Weekly Wrap Up - A Light Week

Well after going to the gym 4 times in a row last week, this week was sort of a dud.  It was a busy week and I was already struggling to get enough sleep, and on top of that my back was feeling kind of achy, so I just decided to let it go.  I'm really trying to listen to my body and actually heal my back!

S - 0.8 mi walk with dogs

M - 1.3 mi walk with dogs + Living Room WOD

• 10 Rounds:
• 25 Lunges
• 10 Push Ups (I did them on my knees)

T - 1.3 mi walk with dogs + CrossFit

• Strength WOD:
• Back Squat Tabata (20 sec of work, 10 seconds rest, 8 rounds)
• Men - 135/95/75
• Women - 95/65/55
• Score is total weight moved (reps x weight)
• I did 82 reps x 55# = 4510!
• WOD:
• 30-20-10-20-30
• Kettlebell Swings (53/35)
• After each round of KBS perform 15 Push Ups and 15 Sit Ups
• I finished in 13:31 using a 26# KB and I did the push ups on my knees.  The KB swings felt fine on my back, yay!  I hadn't done them in quite a while.  My chest and arms were already sore from Monday, so those push ups were painful.

  

 The sunset right before our walk at Wilson Farm Park.

W - 1.3 mi walk with the pups

 

We're so happy the park has lights!

Th - 1.0 mi walk with the pups

F - 1.0 mi walk with the pups

S - 2 mi + 1.5 mi walks with the dogs

The weekend kicked off with a chicken parm feast with my bffs from work.  The quantity got a little excessive...

Saturday started out with some laps at the park and then I tried to get the dogs to sit nice for a little Christmas card photo shoot...

Obviously that went well!  I cannot believe how warm it was all weekend.  70 degrees in December is just nuts!  It was really nice to spend some extra time outside in the warmth.  Our Saturday wrapped up spending some time with Leah, Pete, and their new little guy Reese.  We enjoyed some siracha honey wings and what I deemed the best burgers ever!  It was great to catch up and get some baby snuggles in.

On Sunday I woke up nice and early and headed to the Suburban One cheerleading competition.  A bunch of my girls from the past few years are now on JV and I wanted to go see them compete!  The girls looked great and I was so proud!  My FB memories from this week have been all about Disney and Nationals, so it was nice to spend some time with everyone.  I did feel super weird sitting in the stands as a spectator and it sort of gave me the coaching itch...

My Sunday concluded with a 2.5 hour nap, some football and Game of Thrones (which we just started and it's so good!) and a big old plate of sushi.

Hoping to get more workouts in this week since I know I'm going to turn into a cookie monster in the very near future!  I also just wrapped up a nutrition challenge at the gym which went pretty well for me.  I'm trying to eat healthy in between all of our holiday events so I don't take this train too far off the rails.  I feel like a lot of people around me are getting sick right now, so it's a great time to get in some extra veggies and sleep.  Nobody wants to be sick on Christmas!

How was your weekend?  How are you prepping your body for the holidays?

Weekly Wrap Up - Burn Off the Bird 5K & Lots of CF

I don't know about you, but I've been missing these weekly wrap up posts.  And I don't usually start with Saturdays, but I have to tell you about the 5K we ran last weekend!

S - Burn Off the Bird 5K (35:40) - Dave and I haven't really been running at all, but when I saw the t-shirt for this race included a turkey/Jurassic Park logo mash up, I had to have it.  We figured we weren't going to be running any PRs, so we decided to take a laid back approach and bring the pups along!  When we ran this race in 2012, we were happy it was in the 30s since the overnight lows were in the 20s (yikes), but this time around the weather was perfect with temps in the low 50s.  The course was a bit hilly, but changed from when we ran it last ran it to include more time on a trail and less time on the road.  We did a mix of running and walking, with an 11:28 overall pace.  The dogs were quite a hit, everyone was cheering for them and giving them tons of attention.  It was a really fun event!  (Side note: Dave and I ran side by side most of the race, but I felt like we were blocking the little girl in pink from finishing, so I ran ahead to give her some space, but when I saw this pic I was so bummed that Dave and I didn't finish together!  Regret!)

S - Rest

M - CrossFit

• Strength: Back Squat - 5 at 40% (55#), 5 at 50% (70#), 5 at 60% (85#)
• WOD:
• 8 Minute Clock
• 1000m Row buy in
• Then AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) "Ground to Overhead"
• Can be snatches or clean & jerk
• Women 45/65/95
• Men 65/95/135
• I finished my row in 4:18 and completed 32 G2OH with 45# in the remaining time.  I really considered using 65# because the actual score was your weight x reps, but I got psyched out at the last moment and settled on 45.  It was hard anyway, but I kind of wish I had tried the medium weight.

T - CrossFit Barbell Club

•  Warm Up:
• 3 x 5 Front Squats, Back Squats, Good Mornings (with 15#)
• 3 x 5 Deadlifts, Overhead Press
• Workout:
• 5 x 2 Hang Squat Cleans - I worked up to 85#
• 5 x 2 Deadlifts (with a pause at the knee) - I used 85#
• 2 Squat Cleans EMOM (every minute on the minute) for 6 minutes - 85#
• I hate not being able to lift as heavy as I want to, but I know it's a good life choice for my back.  I spent a lot of time working on not shooting up my butt in the deadlift portion of the clean.  My hamstrings were so sore the next day!

W - 1.25 mi walk with the pups + CrossFit

•  Strength: EMOM for 8 minutes
• Minute 1-4: Power Snatch (with a 3 second pause above knee)
• Minute 5-8: Power Snatch (no pause)
• I worked up to 85#.  I felt good at 80, but I lost my technique in my last snatch at 85#.  I should've kept it lighter.  My back was feeling pretty achy the next morning.
• WOD: Annie
• 50-40-30-20-10
• Double Unders
• Sit Ups

I was not excited about this one at all.  I have been crossfitting for over 2.5 years and double unders (jumping rope where the rope passes under you twice in one jump) seemed like the only thing that I couldn't seem to get better at.  They are extremely punishing if you're not good at them: they take you longer, make you more exhausted, and you will whip yourself... sometimes in the face.  I came to dread every workout with dubs and I started to wonder if I should just give up and do the scaled version of 3x singles.  And then last night... it clicked!  I had been doing dubs with singles in between and my first round I got 23 dubs in a row that way, which was definitely a PR!  And then about halfway through the workout, I decided to try and drop the singles in between and for the first time ever, it worked!  I did 12 consecutive dubs in a row!  They were the best double unders of my life and I still can't believe I finally made progress on them!  I finished Annie in 14:11, which is a super long time, but I Rxed and I am so proud of myself!

Can you find me in the back?

Th - 1.30 mi walk with the pups + CrossFit

• Strict Pull Up Ladder (do one, then two, then three...) - I used a light green band and I got 6+4.  Maybe one day I'll get one unassisted!
• WOD: For Time 
• 2000 m Row 
• Partner 1 rows to 250 
• Partner 2 does 7 burpees
• This workout kicked my butt.  I worked out with someone who rows a lot faster than I do, so I was barely finishing my burpees by the time she was done rowing, aka I didn't get much rest.  I also didn't want to hold her back, so I rowed as fast as I could.  By the last set of burpees, my back started to really hurt.  I should've taken this day as a rest day :/  I was pretty much out of commission afterwards.

F - 0.8 mi walk with the pups

S - 1.7 mi walk with the pups and Dave

The rest of my weekend was spent catching up with friends, pulling out all my Christmas decorations, seeing a show at a winery (aka drinking way too much wine), and honoring our yearly tradition of cutting down our Christmas tree with Dave's parents! 

 

 Do you think our tree is big enough?!  The pups don't know what to think about it.

I'll try to take more pictures throughout the week to make these posts more exciting haha.  Hope you're enjoying all this beautiful December weather and all the awesome Christmas movies on TV!

Do you have a yearly Christmas tree tradition?  

Hey Hey! What's Happening?

Well it's been a month and a half since I posted in ye old blog, so I thought I'd pop in and give you guys an update!

Fun:
At the end of September we spent 11 days in Italy checking out Florence, Orvieto, Rome, Positano, and Naples.  It was amazing!  I planned it all myself and everything seemed to work out wonderfully.  We stuffed our faces, walked 98 miles (I just added this up and holy shit!), and drank so much wine that I legitimately got sick of it.  We saw the David, climbed 463 steps to the top of the duomo, drank wine in an Italian villa with the owner of the winery, went on VIP tours of the Vatican and the Colosseum, enjoyed the unbelievable views of Positano, and ate 3 pizzas in one day in Naples.  It was fabulous.  I took over 2500 photos and frankly I've been avoiding them because they are so overwhelming!

Fitness:
I started PT at the end of August and was cleared to come back to CrossFit a few weeks later in mid September.  As directed, I took it pretty easy coming back, but I also found it hard to get motivated, especially right before vacation.  Then we went to Italy and after I got back, I was discharged from PT with no remaining pain!  My first workout after vacation was Fran and it was nasty.  Now I'm working on getting back into the groove.  I thought I lost a lot of my strength, but I'm finding that most of my lifts are coming back really quickly.  My endurance is another story.  I've definitely been feeling super winded lately (and I've even had a few dry heave finishes...) but I know the only way to help myself is to consistently workout.

Food:
My diet sucks.  The scale has slowly but surely been going up since the end of August and going to Italy obviously didn't help.  I did a Whole10 at the end of October, which debloated my tummy and really got me excited, until the next week where I gained back all 7 lbs that I lost.  Halloween, friendsgivings, and football... oh my!  My clothes don't fit very well and I find myself avoiding some of my favorite outfits because they are so unflattering.  Big time WOMP.  Coincidentally my gym is starting a 4 week challenge tomorrow!  You earn points based on eating whole foods, hitting the gym, and getting lots of sleep.  It's not as rigid as a Whole30 and there's even a 2 hour cheat window each week (yay Thanksgiving).  I think it's just what I need right now. 

Feeling:
It's seriously weird not running off to cheer practice 3 days a week.  On one hand, I love having time to cook dinner, walk the dog, and go to the gym in the evening if I blow off my 5:15 am alarm.  But on the other hand, there's this void that leaves me feeling really low when I think of all that I'm missing:  the coaches, the kids, the excitement, the hard work, the challenge, the victory.  After 15 years... my fall just feels kind of incomplete without it.

Throwback from 2000, my first year of coaching!

Family:
We adopted a new pup yesterday!  Her name is Carmela and she's a 8 month old pit boxer mix.  We weren't really planning on adding to our family until after the holidays, but when I saw this little face on the Pitties.Love.Peace facebook page, I knew we had to meet her!  The adoption was riding on how Butler felt about her, but their first meeting was great and they're romping around the living room as I type.  I'm so happy she's a part of our family now!

I hope to get back to blogging on a more regular schedule, so see ya soon :)

What's new and exciting in your world?