Category: 2018

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.

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.

Monday

Greetings from the garage. Yesterday the CFHQ WOD was swim 1,000 meters (1,094 yards) for time. 1,000 meters equals approx. .6 miles, or around 20 laps in a 25 yard pool. Either way, I do not have immediate access to a pool, nor will I anytime soon, so instead of swimming on Sunday I ran 2.5 miles for the first time since the 5K last weekend. The route from my house is uphill on the way out, a gently sloping uphill for approx. .9 miles, so I tend to feel slow when first embarking. It’s not until getting about a mile under the feet that I begin to warm up and gain some cadence and comfort in my stride.

The dog loves to go for these runs, that’s an understatement. When I pull out the training collar he wags his tail and circles at my feet making it difficult for me to get my shoes on. There’s a cornucopia of chipmunks and squirrels and robins along our route. There’s also the old white farmhouse down the road, home to two white farm geese. Winter or summer, the geese are out there. Sometimes the farmer closes them up in the warmth and security of their shelter—a small wooden house-like shed painted green with white trim and a shingled roof—but mostly they wander freely around the property.

On Sunday afternoon the farm owner was outside putting up fencing around his rather impressive gardening plot. The dog and I stopped to say hello.

“Oh hey, Mary,” the farmer said. The geese honked loudly in the background as if to say, Intruder! Intruder!

“Beware of my attack geese,” the farmer said.

“Do they have names?” I asked.

“No, no names,” he said.

My dog tilted his head from side to side, listening and studying the creatures before him as German Shepherds do. He didn’t bark or tug on the leash to get to the geese and I felt relieved for his restraint against a normally pretty high prey-drive.

Then a bug flew into my mouth and I gagged and coughed and gasped for air and unsuccessfully tried to spit it out. “Oh my goodness, COUGH, COUGH… excuse me,” I said.

“Black flies, they’re out this time of year,” the farmer said.

“Well, enjoy the afternoon,” I sputtered and then turned to go. The dog dutifully stepped in-line at my side.

A few weeks before we had met two young black labs, Jupiter and Indigo, another half mile up the road and I get the sense that my dog was more interested in seeing them again. After some brief introductions the dogs were tumbling along the roadside and thrashing in and out of the creek in a playful roughhouse that dogs do and their humans love to watch. The newly acquainted neighbors seemed to get along just right.

My dog picked up an optimistic pace as we headed in Jupiter and Indigo’s direction once more, but sadly, the siblings were not out. So we turned and headed back the way we came; the dog noticeably slower then, lacking a certain bounce even if we were on the downhill home.