadlift, your form suffers and that's when problems can arise. I'll see how I feel in the morning. The good news is that I won't have to do deadlifts tomorrow! Yay! Tomorrow's WOD is a strength day, so that will be a nice break. I'll probably jump on the C2 rower for a while too to get some cardio in.
Joel is headed home on Friday for Christmas so the whole family is looking forward to that. Hopefully this time I'll see him for more than a few hours (his doing, not mine). He always spends a lot of time with his friends, which is important, but it'd be good to hang out too.
I still have a lot of Christmas shopping to do. So that's still on the docket of things to accomplish in the next 9 days. I can't believe Christmas is already that close.
The rest of the week will be spent at work during the day, at the gym at night, and who knows after that. Everybody I know is finally done with school this week, so hopefully people will be up for stuff next weekend.
Also check out the following two joints:
Cafe Maude
moto-i
I checked out both these places this past weekend. On Friday, Dave, Mark and I went to moto-i and got some home brewed sake and awesome Japanese bar food. I highly recommend it. Saturday morning I met Jamie and one of her friends at Cafe Maude for brunch. It was phenomenal. I splurged and got the Eggs Benedict with spicy lamb sausage. Totally delicious.
Hopefully this week Girtz and I will make it to Buster's. I have heard good things. I think he's looking to celebrate being done with the semester. It sounds like it was a pretty taxing one.
Anyway, until next time, thanks to Zach for the current recommended track:
Austin Lucas - Go West (demo)
Monday, December 08, 2008
We Ain't Nobody's Darlings
It is definitely winter I guess now. I know this because my skin is insanely dry and there is snow on the ground outside. Those are really the two indicators for me.
Well Christmas is right around the corner. I have yet to any shopping this year. The good news is that I have exactly one less person to shop for this holiday season. I never know what to get anyone. I'm guessing I'll end up riding the light rail to the Mall of America on probably the 23rd of December at about 6 PM. That's usually how I roll. 'Tis the season I guess.
To be honest I always like this time of year, even this particular go around as much as it kind of sucks. The snow, the bustle, etcetera. I really appreciate living in the city in December. The rough part is always when January rolls around. January 2nd is usually when I get sick of winter.
Speaking of January the trip to Park City is coming up quickly. Sadly there isn't much open out there right now... Hopefully that will change in the next month. We'll be out there exactly one month from today. The Dudestorm is coming. It should be interesting attempting to navigating the Utah liquor laws. I suppose I'll need to get out and tune up the skiing skills a little bit. It's just so cold right now, I feel like I don't really want to do much outside.
Last weekend was a good time. Friday night Zach came over and we headed down to Grumpy's to grab some food and a couple beers before taking the light rail down to the Triple Rock for Lucero. The snow was flying that night and Zach and I ended up stumbling around quite a bit in it. The show was awesome, many whiskeys were consumed and the bands were awesome. We missed the last light rail headed back north so we were stuck walking from the Triple Rock to Grumpy's on Washington. I was starving when I got home so I ordered Domino's and ate a whole pizza (hey it was thin crust!).
Saturday was spent cleaning up a little bit around the apartment and I hit the gym. It was supposed to be my day off so I just took it easy. Got on the C2 rower for a while, did about 3K with sub 2:00 500 meter splits. I took short breaks between the last couple 500 meters. After that I decided that I'd do some strength work. I worked up to a one rep max (1RM) on shoulder press. I put up 125, which isn't great, but it's good to know where I'm currently at.
After I got back from the gym Cerqua called and we made plans to hang. He came over and we ran over to Surdyk's and got some Labatt Blue and a six pack of the new Schell's Snowstorm. Good stuff. We played a bunch of Tiger Woods, listened to some music, and watched a number of Dr. Steve Brule videos. We discussed what in the world this Tim and Eric live show will be like next month. I think if it's anything less than completely nuts we'll both be disappointed. Girtz came home after finishing his final a little later and we hung out for a bit. Finally we decided to head out around 11. I'm pretty sure earlier we vowed to cab it somewhere, but we ended up walking over to Mac's which was rough. The wind was really cold so we decided we would not be walking back. We played some darts and video game miniature golf (completely ridiculous). I wanted so badly to play some stuff on the jukebox but the bar was busy and the jukebox was completely clogged up with requests. So we headed out eventually and cabbed it to uptown to get some Topper's to go. We joked that it was a 50 dollar pizza and I'm pretty sure it actually was between the cab fare to go down to uptown and then back to downtown with a hot pizza. All in all I think it was worth it. Sunday was laid back, just slept in, watched the Vikings and monitored my fantasy football team. This week was week 1 of the playoffs and I ended up squeaking out a win.
This week has been pretty quiet so far. I checked out the Lifetime in St. Louis Park last night since I realized I am a platinum member. No wonder I pay so much in monthly dues. It was completely ridiculous. Plasma screens everywhere, tons of elliptical machines, and treadmills. I guess that's not really what I'm looking for in a gym. I could find half the stuff I was looking for. No bench for back extensions, so I ended up doing Freddy's Revenge. Obviously I couldn't do the weights those freaks were putting up so I scaled to 95 pounds and 10 burpees times 5 rounds. I think I finished in about 9 minutes. It sucked a lot. I really really hate burpees. Also by the 2nd round I resorted to push-jerking the weight, because my arms just couldn't do it by themselves. After resting for a bit I started messing around trying to find my 1RM on the deadlift. I think it's about 225 which is pretty gross. I have read that ideally it should be about 2X bodyweight (which means I need to be picking up about 350 pounds). Well I think I can get there someday hopefully. Then did some ab work. That usually ends up being my cool down these days because the workouts themselves suck so much. I always look forward to just laying down on the mat and doing some sit ups at the end. After I finished I drove home through some pretty nasty weather, I was glad I didn't have far to go on 394. It was bad enough as it was. Then tonight I did the WOD from Sunday. I'm a couple days behind due to me taking a rest day on Sunday and then not being able to find what I needed on Monday. I scaled down to 10 reps on each exercise, regular pushups, and jumping pullups (still can't kip, and I'm not even close). The full 20 minutes was rough. I think I made it about 8 or 9 rounds. It was pretty bad. By the end I could barely do sets of 5 pushups without my arms just going out. Skipped the ab work because I estimate I did between 80 and 100 situps during the workout. I feel pretty good now though. I think I'm blessed with a relatively quick recovery period. Even after the marathon in October, the first couple days sucked, but I probably could have gotten back to the gym sooner (probably no running though).
As for the rest of the week no real plans. Finally getting a much needed haircut on Friday. The beard still exists. No plans on shaving that til after Park City. I'm kind of sick of it though already. Just a pain to maintain and it already looks scraggly. Whatever, I guess that will be the look I'm going for in the near future. Hopefully another fun weekend on tap. I need to get Cerqua's ipod back to him so maybe that's a good excuse to get some Buffalo Wild Wings... My mouth is watering.
I've found my anthem for my current mood: Lucero - It Gets the Worst at Night.
"it gets the worst at night
with nothing on my mind
but you
i'm thinking too damn much
i go ahead and get up
and put on my boots
so i can drive as far as i can get from you"
Ugh.
Well Christmas is right around the corner. I have yet to any shopping this year. The good news is that I have exactly one less person to shop for this holiday season. I never know what to get anyone. I'm guessing I'll end up riding the light rail to the Mall of America on probably the 23rd of December at about 6 PM. That's usually how I roll. 'Tis the season I guess.
To be honest I always like this time of year, even this particular go around as much as it kind of sucks. The snow, the bustle, etcetera. I really appreciate living in the city in December. The rough part is always when January rolls around. January 2nd is usually when I get sick of winter.
Speaking of January the trip to Park City is coming up quickly. Sadly there isn't much open out there right now... Hopefully that will change in the next month. We'll be out there exactly one month from today. The Dudestorm is coming. It should be interesting attempting to navigating the Utah liquor laws. I suppose I'll need to get out and tune up the skiing skills a little bit. It's just so cold right now, I feel like I don't really want to do much outside.
Last weekend was a good time. Friday night Zach came over and we headed down to Grumpy's to grab some food and a couple beers before taking the light rail down to the Triple Rock for Lucero. The snow was flying that night and Zach and I ended up stumbling around quite a bit in it. The show was awesome, many whiskeys were consumed and the bands were awesome. We missed the last light rail headed back north so we were stuck walking from the Triple Rock to Grumpy's on Washington. I was starving when I got home so I ordered Domino's and ate a whole pizza (hey it was thin crust!).
Saturday was spent cleaning up a little bit around the apartment and I hit the gym. It was supposed to be my day off so I just took it easy. Got on the C2 rower for a while, did about 3K with sub 2:00 500 meter splits. I took short breaks between the last couple 500 meters. After that I decided that I'd do some strength work. I worked up to a one rep max (1RM) on shoulder press. I put up 125, which isn't great, but it's good to know where I'm currently at.
After I got back from the gym Cerqua called and we made plans to hang. He came over and we ran over to Surdyk's and got some Labatt Blue and a six pack of the new Schell's Snowstorm. Good stuff. We played a bunch of Tiger Woods, listened to some music, and watched a number of Dr. Steve Brule videos. We discussed what in the world this Tim and Eric live show will be like next month. I think if it's anything less than completely nuts we'll both be disappointed. Girtz came home after finishing his final a little later and we hung out for a bit. Finally we decided to head out around 11. I'm pretty sure earlier we vowed to cab it somewhere, but we ended up walking over to Mac's which was rough. The wind was really cold so we decided we would not be walking back. We played some darts and video game miniature golf (completely ridiculous). I wanted so badly to play some stuff on the jukebox but the bar was busy and the jukebox was completely clogged up with requests. So we headed out eventually and cabbed it to uptown to get some Topper's to go. We joked that it was a 50 dollar pizza and I'm pretty sure it actually was between the cab fare to go down to uptown and then back to downtown with a hot pizza. All in all I think it was worth it. Sunday was laid back, just slept in, watched the Vikings and monitored my fantasy football team. This week was week 1 of the playoffs and I ended up squeaking out a win.
This week has been pretty quiet so far. I checked out the Lifetime in St. Louis Park last night since I realized I am a platinum member. No wonder I pay so much in monthly dues. It was completely ridiculous. Plasma screens everywhere, tons of elliptical machines, and treadmills. I guess that's not really what I'm looking for in a gym. I could find half the stuff I was looking for. No bench for back extensions, so I ended up doing Freddy's Revenge. Obviously I couldn't do the weights those freaks were putting up so I scaled to 95 pounds and 10 burpees times 5 rounds. I think I finished in about 9 minutes. It sucked a lot. I really really hate burpees. Also by the 2nd round I resorted to push-jerking the weight, because my arms just couldn't do it by themselves. After resting for a bit I started messing around trying to find my 1RM on the deadlift. I think it's about 225 which is pretty gross. I have read that ideally it should be about 2X bodyweight (which means I need to be picking up about 350 pounds). Well I think I can get there someday hopefully. Then did some ab work. That usually ends up being my cool down these days because the workouts themselves suck so much. I always look forward to just laying down on the mat and doing some sit ups at the end. After I finished I drove home through some pretty nasty weather, I was glad I didn't have far to go on 394. It was bad enough as it was. Then tonight I did the WOD from Sunday. I'm a couple days behind due to me taking a rest day on Sunday and then not being able to find what I needed on Monday. I scaled down to 10 reps on each exercise, regular pushups, and jumping pullups (still can't kip, and I'm not even close). The full 20 minutes was rough. I think I made it about 8 or 9 rounds. It was pretty bad. By the end I could barely do sets of 5 pushups without my arms just going out. Skipped the ab work because I estimate I did between 80 and 100 situps during the workout. I feel pretty good now though. I think I'm blessed with a relatively quick recovery period. Even after the marathon in October, the first couple days sucked, but I probably could have gotten back to the gym sooner (probably no running though).
As for the rest of the week no real plans. Finally getting a much needed haircut on Friday. The beard still exists. No plans on shaving that til after Park City. I'm kind of sick of it though already. Just a pain to maintain and it already looks scraggly. Whatever, I guess that will be the look I'm going for in the near future. Hopefully another fun weekend on tap. I need to get Cerqua's ipod back to him so maybe that's a good excuse to get some Buffalo Wild Wings... My mouth is watering.
I've found my anthem for my current mood: Lucero - It Gets the Worst at Night.
"it gets the worst at night
with nothing on my mind
but you
i'm thinking too damn much
i go ahead and get up
and put on my boots
so i can drive as far as i can get from you"
Ugh.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Are we human or are we dancer?
It's amazing how much time can fly by. So what's been going on... Let's see. The weekend before Thanksgiving I headed down to Iowa for the Living History Farms Race with Valley, Kerin, Berndt, Karl, Anne, Joel, and Joel's buddy from the Corps, Andy. We headed down on Friday night, got there pretty late and had Mexican food for dinner at about 10 PM. All in all, probably not such a good selection. The weather was pretty rough. Very overcast, pretty windy, and mostly just cold all around. The worst part was standing around beforehand. We couldn't do packet pickup on Friday night because we got there so late, so we got to the race site early on Saturday morning. The good news is that our motel was about 3 minutes away. Karl brought some sweet mustaches for everybody. So we wore those as well:
Anyway, it was all good times. See if you can spot any of us in this scrum, it's like Where's Waldo:
All in all, it was a great time. It was actually kind of hard to actually RUN the stupid thing. There were just so many people and the course was very narrow at points. Probably the easiest/slowest 7 miles I've ever run. But that was OK. We closed out the day with cold showers at the motel and then a meal at Cheddar's (??!, some bizarre Iowa chain restaurant). The best part was the next day I wasn't sore at all. I was a little worried about my right knee. I think I developed some tendinitis running the TC marathon. But it wasn't sore at all on Sunday.
I've been sticking to the CrossFit stuff pretty well. It's been 3 days on, 1 day off for the most part. I can definitely tell my endurance is getting better and my strength is improving. The other weird thing is that I think I've kicked my metabolism into overdrive because I am hungry all the time. And all this on 30 minute workouts 5 times a week. Hard to believe. I'm up to about 6 dead hang pullups and I'd like to get that number up a little more. I still would like to maybe join the CrossFit Minnesota gym down in Eden Prairie. It just sucks that it's so far away. They got a brand new space though with a bunch of new equipment. It would be a lot of fun to work out with other people and get the help of their trainers/coaches. I have been practicing some of the lifts and I feel better about them. The biggest issue with Lifetime is the fact they don't have bumper plates for weights. It makes me a little concerned about doing some of the power lifts and presses and whatnot since you can't drop the weight if it's too much. Which kind of sucks because then you're always going to play it a little safe with putting weight on the bar. Ah well. Today's WOD was Helen. I subbed a 40 pound dumbbell for the swings and did jumping pullups since I don't have the kipping technique down yet. I finished in 12:09. That was the closest I've come to puking with a WOD so far. It made me think that maybe I finally hit the intensity level that I need to be reaching every time. Anyway, I'm really loving the whole program. I'd like to start doing some of the WODs from CrossFit Endurance and do some 2 a days. I'll probably wait a little longer till I think my body can handle that. The goal is for me to hit the ground running (literally) next spring when the snow melts. Berndt is wanting to do the TC marathon next fall and probably a half marathon in June. I told him I'd do that half marathon for sure. I'm not real positive I want to do another marathon, but maybe I'll get that bug in a few months. I'd kind of like to do some 5K's and really go for some fast times. I'd love to break 20 minutes.
I've been feeling pretty reflective lately with the holidays. It's kind of funny, it seems like Thanksgiving and Christmas are always times that I kind of think back to where I was at in years gone by. This one is a little weird since a lot has changed for me between last year and this year. Thanksgiving itself was a little rough. I think Zach was in the same boat, so we ended up grabbing a few beers at Mac's last Thursday. His buddy Ted came out and it was good to just hang out with some people and try to get your mind off it. Friday night ended up being pretty legendary. A bunch of us went to the Northeast Palace. They had karaoke and everybody ended up singing at least one song. It started off pretty tame, but ended far from that when last call happened. Definitely good times.
Not a whole lot going on this week, which I'm completely fine with. Last week actually ended up being busy with Thanksgiving and people having a lot of free time on their hands. Tomorrow's my day off from doing WODs but I'm thinking maybe I'll do a CrossFit Endurance WOD since those are less strength based. I do need to hit up the grocery store at some point. Which reminds me, I need to go with a list this time! Otherwise I always end up aimlessly wandering around and never get anything I actually need. Also, Friday is the Lucero show at the Triple Rock! Zach's coming up and we're going to head over to that. I'm pretty excited. Should be a good night for whiskey and some good alt country. Anybody else want to go? I believe there are tickets still. And it's not real expensive, only 10 bucks or so? Also, the beard is getting to be in full effect. It'll be in good shape for the Park City trip in January hopefully.
One thing I realized on Thanksgiving this year is how much I truly appreciate all my friends. The past 6 months would have really sucked if not for every single one.
Listen to:
Lucero - Rebels, Rogues, and Sworn Brothers
Lucero - That Much Further West
Lucero - Nobody's Darlings
The Evening Rig - Never Been'r
Anyway, it was all good times. See if you can spot any of us in this scrum, it's like Where's Waldo:
All in all, it was a great time. It was actually kind of hard to actually RUN the stupid thing. There were just so many people and the course was very narrow at points. Probably the easiest/slowest 7 miles I've ever run. But that was OK. We closed out the day with cold showers at the motel and then a meal at Cheddar's (??!, some bizarre Iowa chain restaurant). The best part was the next day I wasn't sore at all. I was a little worried about my right knee. I think I developed some tendinitis running the TC marathon. But it wasn't sore at all on Sunday. I've been sticking to the CrossFit stuff pretty well. It's been 3 days on, 1 day off for the most part. I can definitely tell my endurance is getting better and my strength is improving. The other weird thing is that I think I've kicked my metabolism into overdrive because I am hungry all the time. And all this on 30 minute workouts 5 times a week. Hard to believe. I'm up to about 6 dead hang pullups and I'd like to get that number up a little more. I still would like to maybe join the CrossFit Minnesota gym down in Eden Prairie. It just sucks that it's so far away. They got a brand new space though with a bunch of new equipment. It would be a lot of fun to work out with other people and get the help of their trainers/coaches. I have been practicing some of the lifts and I feel better about them. The biggest issue with Lifetime is the fact they don't have bumper plates for weights. It makes me a little concerned about doing some of the power lifts and presses and whatnot since you can't drop the weight if it's too much. Which kind of sucks because then you're always going to play it a little safe with putting weight on the bar. Ah well. Today's WOD was Helen. I subbed a 40 pound dumbbell for the swings and did jumping pullups since I don't have the kipping technique down yet. I finished in 12:09. That was the closest I've come to puking with a WOD so far. It made me think that maybe I finally hit the intensity level that I need to be reaching every time. Anyway, I'm really loving the whole program. I'd like to start doing some of the WODs from CrossFit Endurance and do some 2 a days. I'll probably wait a little longer till I think my body can handle that. The goal is for me to hit the ground running (literally) next spring when the snow melts. Berndt is wanting to do the TC marathon next fall and probably a half marathon in June. I told him I'd do that half marathon for sure. I'm not real positive I want to do another marathon, but maybe I'll get that bug in a few months. I'd kind of like to do some 5K's and really go for some fast times. I'd love to break 20 minutes.
I've been feeling pretty reflective lately with the holidays. It's kind of funny, it seems like Thanksgiving and Christmas are always times that I kind of think back to where I was at in years gone by. This one is a little weird since a lot has changed for me between last year and this year. Thanksgiving itself was a little rough. I think Zach was in the same boat, so we ended up grabbing a few beers at Mac's last Thursday. His buddy Ted came out and it was good to just hang out with some people and try to get your mind off it. Friday night ended up being pretty legendary. A bunch of us went to the Northeast Palace. They had karaoke and everybody ended up singing at least one song. It started off pretty tame, but ended far from that when last call happened. Definitely good times.
Not a whole lot going on this week, which I'm completely fine with. Last week actually ended up being busy with Thanksgiving and people having a lot of free time on their hands. Tomorrow's my day off from doing WODs but I'm thinking maybe I'll do a CrossFit Endurance WOD since those are less strength based. I do need to hit up the grocery store at some point. Which reminds me, I need to go with a list this time! Otherwise I always end up aimlessly wandering around and never get anything I actually need. Also, Friday is the Lucero show at the Triple Rock! Zach's coming up and we're going to head over to that. I'm pretty excited. Should be a good night for whiskey and some good alt country. Anybody else want to go? I believe there are tickets still. And it's not real expensive, only 10 bucks or so? Also, the beard is getting to be in full effect. It'll be in good shape for the Park City trip in January hopefully.
One thing I realized on Thanksgiving this year is how much I truly appreciate all my friends. The past 6 months would have really sucked if not for every single one.
Listen to:
Lucero - Rebels, Rogues, and Sworn Brothers
Lucero - That Much Further West
Lucero - Nobody's Darlings
The Evening Rig - Never Been'r
