Happy Monday!

Hey there.

I'll keep it short and sweet today. Here's what we had.

I was happy to see cleans. We hadn't done them in a while... and I was happy to see power cleans. I didn't feel like squatting all that way. We had a good warm-up session and I finally settled on loading the bar with 70lbs. 

I felt good throughout the first few rounds. By halfway, I felt a bit tired but still strong. I was taking slightly longer breaks between the rounds. My first few cleans were good, but I had to really concentrate on the last two. Those were the hardest to get out. 

In the end: 9 rounds

I wanted 10, but it didn't happen. I was happy enough to be doing cleans. 

On a side note, some shots from my weekend.

Took Hoku to the Loews Surf Dog Competition down the road from my house!

World record for most dogs (and human) surfing at one time.

This nice lash was from double unders on Friday.

Sunday breakfast... "Black Forest Pancakes" non-paleo choc chip pancakes with paleo cherry jam. 

Mmmm good.

Memorial Day Murph 2012

OMG! I have been so bad at writing lately. I'm sorry to those (if any) who read this. I'm working on being better.

I had a great long weekend. Saw Battleship on Friday. I thought it was hilarious, but that's probably because I made fun of all the Navy stuff the whole time. Mostly, I watched it to see Alex Skarsgaard (aka Eric Northman). I also got a bit homesick seeing Hawaii and Pearl Harbor. I was there when they were filming this. Seems like such a long time ago.

Anyways, I spent most of my weekend thinking about Monday. Why? Because I had Memorial Day Murph to prepare for. I remember the first time I ever saw the Murph WOD. I thought it was batsh*t crazy. Seriously, who does that to themselves? Mostly due to the fact that I hate running, I knew I would never do this WOD.

Well... there I was at 10:00am Monday morning, warming up to start. I knew it would suck, but I pushed those thoughts out of my mind and remembered why I was doing it: to honor those who have served and sacrificed for their our country.

I had settled on just doing my best to pace the miles as fast as I could without killing myself. Turned out okay. I don't know my exact time for the first mile, probably around 8:30ish. There was another girl, Christy, who I basically paced off of. She finished just ahead of me.

I broke down the pull-ups, pushups, and squats Cindy-style (5, 10, 15). That worked great for me. I felt like I kept my pace pretty good. I managed to stick with kipping using the red band, I was pretty proud of that. I'm glad I stuck with Cindy-style. The pull-ups def got hard by the end and I really needed to use the kip. At halfway through I had to break the pushups into 5-couple-of-breaths-5. The squats, I just tried to keep going.

I was out the door for the second mile right around 34:00.

And then I DIED. Like for reals, my legs just did not want to move. My knees were killing me from all the squats. I felt like I was towing a tractor trailer around the block with me. If you've never been to CFEV, there's a pretty good restaurant around the corner from the box called Mission. It being a holiday and all, there were a ton of people waiting outside to get seated. I just yelled "excuse me" every time and ran right through them. Oh well. Hopefully it reminded them that Memorial Day is about more than just food. I pushed through until the end.

I made it back in the door at 46:11. Yay me. It did suck, not gonna lie. It was hard, but I'm glad I did it. I'll definitely do it again next year.

Here's some shots from the morning.

The 9:30am heat doing their work.

Did I mention that I hate running?

Me and Hillary post-Murph

The "Two Brown Chicks," me and Laura.

Oscar and I from the 6:00am crew.

Irene and I cheering on the 11:00am heat.

Too Light... ha!

I don't know what it is... maybe that we are getting closer to the summer? Maybe that more people are moving to East Village? It's been harder to find parking in the morning in front of the box. I used to always get this one spot across the street. Nobody parked there overnight. Now, it's always taken when I show up and I'm not showing up any later. Huh... might have to start making friends with the homeless people around the corner.

Anyways, this is what we had this morning.

I was pretty excited for this one. Even though it contained running... 200m, I could do that! (I think!) There were a lot of people around this morning too. A couple of drop ins added to the usual numbers. Once we all had our barbells set up, we took up the majority of the floor place and were packed the tightest I've ever seen it. 

Still comfortable though and we got straight to work.

I had set up 63lb for the push press. I wanted to go "heavy" but not so heavy that I couldn't finish unbroken. 

The first round, the weight felt heavy, but I think I just wasn't warmed up enough in that movement because it became easier in the later rounds. About halfway through, Christa looked at me and said, "Kana, you look too strong for that weight." To which I immediately was shaking my head while finishing a press. She chuckled. I was having to push quite hard to finish out those rounds.

The runs were... okay. Sucks that it's the slightly uphill area of the block for the first 100m. Definitely worse going up for the first half. 

15min AMRAP: 6 rounds + 15

On a side note... a coworker and I went to Urban Chicken for the first time today for some lunch. It was much better than I expected from the look of things outside. Don't be discouraged by the exterior! They only use locally grown produce and free range chickens, which is good for paleo menu options. I got a 1/4 chicken with two sides. I choose the salad and grilled veggies. The food was phenomenal. The chicken was nicely seasoned and moist. The veggies! I don't remember the last time I had zucchini, but I remember that I never liked it. Today... uh... it was delicious! So tender and perfectly charred. I'll definitely be going back. Probably for a cheat meal so that I can try a Chicken Turnover, cause those things looked amazing.

My WOD in Pictures

So today I had to be at work early... 0630. That meant I couldn't get my usual 0600 class. I hate that. I debated going for an evening class, then found out that I had been tasked to attend another meeting tomorrow morning. So again, no class. What's worse, I have no idea where the place for the meeting is. So now instead of an evening class, I had to go an scope out where this joint was. (I hate being late for things and I have a horrible sense of direction, scoping the place out was a must.)

After two days off (one of which was my first cheat day since sticking to paleo... it was an amazing aka the best brunch i've ever been to kinda cheat... I didn't feel bad), but I knew that I needed to do something.

So I came up with this to do at home:




150 of these


Followed by 150 of these


Finally, 150 of these


I don't own an abmat, so I improvised with a towel instead


How it turned out in the end...

Originally, I was going to do two rounds. Boy was that ambitious! I knew right away there weren't going to be two rounds. I almost visited pukie in the middle of the sit-ups!

Crossfit people are crazy... who else would think of a workout like that for themselves??