Rehab Day 27

Weight 123.8



Food
For breakfast I had two eggs scrambled with 1 sausage, topped with 1/4 avocado and salsa. Yum! I hit up the farmer's market this morning for the first time in a while. I picked up a bison eye round roast, which will be turned into bison jerky later this week as well as some fresh BC cherries. I only just discovered the delicious wonder that is cherries last week and now I'm obsessed. I'm not sure how I managed to go my whole life without ever eating cherries before, but I have been missing out!


Before working out I had 1/2 apple with almond butter and some leftover pot roast. Usually I find as soon as I start warming up I get painfully hungry and that I can eat immediately before starting the stop watch. On this day though, eating right before this WOD seemed like a very, very awful idea since I started to feel nauseous almost immediately. After this serious ass kicking workout (see below) we hit Booster Juice for a little PWO refueling. Again I ordered a Mango Hurricane, no yogurt and added my own egg white powder to it. I get stuck in a rut with these things.


It's Saturday so that means it's time for a cheat. I made chicken fingers in the oven and David had pizza. We both had some cookies from Safeway for dessert. If you know me at all, you'll know I'm not much of a drinker and it's a rare occasion that I actually enjoying an adult beverage. It happens maybe once every few months. Tonight would be one of those nights. I enjoyed a few glasses of Kim Crawford Sauv Blanc while sitting out on the deck lounging in the summer loveliness. Perfect!


CrossFit
"Badger"
3 rounds for time
30 Squat Cleans, 65lbs (men's Rx'd 95lbs)
30 Pullups
800m Run
--> 40:25
I really wanted to finish this one is under 40 mins! Dammit. It annoys me to no end when this happens in a longer workout. Surely I could have shaved off 26 seconds somewhere in this whole endeavour! A few seconds here or there really doesn't matter, other than I just like the idea of a 3 at the beginning of my time rather than a 4. It's silly. I know. My rounds were 12 min, 15 min, and 13 min so I probably could have knocked off the time I needed by slacking less in round 2. I stopped though to cut off two callouses on my left hand that were starting to lift rather than suffer the pain of ripped hands again.
My winning streak continued as I beat David by about 7 mins. Once again my muscular stamina prevailed.

Rehab Day 24

Weight 124.0

Food
Nuts and eggs again, with a little ham in there for good measure. Through the day I ate some more ham, nuts, blueberries, cherries and some delicious left over pad thai. For dinner I turned some of the roast beef in the fridge into a cavegirl Shepherd's Pie. I actually found a ready to eat beef gravy at Sobeys which wasn't terrible. The ingredients were quite similar to anything I would have made at home: beef dripping, mushrooms, red wine, and some corn starch. I added loads of veggies and simmered on the stove. For the topping, I steamed cauliflower and a parsnip with a clove of garlic. Once softened, I pureed them in the food processor. It turned out to have a texture exactly like mashed potatoes and a mild, yet hearty flavor. Overall, yummy!

The picture doesn't quite do it justice...

Cheats
David and I have been discussing how to incorporate cheat days into our lives a little more, shall we say, responsibly. The all-out, anything goes entire cheat day seems like too much. I end up feeling like crap for a day or two after, like a food hangover. As you've seen, I gain a lot of weight in a short period of time. Water weight or fat, it doesn't matter. 5lbs is 5lbs when you're trying to do a pullup! We go way beyond "refueling" to the point of performance sabotage. Plus I generally resent the idea that I willingly pump myself full of such processed, garbage food-like substances.

So we're experimenting with this: Two cheat items per week, one on Wednesday, one on Saturday, preferably home made. We eat pretty low carb the rest of the time, so this approach is essentially a cyclic low carb/high carb diet a la Mauro DiPasquale's Anabolic Diet. I have not read any of his books, but from what I've gleaned from articles and interviews this is essentially his approach. Far be it for me to put words in his mouth though, so check out his website if you're curious about what he does.

Anyway, last night David chose sandwiches as his cheat - one roast beef, one peanut butter and jam. For me, I made a tiny batch of brownies. Mmmm.... Better than anything I could have found in a store!

CrossFit
Today's WOD
Run 10k

As my gimpy foot is not up to running I did not attack this one today. I'm not one to skip workouts or cherry pick the ones I like, so I will complete this one as soon as I can, hopefully on the weekend. I had intentions of subbing in something else, but ended up just feeling too wiped out from Eva yesterday. My own programming ended up being "One Nap, for Time" - Total time: about 3 hours! Precious precious sleep....

Rehab Day 23

Weight 125.2

Food

Nuts and eggs again for breakfast, this time with a little sliced ham for variety. Oooooh! I had a delicious strawberry, blueberry, spinach, egg white smoothie after working out around noon. Mid afternoon I ate a caveman's delight variety leftover platter - 3 ribs, pastrami, a chicken and sausage skewer, and 1/2 an avocado.

I found a spaghetti squash at the co-op this week so I made my Paleo Pad Thai with chicken and shrimp for dinner and used the squash in place of noodles. It makes an excellent substitution and you really would hardly even notice the difference!

CrossFit

Today's WOD

"Eva"

5 rounds

800m run

30 KB swings, 1 pood (Rx'd weight was 2 pood)

30 pullups

--> 57:09

Yeah... that's right. 57:09. This is officially the longest CrossFit workout I have ever done. I ran the first two 800s, but my foot, still sore from a bad landing off the bar on Saturday, started screaming at me and I knew I was running gimpy. I rowed 800m for the last three rounds which made an awful substitue given the other two exercises are grip and pulling intensive. Even though it was long and tough, I felt good afterwards. I'm one of those sick individuals that likes these kinds of challenges.

Rehab Day 20

Weight - 124.2

The blogger world

Melissa Byers is a girl I like, even though I've never even met her. She's witty, real, and an awesome CrossFitter - my 3 favorite qualities in a lady. She writes a great blog called Byers Gets Diesel that I check in with often. This week she had a wonderful two part series on cheat days (how timely, see below...). You're never going to go your whole life without eating a cookie again and no one expects you to, so she addresses a few points on how you might work cheat days into an other wise health and performance oriented lifestyle. I accidentally got up on my soapbox with regard to Part 1, however, and ranted a little about how we think about supposedly "clean" carbs like sweet potatoes vs obvious junk food like ice cream. Read it here. 

Food

I ate my regular breakfast, although somewhat later in the morning than usual. After the workout I made a strawberry, mango, blueberry, banana, and spinach smoothie. Seriously, you can't even taste the spinach. It's a good way to hide some extra greens in your diet. 

We planned for a cheat day today, and cheat we did. It didn't start until about 3 in the afternoon. So in total the crap food intake only lasts about 6-7 hours. It is remarkable what can be demolished in that amount of time. I've threatened to post what I am actually capable of consuming on a cheat day before, so here it goes in all its disgusting, carb'o'rific glory:

• 1 regular size Quizno's turkey sub with guacamole and a cookie
• Several chocolate cake donuts
• 2 pieces of Delicio oven pizza
• Blue Cheese/Hot Wing Doritos
• 1/2 pistrami sandwich (one piece of bread, lotsa meat)
• A few winegums
• Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream

Sometime I will actually FitDay a cheat day just to see what it all adds up to. I suspect it is easily 5000-7000 calories. The worst part is this is nowhere near the most I've eaten on a cheat day. While wandering through sobeys looking for inspiration, I found myself mostly wanting meaty things. I bought some deli meats, and chicken fingers, which I never even ate. They're still in the freezer for next time. 

CrossFit

Today was an odd workout that has not come up since 2003... 

2 rounds for time:

1 arm barbell push press, 12 reps right arm

1 arm barbell deadlift, 12 reps left arm

run 800m

1 arm barbell push press, 12 reps left arm

1 arm barbell deadlift, 12 reps right arm

run 800m

This WOD has no Rx'd weight, only saying "go heavy, run fast". I used 46lbs for the push press and 96lbs for the deadlift. As expected, the left arm, and especially the grip in the left hand were the weak parts. My foot is still not happy from yesterday and so the runs were slow and kinda gimpy. Total time 40:53. David severely owned me in this one, finishing in 27-something. Ouch. This was a fun one though! 

Rehab Day 19

Weight - 126.2

Food

Again with the same breakfast. Food throughout the day was left over pork stirfy and butter chicken. I had a banana, blueberry, and spinach smoothie after the workout. I ate some chicken and guacamole at my parents' house while visiting in the late afternoon. Today was one of those days where I had very little appetite and almost no interest in eating.

CrossFit

"Nicole"

AMRAP 20 mins

400m run

max reps pullups

Basically you sprint, then do as many pullups as you can. When you drop off the bar you go for a run again. If you can't do very many pullups, or if your grip is weak you'll be running a lot.

-->15, 12, 10, 10, 7, 6

the 15 pullups in round one is a new PR for me. I did 13 continuous kips, then 2 more before dropping off. Previously my record was 7 continuous, and 12 without dropping. Unfortunately I dropped off the bar and landed wrong on my left foot in round 3. It wasn't too happy about running after that. I did not do the run between the last two sets of pullups because I was already hobbling around at that point.

Rehab Day 18

Weight - 126.2


Food
Eggs and nuts again for breakfast. I mostly ate leftover stirfry from last night throughout the day. David picked up some fresh cherries from one of those roadside stands yesterday and it was on this day in history that I first discovered that cherries are in fact delicious. I'm not sure why, but I always thought I didn't like cherries. I had no idea what I've been missing my whole love. Those little gems are scrumptious!


We went to costco in the afternoon for another load of meat, veggies, and nuts. In addition to Cherries, it is also getting to be blueberry season. My favorite time of year! For dinner I made a cheater butter chicken with sauce from a jar. Besides some cream, the ingredients are not only pronounceable but also reasonably paleo.


CrossFit
The Workout of the Week in our gym this week is:


3 rounds, for time:
500m row
21 burpees
400m run


After watching everyone else sweat it out through this cardio monster, I couldn't resist taking a shot at it even though it wasn't on my schedule. In April, I did it in 19:21, this time 18:00 flat. I was really hoping to go sub-18, but I just didn't get there in time! Call me a masochist, but I love this one.


But since that wasn't actually my workout for today, I had a smoothie then hit the main site WOD which was:
AMRAP 20 mins of
Thruster, 5 reps
Hang Power Clean, 7 Reps
Sumo Deadlift High Pull, 10 reps
66lb barbell for all.
--> 5 rounds + 3 thrusters.

Hang Power Clean

Since I had just worked all the metcon I needed for today, I used a weight that, for me, is really heavy and treated this as more of a strength workout. 5 rounds is really not many for one like this, but it felt great to throw some weights around!

Rehab Day 9

Weight: 125.0

Food

Breakfast: 2 eggs, 1/2 apple, almonds butter

Late Lunch: Drake Sausage, cucumber, mini red and yellow peppers

Snack: 1 Pepperoni stick, pistachios, Larabar

Dinner: Lemon Chicken, steamed broccoli

CrossFit

Today is the CF main site rest day. On Monday, "Run 5k" came up and I said pishposh at that time. But today I decided to give it a whack with my new and improved running form. Usually on the rest days, CrossFit Endurance will prescribe a "Time Trial" (balls to the walls, all-out) or "Tempo Run" (85%-90% Rate of Perceived Exertion) so it seemed fitting. Mincing no words, this was the worst run ever. Ever. I must have hit the button on my silly iPod timer, because it stopped around 14 min, but I estimate this 5k jaunt took over 30 mins. ugh! Problem #1: I was trying to focus on maintaining my POSE form, and so speed was of little priority. My form fell apart in the 4th km. Problem #2 was I procrastinated until 11:30am which left me baking under the mid-day sun! Sweat much? Yikes.

After the terrible run, I went through the CFE Strength Recovery circuit:

3x15 of GHD extensions, GHD sit ups

3x10 of pullups, pushups, kettlebell swings

Sometimes (all the time) CrossFit challenges our ego and our patience by making us attack the things we struggle with the most. I hate running, for no other reason than I suck at it. But I believe it in as one of the many important functional skills I should possess in order to consider myself "fit". This is also the area where I have the greatest opportunity to improve, and isn't that the point of training. I could continue focusing on the things I am already good at (single leg squats anyone?), but where would that get me? So I suck it up, and I run.

Rehab Day 7

Still in Edmonton and still running drills and watching ourselves frame by frame on the screen all day long. Vast improvements have been made over yesterday!

Omelet, Bacon, and a little fruit. Now that's a breakfast!

Food Log
Breakfast - 3 egg omelet with ham and green peppers, a side of bacon, a few pieces of melon and grapes
Snack - Larabar
Lunch - Shaved turkey, pistachios, cucumbers, blueberries
Snack - Trail mix, dark chocolate
Dinner - at Original Joe's in Lloydminster: Burger (no bun) with bacon and guacamole, side Caesar (no cheese), and raw veggies

CrossFit
No official WOD today, just a lot of drills and running around outside.

Rehab Day 6

David and Coach Carl heading outside for some running drills

Today we're in Edmonton and will be running around at Spark Sport Conditioning / CrossFit Alberta getting berated and corrected on our awful running form all day long!

Food Log
Breakfast Buffet - scrambled eggs, bacon, 1 sausage, a few grapes

Mmmmm... Breakfast!

Snack - Larabar
Lunch - walked to a grocery store for broccoli slaw, shaved turkey, pistachios, and blueberries

Blueberries, broccoli, and turkey

Snack - turkey, blueberries, trailmix
Dinner - in a pub, I ordered a turkey burger (no bun) with a side ceasar with no cheese. Not bad!

Dad and David show off their paleo lunch choices as well. Dad, on the left has a big salad with 1/2 a roasted chicken. David, on the right, chokes down some salad and turkey. He's not too keen on meat or veggies today after regurgitating chicken and broccolli just yesterday! ewwww...

CrossFit
The morning started off with an easy jog, then 4 x 400m while they filmed us for later review and critique. Later we ran loads of different drils to correct said awful form. Finally, the day concluded with a WOD that looked like this:

100m repeats, every 30 seconds on the mark for:
6 min
3 min rest
3 min
2 min rest
2 min
A total of 22 x 100m sprints. It was hot and we were all complaining loudly!