Back in the Groove

I'm feeling more like myself again.  The sickness is subsiding, and I even did a workout yesterday.  It was a bugger.  This workout has a story to it.  It is called the "Hotshots 19" memorial workout, in honor of the nineteen members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots firefighting team, who tragically lost their lives on June 30, 2013 while fighting a fire in Yarnell, AZ.

"Hotshots 19"

6 rounds for time of
30 squats
135 pound Powerclean, 19 reps
7 strict pullups
Run 400 meters

I was getting sideaches like crazy during this workout.  We had a 31 minute timecap for this workout.  At the end of the 31 minutes I had just finished my 5th round.  We were all rolling around on the floor like we were going to die when I noticed that Cal was still going.  I asked, "are you going to finish it?".  To which he said, "I have to.  I have to finish it!"

Well that kind of crap inspires me.  So I said, "Well if Cal is going to finish, then I'm sure as heck going to finish!"  And we all started working out again until everyone had finished the 6 rounds.

It was great to see Cal and Ron trade off on the powerclean bar, yelling to each other to "put out the fire".
I love when people keep pushing each other above and beyond what they think they can do.  That's the kind of stuff that makes all the difference in your life.

https://hotshots19.crossfit.com/

Lousy weekend

I was really looking forward to this weekend. It was supposed to be a nice 3 day weekend, but unfortunately I've been sick for most of it.

Saturday began with a great workout.

30 clean and jerk (135 lbs) for time

I've done this once before with a time of 3:47. I only know this, because Jesse had recorded everyone's time, and then posted our previous time and weight on the board before we started. So naturally I had to best my old time. I was able to do so with a new time of 3:06.

The day is going great. Soccer games for both girls, and a game of Dungeon Slayers with Nik planned for later. Very good day. Only a very minor sore throat which I was sure would be gone by morning. But Sunday morning hit hard. My throat was killing me, and I felt like crap. I still do, and tomorrow I have to go back to work. I guess I'll be downing the Dayquil and maybe leave early.

Somehow we managed to still get a lot done around the house. We moved some rooms around and did a lot of cleaning.

Sleepless Run

Well this morning I couldn't sleep.  I woke up at about 3:30am and couldn't get back to sleep.  I was stressing about my 4-year-old daughter's soccer team of all things.  I'm coaching Sofi's team this season, and I've been bothered by a couple of things.  There are only enough girls for two teams to play, so it's the same girls playing each other each game.  The other coach has not made it to the first two games, and he won't be there for the third game either, because they'll be out of town on vacation.  I worry that because of this, the girls on his team aren't having a good time and won't want to continue playing.  Also, there is one girl on my team who is scoring tons of goals and nobody can stop her, which gets depressing for the other girls getting scored on constantly.  They get discouraged easily about it.  So I'm trying to find ways to help everyone have a fun time, and to balance out the play as much as possible.

Any suggestions?

Sofi, not being the most athletic, hasn't really gotten into the play much, so she's not having a great time either.  In the last game she just wanted to stand by me the whole time and say, "Me coach!".  She wanted to be the coach, and wouldn't play the game.

Well, because I was unable to sleep, I just got out of bed and went for a run.  I haven't been running lately, because my left knee has been bothering me when I do.  I have taken some time off to see if it will get better.  It doesn't hurt when I do a crossfit workout, just when I run.  After about a mile or two it starts to hurt.

Today it did pretty good.  I was able to go about 4 miles, and the pain was very minor, so I think it's getting better.  Maybe I can start to ease back into a little running.  Based on where I am feeling the pain I think it might be my LCL (lateral colateral ligament) that is hurting.  But I'm not sure.

Small Logjam

Well, it's been a few days now since I recorded my workouts, so I have a little catching up to do.

Monday
5 rounds of:
400 M run
10 front squats (135 lbs)
10 burpees

My time:  18:45 ?give or take a few seconds?

The goal was to go unbroken on all the sets, which I mostly did except my 4th round of front squats.  I had a little mental breakdown and dropped the bar after the 6th rep.  I feel I made up for this by doing the last round unbroken.  And I was ok with my time.

Tuesday
12 minute AMRAP
11 pullups
13 wallballs
15 kettlebell swings

My score: 5 rounds + 3 reps

I got really sluggish the last 2 rounds.  I was hoping to get through 6 rounds, but I just gassed out.  I did all the sets unbroken except for the last to rounds of pullups, I had to break them up.

Also, we had a pullup bar in the lab that I brought in for the nightshift guy to use, but it was still up in the morning so I ended up doing about 100 pullups between the workout and small sets at work each time I went to the breakroom.

Wednesday
Run 800 M
20 hspu
20 kettlebell snatch each arm (50 lb)
100 situps
run 800 M

My time: 16:46

I felt good about this one. I wasn't as fast as some people, but I was going full range on my hspu.  I did the workout Rx, which is always nice.

Since I did a boatload of pullups yesterday, I decided to to a truckload of pushups today.  I planned to do 10 sets of 20 pushups throughout the day.  Almost done, just three more sets to go.  I would like to make it so that pushups and pullups are a strength for me in workouts.

New Levels of Sore

I am sore today in places I've never been sore.  Last night for our scouting activity we took a little trip to the pool for some swimming.  We are incorporating swimming into our training for a triathlon.  I can swim, but I'm no swimmer.  I usually avoid a lot of swimming, because I'm not that good at it.

At first we just goofed off on the diving boards, and we were taught some basic pool entries from the side of the pool. Then we were told to tread water for as long as we could.  I figured I'd last about 5 minutes and I'd be done.  Heck I was tired after two.  But we all just kept on going.  After a while it didn't seem so bad and I felt like I could keep going a while.  Eventually we reached 15 minutes, and then we called it good.  I didn't think I would be able to tread for that long.  I was pretty worn out, but we weren't done.  We swam several laps working on different strokes.  That really gassed me out.

Today I am super sore in my legs.  Especially my calves and butt.  I think I will have to add some swimming into my regular routine.  I can see it doing great things to increase my base of fitness.

Someone else's Blood, My Sweat, and No Tears

An interesting workout this morning.

8 min AMRAP

3 strict pullups

10 walking lunges each leg

Rest 2 min

8 min AMRAP

2 wall walks

50 ft farmer carry (I used 45lb plates)

My scores:

First AMRAP: 10 rounds plus the pullups and 2 lunges each leg

Second AMRAP: 9 rounds plus 2 wall walks

Wall walks are a great exercise.  You lay down on your stomach with your feet against the wall.  Then you walk your feet up the wall as you walk your hands underneath to support yourself until you are fully upright with your stomach against the wall.  Work your way up and then back down.  That's 1 rep.  They are hard to do if there are a lot of them, but 2 at a time works great.  I always like the way I feel after doing them.

As I lay down to do my first wall walk I noticed that there were drops of dried blood on the cement right in my face.  For some reason this just got me all pumped up to do these wall walks.  And the blood continued to motivate me throughout the workout.  I added several drops of sweat to the pile, and we were in business.  No tears though.  I have yet to actually cry from a workout.  I've thrown up a couple of times and felt like it many times, but I don't think I've ever actually cried.  I'll have to check with Kaitlin on that one.  There was the time I hurt my back really badly.  That was some serious pain, but I honestly can't remember if I cried from it.

My inner Bob Ross

Kaitlin and I decided a while ago that it might not be a bad idea to do some paintings for Christmas presents. Also I wanted to do a painting for the county fair. So I took a shot at doing a Bob Ross style oil painting. Unfortunately it will not be dry in time to submit to the county fair. No big deal though it will still make a good Christmas present for somebody.

It's not a good photo.  You can't see the colors very well at all, and there's some sort of a weird streak that showed up in the lower left corner.  This photo makes it look a lot duller than it is.

Our workout of the day was:

30 hand stand push ups

60 box jumps (24" box)

15 hand stand push ups

30 box jumps

My time: 10:04

Felt good about the time and my effort.  I put 4" boxes under my hands and padding under my head to make it level across, so that I could work on full range on these.  I probably did about half of the hspu Rx.  The other half were either partial range, and on some of the reps, I would just lower myself down as slowly as I could.  The full range of motion definitely made it harder than what I'm used to, which is good.  As always though my neck is sore after doing these.  Where I was slow on the hspu, I tried to make up ground by going fast on my box jumps.