PCF WOD 5.06.10

Slightly out of order…

Deadlift
1-1-1-1-1-1-1

For Time:
50 Ring Dips
200 Double Unders or 75 Box Jumps (20 inches)

DL: 335 (PR)
Metcon: 7:37 rx’d, DUs

Got 355 off the ground, but didn’t pull it up fully and copped out. Dropped to 345 with less than a minute rest (because we were out of time), got that off the ground but still didn’t pull it up. So… next time, incorporate more rest and/or shoot for the 355 sooner.

I forgot how tired ring dips make your arms and thus tired out on DUs. Not a good DU day for me. Got off the ring dips right after Guch though, so that went reasonably well. Guch did a great job being Tigger on the box jumps.

At the encouragement of Dave and LeeAnn, went along with Foundations in FGB for a round = 112 (there were some serious transition issues with me – like me flipping the rowing display over, and doing PPs when we were supposed to do SDHPs).

PCF WOD 5.09.10

Happy Mothers’ Day!  Wish I could have celebrated with my mom, but that’s hard when she’s 5,000 miles and 6 time-zones away.

“Chief”
Max rounds in 3 minutes of:
135 pound Power cleans, 3 reps
6 Push-ups
9 Squats

Rest 1 minute, repeat for five rounds.  Partial rounds count (in this case, we began on the next movement – e.g., if you completed the 3 power cleans, you got credited for the 1/3 and started the next round on pushups).

22 2/3 rounds as rx’d
(5 – 4 1/3 – 4 1/3 – 4 1/3 – 4 2/3)

My favorite Crossfit WOD.  I really, really like this one.  It’s a met-con, but contains a heavy-ish component (power cleans) with bodyweight components (push-ups, squats).  The number of reps, I find, suits me perfectly as well.  I’m finally strong enough to do the power cleans without too much effort, and 3 reps is low enough that I can do them unbroken.  Same with push-ups and squats – 6 and 9 reps respectively are low enough for me to do them unbroken each set.  It seems that 6 is the magic number for push-ups since whenever Cindy comes up, I usually break the sets of 10 push-ups in later rounds.  I took the squats relatively slow since the quads were feeling yesterday’s Filthy 50 – so that’s an area of improvement to go faster next time.  In any case, I’m pretty happy overall with this performance, as I did everything unbroken.  The last time I did this more than a year ago (4/10/09), I got 16 rounds.

Saturday WOD at CFA 5.08.10

Visited Curtis’ new box – Crossfit Adaptation – to see how everything was going.  Great space, nice setup, and good times.  In addition to checking out the box, my motivation was to re-do the dreaded Filthy 50 and improve upon my less-than-impressive time a couple weeks back in St. Louis (33:13 – yes, somewhat embarrassing, but the time before that was something like 38:47).

“Filthy 50″
50 Box Jumps (24/20)
50 Jumping Pull Ups
50 Kettlebell Swings (1 pood/25 lbs)
50 Walking Lunges
50 Knees to Elbows
50 Push Press (45/35)
50 Back Extensions (sub Supermans)
50 Wall Ball (20/12)
50 Burpees
50 Double Unders

30:54 as rx’d

Okay, better than last time, but I was hoping for a sub-30 performance.  Here are my thoughts on reasons why this didn’t happen: knees-to-elbows, wall balls, and burpees.  I would guess those three exercises took more than 2/3 of the workout time.  I can kip KTE, but there comes a point when I can only string a few together, either because I’m losing my grip, or because my abs get tired.  Wall balls are troublesome when there is a ledge to hit – give me a ten-foot target on a flat wall, and I can do it better.  Bad depth perception.  I should be better at burpees, but ever since gaining weight, they’re not so fantastic.

These are things to certainly consider next time I do skill work.  Great job to Paul who bested his previous time by 40-ish seconds and flew through the WOD in just over 18 minutes.  I’d like to set a goal for completing this next time in the 25-28 minute range.

PCF WOD 05.04.10

30 Handstand push-ups
40 Pull-ups
50 Kettlebell swings, 1.5 poods
60 Sit-ups
70 Burpees

18:05 rx’d

HSPUs were piece of cake in just around 2 minutes… that was the only good part of the WOD for me. Pullups were slower than anticipated (kipping was off, grip started to give around 30), and I really shouldn’t have done GHD situps yesterday – situps were harder than they should have been. Burpees, well, no one does really well at them right?

Here’s how things were broken out (I think)

HSPUs: 10-10-4-3-3
Pullups: 10-8-6-5-3-2-2-2-2 (yikes!)
KB swings: 10-15-15-10
Situps: 20-10-10-5-5-5-5 (though most of the breaks in sets of 5 were pauses)
Burpees: 10-10-10-10-10-10-10 (slow and steady)

Thought I was on the leaderboard for 2 minutes (so did Aaron and Doug), then looked more carefully at the board and saw better times (nice job Aviv, Seamus, Clay, Simple Jack, Ken, Johnny).  Aw shucks.

PCF WOD 5.03.10

Back squat: 5-5-5
2 rounds 800m runs (with ample rest in between)

225-245(PR)-225

3:08, 2:57

Felt good on the 245 set but wasn’t feeling like over-doing it and going heavier (though I probably could have put another 10# on).  After not squatting for awhile though (just because I missed squat days), I’ll take the PR.

As usual, I paced way too much on the first 800m run.  The second run was definitely more on par with giving it all.  Sprinting has become more difficult for me as my legs are like “thunder thighs” compared to when I trained for my marathon/ ran a lot.

And Spidermonkey is back…

Whew… it’s been quite a long hiatus between posts… between having to post on the PCF blog, on my G-mail calendar, I think I let the online blogging take a backseat.  But, in realizing that it is much easier for me to find my last benchmark on my own blog rather than searching through the tens of comments on the PCF blog, I’ve re-discovered the value in posting WOD performances on here.  To keep me motivated (and the reader entertained), I’ll try to post thoughts about Crossfit as well.  Maybe even post pictures (when I figure out how to do these things – I am so behind the times in online and social media).

Since the last post, I’ve competed in the DC/VA/WV Sectional Competition on March 27-28, 2010 (see picture – thanks to Nicole Bedard for taking amazing photos of the athletes).  It was an amazing experience, as I came away pleasantly surprised with my performance.  I’ll recap the experience in a later post (soon).

In the month following Sectionals, I’ve been taking it relatively easy… easing my way back into doing normal WODs, which I had missed since we were focused on Games Prep.  I lost a few pounds (went down to 148) after Sectionals due to a stomach virus (affectionately termed PCF dysentery) compounded with me eating normally (you may recall I was on the “see-food” diet).  However, I like being over 150, so I’ve been slowly but surely putting back the weight (currently at 152).  Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like I lost any strength with the weight loss and I have been able to complete most WODs as rx’d.

It’s time to get back in the game.

PCF WOD – 01.07.10

Great to be back at PCF… not so great for the weather… 😦

Deadlift
1-1-1-1-1-1-1

AMRAP in 10 minutes of:
15 KB Swings (1.5/1)
30 Box Jumps
Post loads and rounds to comments.
All work sets of deadlifts should be at 90% or higher of your 1RM.  KB Swings should be done to just above eye level.

DLs: 275-295-295-300-275 (and ran out of time, but the 300 felt good and if I had more time, would have continued at that weight); not too bad considering I just got my PR 315# last Saturday.

Metcon: 4 rounds + 15 KB swings + 10 BJs
All KB swings unbroken. Lesson learned: do not do box jumps in running shoes – they threw me off balance each jump.

Happy New Year, 2010!

Happy New Year everyone!

So I haven’t been posting as I’ve taken a two week hiatus in warm, sunny, tropical, happy (and many more pleasant adjectives) Hawaii.  Always the best time to visit every year (we actually have a song with words that: “here we know that Christmas will be green and bright” ~ name that tune) when the rest of the country is in deep freeze (you too Miami).  And as much as I could go on about how warm and wonderful and happy I was there, the brute reality is I got thrown back into the arctic winter.  You try a 50 degree drop in temperature in 12 hours and 5-hours time difference and see how you feel about it.  But I digress…

Lots of catching up to do, so I’ll mention the highlights:

Weight:  This may sound ridiculous, but I feel I actually did better gaining weight in warm weather.  I think the main contributing factor was the fact that I was relaxed, properly hydrated, and that I was more aware of eating (and could eat at any time).  At the same time however, I didn’t feel like I was eating excessively (mostly because quality food costs more there).  Around the 1st of the month I had reached my peak of 156.0 pounds, but have since lost a few pounds (seriously, I feel like I lost a couple pounds on the plane ride alone – they need to feed us better/ make food more available, and not just the crappy chips and candy) and am back to around 153 pounds.  This puts me within 7-8 pounds of my goal of 160.

WODs:  While back in Hawaii I worked out at Crossfit Oahu.  If ever on Oahu, I’d recommend visiting their box.  As long as you’re an affiliate member (e.g., you pay for membership at another box), you can WOD there for free.  Since it was only a 7 minute drive from where I was staying, I went there as often as I could (a total of 8 WODs).  A recap:

12/26/09:  AMRAP 7:30 of 5 SDHP @ 95#, 10 pullups; then AMRAP 7:30 of 5 snatch-grip DLs @ 185#, 10 wallballs.  Tore my hands on the pullups, so I was bleeding everywhere on the snatch-grip DLs.  Subbed BW squats in an effort not to bloody up the wallballs.  Got through 5 rounds of the first part, and then only 3 rounds in the second part.  Could not grip the bar because a) hand was bleeding; b) the skin would tear more.  Ouch!

12/28/09:  AMRAP in 20 mins of 3 power snatch @ 135#, 6 muscle ups, 9 DLs @ 225#.  Scaled power snatch to 115# and subbed 6 ring dips for MUs (though it should have been way more…).  DLs were heavy and slow, but I got through them.  7 rounds, 3 power snatches, and 6 ring dips.

12/29/09:  Helen = 11:20 rx’d.  Somehow everyone thinks the 400 m course is long, and I’d have to agree.  Did all kettlebell swings unbroken, so that was promising, and only broke pullups three times.  So yeah, about that run…

12/30/09:  Partner WOD with 3 rounds AMRAP 30 sec box jumps, 30 sec situps, 1 min front squats @ 135# with 1 min rest.  Luckily there were two of us (went in the middle of the day).  165 rx’d.  BJs were mostly unbroken (unless I stumbled, which happened three times), situps were as good as they could get, and I was reasonably happy with FS (think the break down was 15-11-11 for the three rounds).

12/31/09:  For time, 365 reps anyway using pushups, situps, KB swings @ 1.5 pood, pullups, BW squats, lunges.  This was a fun one, and one I did last year.  It is 90% strategy.  I don’t think last year I even thought of subbing in some other movement while resting from another (e.g., doing squats while recovering from pushups).  Quantity breakdown was: 100 lunges, 100 squats, 30 KB swings, 20 pullups, 50 pushups, 65 situps.  Did the last 50 squats in sets of ten followed by 10 pushups.  Added 10 more squats as pushups got harder and was taking too long.  10:33 rx’d.  I wish I could compare with last year’s.

1/2/10:  CFT = 735 (PR!)  SP=135(PR), BS=285(PR), DL=315(PR).  Gain of 65 over previous 1RM in each lift.  I was pretty happy about this.  Especially about finally breaking through the mental 300# DL barrier.

1/4/10:  Fran = 6:06 rx’d.  Was hoping for sub-6, perhaps even low 5s.  Consider this: last time I did Fran was in Feb-09 at 10:32 rx’d – that was the first Fran rx’d.  So a 4.5-minute improvement isn’t too bad.  Flew through the first round with 21 unbroken thrusters, and 11-10 pullups, but gassed on the second round and broke it 5-5-5 on thruster and pullups.  Bad idea.  I would shave a minute off if I did it 8-7 and muster through the last set unbroken thrusters and 5-4 pullups.

1/5/10:  AMRAP 20 mins of 6 one-legged squats, 9 HSPUs, 12 KTEs.  7 rounds rx’d + 6 OL Squats, 6 HSPUs.  Tried to do as many rounds with unbroken KTEs, but gave up around round 4.  HSPUs were slow, but not the limiting factor.  I was happy I did 69 of them.  There was just enough rest between each round of HSPUs to allow me to continue to bust out a set of 5, then two sets of 2.

Crossfit Oahu is definitely a Scott Q. type of place (for that matter, a 5 p.m. WOD place) where guys stroll in shirtless or do so during or before the warmup.  Totally lived up the boardshort life sans shirt while there.

Strength WOD – 12/13/09

Jon’s switching up my supplemental strength program to a CFT-style 3 x 5 rep scheme once a week since our general PCF programming is reflecting more strength elements (which I am loving).

Back squat:  205-215-225

Shoulder press:  105-115-120

Deadlift:  225-235-235

Went up 10# on the back squat, went up 5# on the SP, first time doing a 3 x 5 on the deadlift.  Deadlifts felt good for once – I’ll definitely be able to do more weight next time.

Games Prep WOD – 12/12/09

So, a little catching up to do…

Last Saturday, we did sandbag sprints up a hill.  The sandbags were at a mystery weight (anywhere from 50-60#?).  We did three sprints where the first half was flat terrain, and the second half was up the steep incline.  I was happy that I could carry the sandbag the whole way.