crlgrl’s BodyBlog

Did 13 miles on the mountain bike last night and ran my 2 mile "easy" run today. Tonight I go to the CrossFit affiliate and the WOD is back squats 5X5. I was hoping for a leg workout!!!

If your sincere, praise is effective. If your insincere, it’s manipulative.  Zig Ziglar

When the charcter of a man is not clear to you..look at his friends. Japanese Proverb

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit. Airstotle

When you’re through changing..you’re through. Bruce Barton

Don’t bother to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. William Faulkner

CrossFit WOD for Sunday was push jerks. I still don’t have the form down for these and may not ever get it down!! So, I do push press instead. 5 sets of 5 reps, the goal is to go as heavy as possible. 55, 60, 65,70 and 70. Not the most wonderful numbers but probably not the worst either and since I’m only competing with me, all I have to do is improve every time, which I did, so I win!!! It’s so hard to stop on the heavy days, so I did 5 rounds of 5 pull ups, 5 push ups and 5 dips. My legs feel good, even after the 6 yesterday, so tonight……I ride!!!

Crossfit is all about functional training, using movements that mimic real life movements. So one of the WOD’s this week was "virtual shoveling". For women, the weight was 25# on the end of a BB then you lift one end over a 24 inch barrier. Then you drop down and do push ups. The rep numbers was 30-25-20-15-10 and 5. Of, course it’s for time, too; it is CF after all. I finished mine in 12:34 using 25# and doing all my PU without stopping.  Then next day I was sore in some unusual place, like the whole lower half of my back and the the outside of my biceps. It was different and different is always good for me because it keeps me interested. That evening Martin and I rode 17 miles on our mountain bike. Yes, I am going to get a road bike but…I’m cheap…I hate spending money. Today was my long run day and the distance was 6 miles. I ran a trail called the Frisco Trail, which used to be railroad tracks. It was more fun than running on the road, for sure, because  it’s out in the woods and anything done in the woods is more fun!! I ran early hoping it would be too cold for the snakes to move and I guess it worked ’cause the only critter I saw was a cat that did scare me a little. I made a noise like one of the three stooges..woop woop woop woop! I had to giggle a little at myself but laughter when you are running is a great thing because it helps me to relax. Time was 57:12.

Yesterday was my first day to do speed work on my 5K plan and I have been looking forward to it for weeks. The plan was run a total of 5 miles including 4×800 with 400meter jog in between, pacing at 5:03. Which meant run an 800 in 5:04 and then jog a 400 to cool down and do that a total of 4 times. I ran a mile and started my 1st 800 and just felt really heavy, I struggled the whole time! I kept tensing up my neck and arms and basically felt exhausted. My times didn’t reflect the way I felt too much: 1st-3:54  2nd-4:36  3rd-4:29  4th-4:32. I had a really bad day at work the day before and think it is possible that the stress just had me tired. We don’t normally diagnose people with cancer in the ER but Wednesday we had a 2 year old boy with a 3 week history of abd. swelling and a knot behind his ear. Long story short his CT abd. came back showing a large tumor with kidney and adrenal involvement. When the report came back it was just like some one pulled a plug and all the air came out, I just felt deflated, as did the rest of the staff. The young parents were hispanic and spoke no English. They had borrowed a car to get there and they also had a 3 month old in tow. After getting the pt. transferred to a specialty hospital, one of the nurses who used to be EMS talked the ambulance crew into taking the whole family in the ambulance. We borrowed formula from OB, wiped out our diaper stash, fed the parents with un-eaten trays from ICU and collected money for them to get through a couple of days. Some one said to me once that they could never be a nurse/doctor because they couldn’t stand to see people hurt…..health care workers can’t stand to see people hurt so much that they are willing to put self aside and are moved to action. To all the health care workers on BodySpace…Thanks for what you do!!!

After running 5 miles on Sunday, the 2 miles I was supposed to run today was like pfffftttt….no problem. Maybe that is why they have us do long distances. More and more I find that the mind is the most important muscle for running! I ran the 2 miles in 18:03. I’m excited for Thursday because I actually get to do some speed work! This evening I went to the gym with my son and did bench press, cleans, triceps and some ab work. It was weird not doing a CF workout. Todays WOD was virtual shoveling???

Yeterday was my "long" run day which was 5 miles this week. I ran it in about the same time as I ran my 4 miles last Sunday. I couldn’t stomach the idea of running 20 laps on the track so I went down to Airport Road which is a quiet back road that is by the airport and happens to be 1 mile. My first mile was 9:21 which scared me because I thought I was going to run out of steam so the next 2 I ran around 10 minutes a piece, which is when I looked down at my stop watch and realized it was on 00:00. Pretty disheartening but I reset and ran the next mile in 9:32 and my last mile in 9:19. I was really happy because I can run 5 miles without stopping. Next Sunday….6 miles.

Today I finally got to do the Filthy Fifty. I did it at home so there were some substitutions based on lack of equipment and some based on lack of ability. Each exercise consists of 50 reps in the least amount of time total. Last Filthy was 36:12 for me.

24 inch box jumps

jumping pull ups

kettle bell swings 1 pood (had to use 20# DB)

Knees to elbows (knees to chest for me)

Walking lunges

45# push press (30#)

Back extensions (good mornings with 30# bar)

Burpees

Wall ball squats with 20# medicine ball (mine is 20.8) throw the WB 10 ft. to wall

Double unders (still can’t do so tuck jumps)

Todays time showed vast improvement and I felt alot better, especially during the burpees which suck for me….time was 21:05. Hoepfully I’ll ge to do this one at the affiliate soon so I can use the RX’d weight to have a more accurate time.

Tuesday morning I did my 2 mile run and then Tuesday evening I did Fran with my husband (sounds kinky don’t it?) Fran is thrusters/pull up WOD of 21-15-9. Wednesday I rested by working a 12 hour shift on my feet. Thursday was my 3 mile run. I got up at 6 (YUCK) to have time to run and shower before work. I ran at the High School track and did pretty well in 27 minutes. The weather was OSM, I was even seeing faint fog with each breath. I started doing my cool down just jogging and walking as the high school band was lining up to practice. As everybody knows, I always work out with an Ipod, but in between songs I heard the band playing the Star Spangled Banner and I just froze in my tracks and turned my Ipod off. I really am not a very emotional person but there is something about that song that makes me tear up every time I hear it. I don’t love everything that happens in my country but I LOVE MY COUNTRY and everything that it has stood for! The way I was raised when the anthem played you stopped! You didn’t talk or move around, you took your d$#@ hat off  and put your hand over your heart and looked at the flag and thought about what it stood for and about those who had fallen to protect it and the freedoms I have in this country. It was just a beautiful end to a GR8 run!!! Friday I did CF doing 30 clean and jerks and some GH situps and worked on my kipping. Tomorrow is my "long" run day and I’m doing 5 miles!! Yipee!

Last night I rode my bike 19 miles out in the country. I really think I need to get a road bike as much as I end up riding in town, it’s got to be a little easier than a mountain bike. This morning I ran 2 miles in accordance with my 5K plan. The legs felt a little heavy…gee, I wonder why?? Everytime I run, I like to run hard on my last lap or 400 meters. Today as I ran my last lap at the park I ran past the parking lot section where some people had parked to eat and smoke. There is just nothing like getting a good lung full of cigarette smoke when you’re running. Which got me to thinking as I walked home from the park about people who live an unhealthy life style and think they can’t live any other way. I work in the health care field and daily take care of people who are slowly killing themselves because of stress, over-eating, smoking and a sedentary lifestyle. Not all, but MANY, of the cases of the top killers in America could be eliminated or controlled by lifestyle changes. The really sad part is that the other nurses I work with are basically the same, which tells me it’s not all about a lack of education. I guess it’s a lack of desire. We all make choices every day…do I want to super-size it? Do I want to work out? And do I want to work out enough to turn off the TV? Do I want to take care of my emotional and mental health by being good to myself? The choices can only be made by the individual. Which is great with me, I’m the ONLY person who is responsible for me. Here, (finally), is the problem I have…..don’t blame me or tear me down because I choose to be healthy and you don’t. I get teased or hear comments at work and other places about how I eat or working out frequently and they used to bother me but now I realize they come from a place of insecurity and unhappiness. And DEEP CLEANSING breath!! Now that, is what I call verbal yoga. Feel better?

Yesterday’s WOD was named the Chief. I took a rest day yesterday so I did it this morning. The Chief is done in 3 minute rounds with 1 minute of rest in between rounds. It consists of three exercises: 3 power cleans, 6 push ups and 9 squats. The RX’D weight for women on the cleans is 85#. I might clean 85# 3x but then the workout would be over so I used 55#. 1st round-6, 2nd round-4, 3rd round-4, 4th round-4 and round 5- 3 and 6 squats. RRRRrrrr!! As always, the push ups were my weak area and the cleans got really tough on the 4th and 5th round. All in all it was a great, hard work out!! It’s been an hour and I can feel how tired my traps are already! On a side note…I’m disappointed that no one has noticed that one of my new supplements is Brawndo. ):

The WOD for the day was 5 rounds of 3 rep clean and jerks. Which I did but only with a 35# bar since I’ve never does them before. Then I did some heavier clean squats with an over head press about 30 of those and jumped some rope.  Friday evening Martin and I rode our mountain bikes 10 miles. We stopped at the football game on the ride home to watch a little of the game and got there for the opening kick off. It was the craziest thing, the ball was kicked off and the sky just all of the sudden opened up and it stated pouring!!! We still had about 1/4 of a mile to the house and it was the most fun I’ve had riding in a long time. It was like being a kid again; I think I laughed the whole 1/4 mile. We got home and stripped outside and BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! Sorry that part had to be censored. :o Sunday is normally my long run day but my gym is closed on Sunday and the forcast has been calling for 100% chance of rain from the hurricane remnents, so I moved my long day to Saturday. I ran 4 miles in 47:12. I can’t believe I ran for 47 minutes straight. My body is exhausted from the 12 miles I ran, 10 I biked and 3 CF workouts and 40 hours of work on my feet. Somedays working in the ER is a work out in itself. So today is a total rest day for me and, on another note, there is NO rain this morning the sun is out and it’s 68 degrees with a slight breeze…perfect running/biking weather. Maybe I could rest tomorrow. (: