Fran

Fran rx'ed: 8:45 (8 sec PR over 6/9/11)

Post: 3 rounds of 20 hollow rocks / 1 min plank / 30 sit ups

Fran left me rolling around on the ground for a long time because my quads were burning. I felt like I moved better at thrusters and pull ups than the last time but must have had too many rest breaks since I barely got a PR. I had hoped to get sub 8. Must try harder.
Post WOD was horrible. I took longer than the WOD PLUS I half assed it too.

As I write this two days later, my lats and quads are still quite sore.

Fran... 25 days later

After Monday's WOD, I didn't have a chance to make it in Tuesday or Wednesday. Thursday rolls around and I'm wondering, what to do... if I made up a wod, I wouldn't recover in time to do Fran on Saturday morning. So... I decided to do it tonight!

Fran rx'ed
8:53

Hell yeah! That's a 2 min and 7 second improvement and no, I did not sandbag the first one. Glenn was there and he can tell you that my first one was probably pretty painful to watch haha. He was there again tonight and him coaching me through the 15 and 9 rounds was much appreciated! The best part was that I saw 9:50 on the clock with 1 pullup to go and everyone is yelling at me to get sub 10. I WANTED sub 10. When I was done, Kelly said I had 8:53... glad she was there to keep track that I started one minute in!!

Where I think I cut my time down
The thrusters were a huge improvement. I have been working on the breathing thing and I really concentrated on that. The thrusters were strong through to the end and no back tightness. They were still broken but probably less so than the first time around (had a string of 9 today!).
I strung more pull ups together today than the first time. The forearm burn didn't sink in until midway through the 15 round of pull ups... which is later into the wod than last time. I had a couple of fails in the last round. I need to stop craning my neck over the bar. I can't see the bar as well and I probably had a few close ones.
The biggest thing is my breaks between thruster sets or between thrusters and pullups were waaaay shorter. I imagine that I am better conditioned than I was 25 days ago. There is still plenty of work I need to do to improve my gas tank!

Anj asked about my diet changes. Over the last 4 weeks, any cheats I had were gluten free, except for a bite of two of things here and there (a bite of wedding cake, pierogi, potato pancakes,...). Gluten really does make me feel like crap so now that I'm pretty clean, I don't crave too much gluten! There were maybe a handful of meals that had some rice in it and probably another handful with corn. I can't help it, my parents came to visit and then we went to a wedding over Memorial weekend!
But the biggest reason why I will keep eating clean is that I breathe better. I don't get the allergies like JJ does (which has gone away since eating clean) but I definitely have some congestion when I don't eat clean. Breathing easier just makes life better, even makes me sleep better! I'm happy to see that it's working for Djokovic too!

As for my "training", other than Regional wods week, it was a consistent 3x a week at CF, supplemented with either a run/row (interval) or something else (bike ride, volleyball, etc). It's working for me in terms of increasing strength and improved recovery so I might stick with this.

Basically, my daily food log on average looks something like this:
- Breakfast: eggs (over easy) in butter, veggies (asparagus, eggplant, peppers, zucchini, onion, etc) in lard. On days that I work out, I'll have max 3 slices of sweet potato. If we have it, half an avocado might get thrown into the mix. Coffee is black.
- Lunch: if I pack my lunch, it's completely paleo. If I buy my lunch, I am making a salad at the cafeteria in the Chase building or Market Creations. What goes in it? If available, bacon, boiled egg, mushrooms, peppers, avocado, asparagus, beets (not all the time), strawberries (not all the time), grilled vegetables, olives... and then dressed with olive oil (hopefully EVOO) and balsamic vinegar.
- Dinner: this one gets tricky depending on how well prepared we are. If we eat at home, it's pretty paleo. If we eat out, we opt for grilled meats at Mexican or Mediterranean places with veggies. Huge downside of eating out if it's not grilled: vegetable oil! That stuff makes us sick. Oh, and stuff like BBQ sauce has sugar in it... oh well...

What happens now?
- Fitness goal: I need to work on improving my conditioning. If I am to improve on Fran next time, I'll need work on the movements but more importantly, I'm going to need a bigger gas tank. I believe that means more interval work? I'm thinking wall balls, burpees, and yeah, thrusters.
- Weight goal: I weighed in at 121.5 this morning. I'd like to lose a little more but I am not really obsessing over this.
- Nutritional goal: it's been pretty sustainable so far and I haven't had any cravings for a while. I'm probably due for something though but I'm not really sure what cheat I want. Plan is to eat this way until some kind of cravings kick in.

Happy this challenge happened as I feel like it helped put me back on track. I forget what else I wanted to say but this is a long post already. :)

Fran

Breaking up the posts into twice a week since they're getting a little long.

Thursday, I went in to make up Monday's WOD. Fun stuff!
BS 3×3 at 125#. Need to remember to initiate with hips back. Good cues from Kelly.

Metcon at 60#: 7:14
Pullups unbanded and quick singles. I almost used 55# since I had such trouble with the 65# the previous day. Kelly called me out since she said it looked light. Yeah, it felt light too so I'm glad she got me to up the weight. Also got a good pep talk about pacing. No rip but got blood blister on the left hand and a regular blister on the right one.


Made up Fran (rx'ed) on Sunday. First morning WOD in a long time!
First time rx'ed (9/15/09: deadhang-Fran with 45# and green band at 8:32) so I was pretty happy to be able to do it. I had hyped it up in my head all week long and set a goal for sub 10 min.

I ended up with 11:00.

I'll be honest, I'm unhappy with that time. I don’t think I breathed on any of my thrusters, which caused the lactic acid burn to come on real early, resulting in a lot of time spent catching my breath. First set of thrusters at 7. Mostly in 3s starting in the 15-round. Had more press outs than I would have liked. Guess I torque a bit given that my right quad seems to be more strained than my left. I had to J-stick the crap out of my shoulder/back tightness. The press-outs from the thrusters really aggravated it.

Glenn's advice: don't try to catch your breath hunched over... "you're crushing your lungs".
Biggest weakness to work on: breathing through up/down stuff like thrusters, WBs, and burpees. If only I can get that breathing down, I'll be a lot faster through most of those movements.

JJ and I are doing our own version of a paleo challenge. No sugar, no grains for as much of the 30 days as possible. No planned cheats (except my parents will be in town this weekend and a wedding over Memorial weekend). Butter, salt, plain labneh, sweet potatoes will stay in our diet. Basically lots of meat and veggies plus high fats (coconut, olive, lard). I'm not doing the official challenge so I won't be posting my meals on a daily basis. My goal is a little more weight loss plus maintain/increase strength. Currently weighing in at 124# +/- 3# water retention fluctuation. Would like to minimize that swing.

3, 2, 1... go!