Mediocre Runners

This was a good week. I hit my lofty goal of five workouts and two days of rest. I did my best to follow some of the WODs from Pat’s box, Diesel.  I did Stronglifts 5×5 workouts on Monday and Saturday to get my strength days in.  If you aren’t familiar with Stronglifts, it is a beginner strength training regimen that uses some of the same whole-body lifts that you see in Crossfit with the gradual addition of weights. The foundation is doing 5 sets of 5 reps, thus the 5×5. I did workout A on Monday and Workout B on Saturday.

Monday: Squat 5×5: 70 lbs, Bench Press 5×5: 90 lbs, Inverted Rows: 3 sets x reps to failure (6-8-7), Pushups: 3 sets x reps to failure (40-25-11), Reverse Crunches: 3×12.

Saturday: Squat 5×5: 75 lbs, Overhead Press: 5×5 75 lbs, Deadlift 1×5 135lbs, Pullups: 5-4-4 reps, 3×30 sec of the plank.

I did traditional Crossfit WODs on Wednesday and Thursday.

Wednesday: Push Press 3-3-3-3-3-3-3 reps: 65, 75, 85, 90, 95, 105, 115. I think I could have gone heavier on these from the start.

Thursday: 4 rounds for time
400m Run
500m Row

18:04. I have new-found respect for the Concept 2 rower after that WOD. Doing a rowing sprint after a run is really f-ing hard!  This WOD was hard to do at the gym because transitioning from the treadmill to the rower took about 30 seconds for each transition.

Today’s WOD will be the subject of its own post because it was so damn good.

I did a modified Helen workout yesterday and tweaked my back from a bad kettlebell swing.  But I still have a lot of love for the kettlebells.  By far, my favorite Crossfit exercise is the Kettlebell swing.  Even though I’m still working on my form, I can’t help but have a good time swinging the KBs.  The fun sometimes masks how f-ing hard doing 21 kettlebell swings can be after a 400m spring on the row, especially on the last round.  I hope my back gets better soon so I can swing away soon.

My stats for Helen were mediocre at best.  Keep in mind at the Globo gym, each station is on a different floor.  Also, we have escalators at my gym and people actually just stand there. Isn’t the whole point of the gym to exercise? They are probably on there way to the ellipticals.

• 400 meter row
• 35 Kettlebell swing x 21
• Pull-ups 12 reps (85 lbs assisted)
• 21:08

In an effort to get back on track, I’ll post this morning’s WOD and breakfast.  This morning’s WOD was Jackie which consists of

• 1000 meter row
• 45 pound Thruster, 50 reps
• 30 pull-ups

Since I used up my 3x/week CF classes at Crossfit Diesel, I too had to hit up the globo-gym.  This makes times interesting because I not only had to find where to find a barbell for thrusters, but had to wait while some donk finished up on the chest machine so I could do pull-ups.  The first time I did Jackie (on July 17), I finished in 11:28 but used the red assist (lowest assist) band for pull-ups.  Today I finished in 13:33, almost 2 minutes slower, BUUUUT I did it as Rx’d!!!  I love that I can do pull-ups now.  Just a few days ago, I did 15 in a row during the warm-up.  I feel I could have done a few more, but the warm-up only called for 15.

For breakfast, I stopped by our new favorite grocery store and bought some eggs, fresh salsa (only 5 calories!!), and a couple avocados.  I cooked up the eggs with some EVO, mashed up the avocado, and threw some salsa in the mix.  Top it off with a glass of chocolate milk.  Mmm…it was really good, filling, and only 470 calories for everything.  Remember, chocolate milk is the new sports drink!

I’ll top this off this evening with a CFE WOD.  Not sure what I’ll do, but I’m sure it’ll kick my butt!

I completed my first WOD at the local globo-gym.  I recently cancelled my membership at the local CF box and have begun my experiment in CFing on my own.  So today’s globo-gym WOD was:

Warm up: 10 minutes on the elliptical

10 sets each of bicep curls, lat pulldowns, and  tricep presses.

Just kidding! I did an honest to goodness CF WOD there and it was a breeze despite the personal trainers and towel service.  The WOD was as follows:

5 Rounds for time:
Row 250m :56. :56, :57, :56, :58. 1 min rest between rounds
Rest 5 minutes
“Tabata Mash-up”
4 Alternating rounds of each exercise:
Push-ups
Situps

I’m pretty sure I was supposed to do 8 alternating rounds rather than 8 rounds total. My high for the pushups was 19 and my low was 13.  For the situps I did a consistent and mediocre 10. Cool down is typing the post with a very warm cat on my lap nibbling my arms.

And the Gods of Crossfit will probably curse me for it.

But I have an explanation. It was getting very hard to commit to the schedule at my local box.  I was finding it harder and harder to show up in Clarendon for a pre-scheduled WOD. I also never really clicked with the crowd there, especially the dudes in brown flip-flops “teaching” POSE running techniques.  I will maybe try to fit in a few more WODs over there before the end of the month. I am also going to a what I hope is a real POSE seminar at the box this weekend.

So why the globo-gym? The fact that it is across the street really helps.  Also, their training philosophy is pretty sound to my mediocre mind.  The foundation of their regimen is good nutrition, followed by an emphasis on general cardio, then strength training.  This is topped off by stretching and recovery techniques. I doubt I will ever do personal training with them. Their general philosophy is something I can agree with.

My goal with the globo-gym is to try CF-style workouts in a mainstream gym setting. I may also take a few yoga classes here and there to improve my flexibility.  I’m scheduled for a fitness “assessment” with a trainer on Saturday. I’ll let all you MR fanatics know what that is like.