back in the groove, groovy

It takes time to build a gym in your garage. Bit by bit over time, you collect the necessary gear. Most times you improvise. The movements in the WOD dictate, and you get creative to make whatever’s available work for you. Sometimes you splurge, but most times you just make due. When I finally did buy a kettlebell, I overachieved and ordered the 44lbs. I might have been that strong way back in 2013 with a year of consistent CF under my belt, but now I’m starting over and should have gone with the 35lbs.

That said, there are other fun ways to improvise, like measuring metered distances from your garage, 200, 400, 600, and so on. Using a simple measuring wheel, I measured out and back distance from the garage for 200 meters (656 feet round trip), and 400 meters (1,314 feet round trip). Using a thumbtack, I pinned small colored note cards to trees alongside the road for each marker.

Now for the WOD.

To get started, 1-mile warmup run with the dog, and then:

15-12-9 reps for time of:
Sumo deadlift high pulls
Jumping pull-ups
(Beginner option)

HQ says: This is a moderately heavy and quick workout. Reduce the load on the sumo deadlift high-pull and modify the pull-up to keep this in the 5- to 6-minute range.
Completed in 6:19.

.5 mile walk cool down.

Targeting a suggested minute range (5 to 6 minutes) helps keep one moving. Tonight, for the first time since inching my way back to CF, I felt that long-lost post-WOD euphoric exhaustion, fluttering heart rate, and urge-to-hurl tinge.

squat and run

Front Squat 5 x3 @ 55, 55, 55, 60, 70

Then, partner wod with the dog: run 2.5 miles.

Who was it that said, why would you want to only do the things you’re good at? When you’re terrible at something, do more of it!

“If I couldn’t handle not being good at something, then how could I consider myself a successful person?” – Gerald Hodges, highschool swim team member, Arlington, TX

Front squats are my nemesis, so I do more of them.

the dreaded front squat

Why are front squats so scary? Seriously. I dread them. Not the most graceful movement for tall people, at least not for me anyway.

Tonight’s workout started with a 1.5-mile warmup run with the dog, half of the running sandwich; even if it is muggy out there and bugs fly in my eyes and nip at my ankles and there’s some wild, sour aroma that permeates a patch of woods down the road.

A running sandwich is a WOD sandwiched between two runs with the dog—one run to warm up, the other to cool down. It’s a blast to run with the dog, and it gets us out to see the world together.

After the warmup, I somehow pulled off the following:

are we going for a run yet, how bout NOW?Front squat 3-3-3-3-3 reps

Started with the 35lbs. bar. Worked my way up to 70lbs. Having not FS’ed in about a year, I’ll take it. Onward.

Here’s a pic of the dog thinking, oh no, not this shit again.

Tonight we only completed the first slice of the sandwich run.

Some days you get it all, some days you get half.

partner wod with the dog

How do you incorporate your dog into your workout? Sprinkle in some running circuits at the beginning and the end of the WOD: a running sandwich. It’s a great way to warm up and cool down, and if you time it right, your dog will look like this at the end.Mav conked

Since today is a rest day at CFHQ, I scrolled through the options until I found this lovely WOD below. I intended to modify it with running bookends, but it started to thunderstorm here, so we only got in one round of running as a warm-up:

5 Rounds for Time:
1-mile run
5 deadlifts
5 burpees

Men: 135 lb.
Women: 95 lb.

The dog is just about flattened, he had a good romp. Time to open the windows and let the wind blow.

training miles

This seemed like a good WOD to kick off training again. For one, I could do it RX, even if it would be a slog. Also, the running portion could be a partner WOD, and I have the best partner of all! He has floppy ears and yellow eyes and keeps a pretty steady pace even if he does trot on the diagonal. Like a boss, he’s also mastering terms like Stay and Place and Heel and Walk. It’s just him and me in our little slice of out-of-the-box garage WODs.

WOD 7-14-18WOD complete. Our time: 1:08, not that that matters much. It’s the doing that matters. As it turns out, we ran an extra mile at the end, which just makes us a couple of badasses.

It’s been almost a year now since I started cleaning out the garage and refitting it with CF gear. It’s amazing what can collect in a garage: dusty bug zappers, rusty trailer hitches, and castaway cans of leftover paint. Last summer the local dump had a hazardous waste disposal day. The mile-long line of cars on that sunny Saturday morning started lining up long before the gates opened. I drove along the queue until it finally came to an end, turned my nose around and pulled in behind the car in front to claim my spot, thinking, I can wait for as long as it takes. I had nowhere else to go, and there was no way in hell the soured antifreeze and curdled engine oil and other unidentifiable garage-type liquids stacked in the bins in the trunk of my car would be coming back home with me.

It’s amazing how something so simple as hazardous waste disposal day at the local dump can change your perspective. It was a catalyst, the beginning of something new for me. The garage felt cleaner, smelled fresher. Then I hung new curtains, put down a throw carpet and cleared away what I could from the floor. What I couldn’t store in the shed or hang on a nail on the wall, I tried to sell or giveaway. Some one’s junk can indeed be someone else’s treasure. Okay by me.

It was as if I felt like I could not start training again until I cleared out the half-used and forgotten piles of… stuff. It’s all stuff. Just stuff. So much stuff. I do not do well with clutter. My ideal space would be modern, open, white and gray with hues of blue and clean lines, minimal wall hangings if at all. White plates, red coffee pot, gingham sheets. We need so little to live well.

It’s officially 12 weeks until the half-marathon.

Now the dog sleeps and soon so will I.

Wednesday – GraceDay

Beginner Option:
30 clean and jerks for time
OR:
30 snatches for time

Men: 75 lb.
Women: 55 lb.

CFHQ says, if you’re aiming to do it right: complete Grace in under 5 minutes. My squat is still for shit, but I can Clean, and so I did: Grace at 55lbs. in 4:38.

If it was a WOD with squat cleans, I’d still be on the PVC and typing to you tomorrow afternoon about what happened tonight.

Afterwards I did 10 front squats and 10 back squats with the 35lbs. bar, all to a med ball, just to get used to the motion of a forced full squat. While I did not put the bar down between reps, the squats were not unbroken. As I’m moving through the reps I think things like: I’m too old for this, just give up, what’s the point, I can’t squat anymore, I’m too old for this, I’m going to hurt myself. The “too old for this” mantra kept repeating over and over in my head. But I pushed through nonetheless. F it. Gotta do something.

The Bear Complex is one of my all-time-favorite-WODs. At some point will revist. DT is my all-time-favorite-hardest-WOD, not sure when I’ll be revisiting that. Perhaps that should be a goal. Even during my fittest CF days, I was never able to complete DT at the women’s RX weight. I’ve also never had a pull up. We will see. That’s it for today.

 

Tuesday

Beginner Option
5 2-minute rounds of:
12-cal. row
Max rep sit-ups

There is no rest between rounds.

Complete in 10:55. Instead of cutting short my time, I aimed for a consistent 18 sit-ups per round. Forgot what it’s like to do sit-ups too. Hooray.