Category: 2018

3rd Inaugural WOD

First of all, tomorrow is a rest day. Let’s just get that out of the way.

Today’s WOD per CFHQ:

Nancy
5 rounds for time of:
400-meter run
15 overhead squats (OHS)
Men: 95 lb.
Women: 65 lb.

I opted for a modified scaled version:

5 rounds for time of:
400-meter row
10 overhead squats

Completed in 16:40.

At first, I thought fer-sure I’d be doing the OHS at the suggested beginner weight of 35lbs. But, no. My OHS squat jumped out the window over a year ago. I can barely get below parallel. So, I opted to use the PVC and squat to a medball. I’m 6″2′ (sometimes even 6″3′) and squatting to a med ball is an act of courage. But, I did it today, each and every time. Granted it was with some measley-peasely PVC overhead, but I’ll take it, bitches. There’s no ego in CF, or is there… Well, there shouldn’t be. Not if you’re doing it right.

When I made it back into the house I finally cooked up the curry cauliflower rice I’d be meaning to slap together since Tuesday of last week (not exactly this recipe, but something similar—there’s a bunch of delicious options out there). By the time it was ready, I was too pooped to eat so put it away for lunch at work tomorrow. That’s the thing about WODing—it kicks your ass. You haven’t much left over for the bullshit, like thinking too much or the obligatory bottle of wine while binge-watching or doom scrolling. You just want to go to sleep. At least I do. And that’s another part of it, once in the routine of the workouts you sleep like a bossperson.

So there we have it.

2nd Inaugural

The second inaugural DCCF WOD is in the books.

Per HQ:

Hang squat clean 3-3-3-3-3-3-3 reps

Scaling
The hang squat clean is a good opportunity to practice full hip and leg extension, and speed under the bar. Ideally, each set will be as heavy as possible for 3 reps, but newer athletes should start light and slowly add weight as they are comfortable.

Completed: @ 35#, 35#, 35#, 45#, 45#, 45#, 55#

Holy that felt good. So light, but so good. It’s amazing what the body remembers and the mind forgets. As I was sinking into the squat under the bar I was thinking, I’m doing it. I’m doing it! In total disbelief. But the body, the body knew exactly what to do. The body said, leave it to me. Somehow these familiar movements bring you back to some place you once knew but long forget and miss nonetheless. It’s like going home. The familiarity found in rediscovering a movement it took years to learn and then left behind. There’s comfort in the body remembering what to do.

According to the notebook, I PRd my Squat Clean at 100lbs. on 7/28/2015.

Tonight’s an early night. Coffee machine is cued up. Dog walked. Check. Check. Check.

Every Day, Begin Again

Sometimes it’s exhausting to think about—having to start over every single day. Like, can’t I just keep building on the momentum I created today and carry it over into tomorrow and the day after tomorrow?

Sometimes we’re grateful for the reboot, not every day is good and we look forward to another start. Sometimes, for me, it’s the starting again, again, and again, that I get a little overwhelmed by, especially when it comes to health and some level of personal fitness. Even just maintaining in the ballpark can be too much, like I just want to chuck it and go on vacation from trying.

Despite knowing how this all works, that every day we begin anew, some part of me keeps looking for a finish line; a place where we reach our destination and we’re done, no more hard work and sacrifice. One could say that finish line is the ultimate finish line, when you’re dead, but I’m talking more about some hypothetical place of ultimate fitness and health where you can stop working so hard and sacrificing so much, and you get to sit inside your accomplishment with a margarita pizza and relish your new home without worrying about sliding back to the place you once were, the day, week, or year before.

You can’t go back in time, but your body and your mind can certainly regress to places you’ve spent a lifetime of meditating, abstaining, and scratching your way out of. It’s the hamster wheel that can wear one down. At least it can beat me up pretty damn good. Same shit, different day. But that’s a crappy way of looking at things and it gets no one anywhere which is probably why, we begin again.

After talking and thinking and pondering and planning and saying I will begin again tomorrow, okay maybe the day after tomorrow, I finally did it: I WODed. Right in my own garage. I’ve only spent the better part of the last 8 months collecting bits of equipment, like my lovely bella bar and a 44lbs. kettlebell and a pvc pipe (which you’d think would be the obvious simple first purchase, but it took me forever to remember the benefits of warming up with pvc, and then it took me another month or so to get up the nerve to ask the guy at Home Depot to cut it in half for me). Then there was the gift of a Concept 2. The box appeared in the garage one day after work. Somehow I knew what it was, I could just feel it. I was beyond excited. What a fkcn awesome gift.

That gift, the Concept, took my little garage gym/box to the next level. Suddenly, I felt legitimate. I still wasn’t WODing, but I could WOD. At. Any. Moment. To be fair, I did row quite a bit when the Concept first arrived; I was getting into a routine of 2K per day. But then I woke up one morning on a new day and I stopped. And as the rower collected dust, I slid backward into some sort of funk. It’s easy to simply do nothing, it’s difficult to keep starting over and over.

Then, tonight, after a couple months of cleaning and dusting and reorganizing the garage with the hopes that one day would be the day that I would feel the spark, I did it: I WODed. Yes, on the first Sunday of June in the year 2018 at approximately 6:39 pm, I set Pandora to shuffle and I hit the start button on the timer, and it was 3, 2, 1, Go.

Bloody unbelievable.

As posted on CFHQ:

3 rounds for time of:
25 deadlifts
Bike 1,000 meters

Men: 185 lb.
Women: 125 lb.

Beginner Option (that’s me!)
3 rounds for time of:
20 deadlifts
Bike 500 meters

Men: 95 lb.
Women: 65 lb.

Completed in 12:28.

I substituted 500 meter row for the bike. Yes, it was the beginner version. Yes, the deadlifts felt heavy. But I was doing it. I was bloody doing it and it felt fan-fckn-tastic.

Perhaps beginning again day after day is a form of hope.

1st Inaugural WOD complete.

5,000 meters = 5K

Today’s WOD, run 5,000 meters. 5,000 meters = 3.1 miles. So, pretty much, 5,000 meters is a 5K. Like the kind of 5K you sign up to run for charity on a Saturday Morning.

Yes, I had to look it up. It was written in a format that I did not recognize, "5,000 meters" as opposed to, "5K run" because then I would have been like, oh yeah, a 5K.

That’s why we love CF: it’s always forcing you to think. It’s forcing your brain cogs to turn, especially when it comes to cardinal numbers and metrics. They can’t just say, run 3.1 miles, or row 1.2 miles (2,000 meters, or 2k row). No, CF keeps you on your toes, rather, your heels if you’re doing it right. And I miss the shit out of it. Have I started WODing again? No.

For now it seems I’m content to check out the daily WOD at CFHQ, read through all the various scaling options, and strategize how I might complete it if I were to do it.

Won’t it be a wonderful moment if I actually do the work? Wouldn’t it now.

i keep looking, but do nothing

So, I admit it, almost daily I log onto CFHQ website and check out the WOD of the day. I take a look just about every day. Yet, I do nothing.

I spend time reading through the scaling options, and then I theorize how I would do the workout, if, you know, I was still WODing. But I’m not. It’s not a question of gear…I have the gear. I’ve set up a nice little garage gym complete with a Concept 2 and Bella Bar and bumpers and squat rack and pull-up bar and bands and med ball and kettlebell. Yet I continue to walk by all of it as I make my way into the house at the beginning and end of each day.

Heck, I walk past it multiple times per day, if you count all the times I take the dog out for a walk morning and night.

So there we have it. I had so much fun setting the garage gym up, ordering it piece by piece and spending weekends cleaning out and organizing and putting it together, yet there it sits. I’ve done some WODing, beginners at best. Sort of a test run. Not sure I ever even broke a sweat.

To be fair when I started building the garage gym it was negative-15 degrees outside and I could see my breath. But I was determined to be healthy again, to get back to that place, whatever it is; when I felt strong and my clothes fit like tailored high-collared stretchy velvet.

But now it’s all collecting dust.

Today’s a rest day at HQ, but did you happen to see the WOD from yesterday (Monday)?

Jack

Complete as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:

10 push presses
10 kettlebell swings
10 box jumps

Scaling options for beginners as follows:

Beginner Option
Complete as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:
10 push presses
10 kettlebell swings
10 box step-ups

And believe me, as hard as it is to admit to myself, I’m a beginner, again.

On a positive note, after a succession of 42 degree days and rain, the sun has finally come out today. Maybe today will be the day that I start WODing again. Maybe. Weather really has nothing to do with any of it.

Either you do the work, or you don’t.

I am supposed to keep training for the 5K in June. That’s been going okay, averaging about 6-8 miles per week. But WODing, nothing affects change in body, mind, soul like WODing, real honest-to-goodness gut-wrenching WODing.

Hello spring

Where the %#^! have you been, Spring?? Some people want to know. We’ve been waiting up all night for you, waiting in the dark, snow-covered landscape, waiting… for you, spring.

But alas, you are here, and it’s glorious! We knew it would be. Take a walk or a drive down the street and people are outside, of their homes, and doing stuff, in the street, in the dirt, and on the grass. It’s wonderful.

I felt the sun on my face this morning for the first time since I can remember. I felt my clothes warm in the afternoon light, the soothing warmth soaked through to my skin and then to my heart. And it was good.

To celebrate your arrival, spring, I went for a two-mile run with the dog. To be fair, it was a walk/run—one minute run followed by one minute walk, etc.—and it was glorious too. Just like you, spring, now that you’re finally here.

So, a friend and I have signed up to run a 5K on June 2. Even though my training has been sporadic at best—some rowing here, some walking there—with the sun’s warmth I’m finally feeling energized to begin again, again. And it is good.

Stats

Garage Temp: 31 degrees. BP: 9am, 132/77. 10pm, 132/74.

10 minute row, breathing thru nose: 1,821 meters.

5 x 5 SDHP @ 55lbs.

The programming is fairly detailed. Seems like every time I read it I find something new. Tonight I realized I’m not exactly doing the row as prescribed. Additional instructions include: Total meters is just a benchmark/starting-point to be able to track progress. Look at average 500m pace and record that. Each week aim to improve average 500m split pace by 1 second.

Hmmm… more calculating to do.