Tag Archives for 90 Days of CrossFit

Day 45: Halfway Friday!

This is my new favorite CrossFit picture. So perfect.

Wow. Have I really been doing this for 45 days? That was fast! I feel like I have sort of exhausted the CrossFit-Inspires-Me-Because train of thought this week, so I am going to keep this post short and sweet!

But I will say that I have gained a LOT in the past 45 days: A sense of accomplishment, self-esteem, a new community, and some muscle definition to boot! 45 days ago I would not have expected that this idea would become such an energizing force or that it would add as much value as I feel that it has to my daily life.

Even though I’m technically half-way done with my “90 Days of CrossFit” concept, I feel like I am just getting started with this whole crazy process! What am I going to call this blog after the 90 days are over and I am still doing CrossFit? Any suggestions?

Tonight we are hosting about a dozen folks from our gym for paleo sushi. I’ll let you know how it goes and post some recipes tomorrow!

Day 44: From Cheez (and a new blog layout!)

Editor’s Note: First of all, apparently the blog theme I was using has been deactivated in some fashion, so I hope you like my new look!

More importantly, yesterday after I posted about feeling inspired, Cheez (who is sadly no longer a trainer at CrossFit Jai but keeps up with my life via my blog and Words With Friends) posted this as a comment on my Facebook. I loved it and wanted to share it with all of you fine people. I hope you enjoy it, and have a great Wednesday! 

What inspires me has been an ever evolving thought rumbling around this dome of mine ever since I started CrossFit. What is it about this pursuit of fitness that drives me every day? Is it something external…watching the Games and seeing seemingly super human feats of fitness, strength, and mind over body? Is it from the countless articles and websites around CrossFit that I read daily? Is it something internal…the personal goal setting and achieving those goals, PRs, and complex movements? Is it the memory of what life was like before CrossFit and the fears that way of life brought me for my lifelong health? Is it the progress and lifelong health that CrossFit has already brought me?
As I sit here today and reflect with a fresh perspective on all that fitness and CrossFit has brought into my life I am completely, totally, and many other “ly” ending words worth of humbled and thankful! However, what I find myself going back to when thinking about this is not how much all I’ve listed above fulfill and inspire me, but how much THE PEOPLE AROUND ME DO. Our CrossFit family is one not easy duplicated, especially at our CrossFit Jai box here in Denver, and the culture CrossFit has bred continues to astonish and inspire me every day. So with that in mind I can now clearly speak to what it is that inspires me daily…
MY INSPIRATION COMES FROM watching new members dive head first into something very foreign and downright scary at times and NEVER making up an excuse as to why they are struggling and failing time and again to hit those first milestones!
MY INSPIRATION COMES FROM seeing people work continuously to achieve seemingly unattainable goals just weeks earlier and witnessing the joy and sense of relief when that first kipping pullup, set of double unders, muscle up, etc. is finally under their belt!
MY INSPIRATION COMES FROM those same people discussing minutes later the next goal or PR they have in mind!
MY INSPIRATION COMES FROM not only from those around me killing PRs but also from those that are the last to finish their WOD just under the time cutoff drenched in sweat and/or tears, body trembling, and pulling through the workout with nothing but pure heart and determination!
MY INSPIRATION COMES FROM seeing seemingly machine-like athletes struggle with lifting movements and break down their ego to ask for help from an athlete half their size.
MY INSPIRATION COMES FROM hearing fellow members cheer on people they met less than an hour ago to push them through a WOD.
MY INSPIRATION COMES FROM coaches that put other’s fitness before their own, often to their own detriment and setting down of their personal goals.
MY INSPIRATION COMES FROM hoping I can inspire.
What inspires you?…

Day 43: Feeling Inspired

 

the pain face

This morning TJ posted a link on Crossfit Jai’s Facebook page to a story about Chris Spealler, one of the athletes who competed in this past weekend’s SW Regional games and came from behind to snag 3rd place and the final spot in the SW to the CrossFit Games. The article didn’t really say much about his actual performance at regionals – what his times were or how many reps he did – but talked about how inspiring Chris Spealler is as an athlete, and how his 3rd place finish was, in some ways, even more remarkable than those who finished 1st and 2nd.

I have talked about how CrossFit pushes and redefines your limits, brings you to places physically and mentally that you didn’t know existed for you, and surrounds you with a community of support and encouragement. All of this from a few hours a week in a gym with no fancy machines that doesn’t boast the secret or the solution to anything, that doesn’t ask anything of you except that you try your hardest and do what you can to encourage others to do the same. With all the hype in the fitness world about silver bullets and magic powders, what could be so great about CrossFit?

The author of the Chris Spealler article poses a similar question (paraphrased): How can we find so much inspiration just from watching some guy lift weights? Even just 6ish weeks into what I now know is going to be WAY more than just 90 days of CrossFit, her answer inspired me and resonated with every experience I have had since that first round of Tabata squats.

“Because of this crazy CrossFit thing. Because CrossFit inspires us in ways we never dreamed of before. We go to the gym and we become better athletes … and then better friends, better parents, better people. And it all starts in the gym, doing CrossFit together.”

To read the rest of the article, go here.

Day 43: Paleo Challenge Week 2

Today marks the start of week 2 of the Paleo Challenge that my gym is putting on. The rules are pretty simple: Eat paleo, don’t drink caffeine or alcohol, get lots of sleep, and do lots of WODs. You get varying points for each of those items, plus additional points for eating at least 5 meals a day, taking fish oil, and having a recovery drink or meal after a WOD. After a rough start last Monday where I only totaled 4 points since I only ate 1 meal the whole day, I averaged about 15-20 points per day and was feeling pretty solid. Until I went to enter my points on the group chart, that is. Turns out that even with 114 points total, I’m currently in 10th place out of 14! Not as good as I thought!

So this week it’s time to get even MORE serious about eating paleo, I guess. The thing I have been struggling with the most, as I’ve sort of mentioned before, is that it’s hard for me to really want to eat that much meat. Traditionally I have eaten meat about 3-5 days per week, and on the other days have eaten pasta, quinoa, or stir fries with rice. Unfortunately all those options are out when you are eating paleo, which means you have to bring a lot more protein into the picture in order to get full. However since beans and dairy are no-nos, adding protein basically means meat. I am starting to come around to it a little, but I haven’t really found a great balance yet. It’s not that I don’t like meat, but if I eat it too much I just feel sort of blah. I also like to be conscious of the environmental impact my food has, and meat – even organic, grass-fed meat – is really high on the impact scale.

If you eat paleo, how do you deal with the extreme amounts of meat? Do you have a favorite paleo recipe or cookbook? I have Everyday Paleo and have also gotten some ideas from the internet. On Friday the BF and I are tentatively planning to host a Paleo Dinner for all the folks from our gym, and since we don’t have a grill (that would be the easy way to do it!), I think we are going to try to make paleo sushi! I have found some cool ideas online, like using smashed avocado instead of rice and using coconut aminos instead of soy sauce. I doubt I will go as far as ordering coconut aminos, but I think that you could also use mashed sweet potatoes instead of rice to hold the sushi together.

Tonight’s WOD is taken from the SW Regional CrossFit Games that happened this weekend – 4 rounds of 10 kettlebell snatches at 55 lbs (for women, 70 lbs for men) and 200 m sprints. It has been rainy and crappy all day today but it’s starting to clear up, hopefully it will be nice a cool for tonight’s WOD. Sprinting is very much not my forte, but let’s be honest – when it comes to CrossFit, do I have a forte?

Day 41: Progress Photos Round 3

Woohoo! Time for more progress photos! I think that the view of my front angle hasn’t changed all that much, but you can still tell from the side that I am tightening up a little more each day, especially in my butt. Which is great news 🙂 AND thanks to this whole Paleo challenge, I actually lost 2 lbs just this week!

Left to right: April 1, April 18, May 4

Left to right: April 1, April 18, May 4

The Boyfriend has definitely added some bulk, especially in his pecs, and his abs are also getting a little more defined.

Left to right: April 1, April 18, May 4

Today I am massively sore from Murph. No surprise there. It didn’t help that I spent all day crouched and bent over, stabilizing heads and building splints out of rain jackets and backpacks. I just got home after joining the BF for a short while at a friend’s Derby party, where the BF won best dressed. For any of you who actually know him, this was quite a feat. He even wore a white top hat! What a stud!

Day 40: Murph

It has been a looong week. Long long. Monday was a pretty intense day and that feeling spilled over into the rest of the week, leaving me with some emotional jet lag. I fell asleep at least twice literally in the middle of a sentence. It was just that kind of a week.

Today I took off work (I know, you’re thinking How could your week be so hard if you only worked 3 days?) to recertify my Wilderness First Responder certification. It’s a 3-day course that lasts the rest of the weekend – 3 totally full days of patient assessments, vital signs, trauma scenarios, and making splints out of backpacks and ski poles. It’s exhausting but kind of just what I need to occupy my mind. I’m also not sure how I am going to emerge from this weekend (which also included hanging out with the NOLS Executive Director last night at a dinner) without pledging to quit my office job and go back into the woods. It’s really only a matter of time.

So after a day full of worrying about hypovolemic shock and whether or not someone could secretly have appendicitis, I drove home with just enough time to change into some shorts and head over to the gym. TJ had warned us that the WOD tonight would be long, saying something along the lines of, “If your heart’s not in it on Friday, you probably shouldn’t come,” and also alluding to the fact that it was likely to be running-intensive. Then this morning the Boyfriend texted me: “Today: Murph. 1 mile running, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, another 1 mile running.” Want to know what my first thought actually was? Oh, that’s not as bad as I was expecting! Who am I? The option to do “Murphette” was also on the table, which was half of prescribed, but somehow after the week I’d had that just did not feel like an option for me. I was going for it – my first prescribed Hero WOD.

After getting that text, I posted on my Facebook “Tonight I meet Murph. Let’s hope I don’t also meet Jesus” and a friend of mine who does CrossFit in Vail replied, “Prepare yourself, they are one and the same…” Encouraging.

The reps were broken up into 20 sets of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, and 15 air squats. It was 85 degrees out when we started running and the BF actually lapped me (distance runners, what can you d0), but I have no idea what my time was for that first mile because when I came back in from the run I went right into pull-ups. Then right into push-ups. Then right into squats. I felt good, so I kept doing squats, and ended up having my progression actually go squats-pullups-pushups instead of the other way around. This paid off at the end since I didn’t have to go directly from my 300th squat into a mile run, but honestly I’m not sure that would have made much of a difference. I have no idea what time it was when I started on the last mile, either, but I do know that I finished the WOD in 59:23. Just under an hour. I’ll take it.

The Boyfriend finished in 39:52, but not without some serious battle wounds.

what 100 pull-ups can do to your hands

I feel super accomplished after finishing this tonight. Even though I had the 2nd slowest time (only beating the slowest time by about 20 seconds) of the entire gym, tonight I finished my first Hero WOD, prescribed except for bands on the pull-ups. After one of the most emotionally exhausting weeks of my life, and after an exceptionally tiring day, I’ll definitely take it. And I will also have no shame in going to bed at 10:30 on a Friday night. Because that is exactly what I plan on doing.

Day 37: Paleo Coconut Shrimp

Today was my first real day of eating in this 30 day Paleo Challenge! Yesterday was technically Day 1, but as I mentioned, it was a pretty rough day which led to me eating almost nothing. Today has been fairly easy, except for right now since The BF is sitting next to me with a frosted glass of our latest homebrew, a delicious hoppy pale that we just tapped on Sunday. Not cool, guys.

So here is my food journal for today:

Breakfast: Egg scramble with asparagus, sweet potatoes, kale, and red pepper.

Lunch: Went to the Mongolian BBQ downtown with The BF, and had a stir fry with shrimp, steak, a few little calamari guys (I just love those things), and an egg, plus various veggies. I even did good and got the sugar free sauce!

Snack: Raw cashews lightly salted with sea salt.

Dinner: Ground buffalo lettuce wraps with red pepper and jalapeno, plus lots of spices.

Snack: Sweet potato fries (currently in the oven)!

Also, I just made some paleo coconut shrimp to bring for lunch tomorrow! Deep frying things is super easy, so I just sort of winged (wung?) the recipe. Here’s what I came up with:

Easy Paleo Coconut Shrimp

-Raw shrimp – Use however many shrimp you want, but it’s preferable if you can find wild-caught.

-Organic coconut flakes

-Almond flour

-Salt, pepper, and any other spices you think would work (next time I think I am going to add curry!)

-2 eggs

Peel and vein the shrimp, then pat dry

Scramble the eggs in a bowl and set aside

Combine the coconut flakes with just enough almond flour to make it cohesive, and add the spices to taste. I had to grind up my coconut flakes in a food processor because they came in big chunks and wouldn’t really stick to the shrimp.

For reference, I used 8 large wild-caught gulf shrimp, 2 eggs, about 1 cup of coconut and a little less than 1/4 cup of flour.

In a large skillet (cast iron is best but whatever you have will work), heat about 1/4″ of coconut oil. You can also use vegetable oil if you want to (though that’s not strictly paleo), just don’t use olive oil as it doesn’t heat well. You will know it’s hot enough when you drop a piece of coconut into the oil and it starts to sputter. Coat the shrimp first in the egg and then in the coconut/almond flour mixture, then carefully drop them into the hot oil. Be careful as this will most likely lead to the oil sputtering a bit, and it will be super hot. After about a minute, or once the coconut has reached a nice brown color, use tongs to turn the shrimp over and brown the other side. This should be more than enough time to cook the actual shrimp.

When they are finished, transfer them to a plate covered with a paper towel to drain the oil. Best served immediately but not bad when reheated, either!

Day 36: Running on Empty

Today was a hard day in my life. It might go down as one of the hardest. Due to compounding personal circumstances, I not only got almost zero sleep last night, but ended up skipping work to spend the day with my family. Things are OK, but I hold all of my stress in my digestive system, and this led to me not eating a single thing all day until about 4PM when I finally came home and the BF made me a fried egg. Then I ate a few pieces of sliced turkey. And then, with all of about 200 calories in my system, we left for CrossFit.

The WOD tonight was 5 rounds of 500 m run, 5 toes-to-bar, 5 push-ups, 5 chest-to-bar, and 5 front squats. I did my squats with 65 lbs, The BF did his with 125 lbs. So, basically, almost a mile and a half of running, plus all those other things, going on 3 hours of sleep and a moderate-sized snack. It did not go well. I managed to not finish last, but I think that’s only because the person who finished behind me apparently had a minor epic in the 4th round of running, because I somehow almost caught up to him even though he had almost lapped me in the previous round. In the 2nd round of running, I felt like I was about to pass out. After my last round of squats, I was seconds away from throwing up.

Based on the state of my day, I very nearly did not go tonight. And I wouldn’t have felt the least bit bad about not going. But at the last second I went for it, and I’m really glad that I did. Tonight was really the first time that I have gone to CrossFit in order to kind of escape my life. And it worked. I’m glad I haven’t had to use it for that yet, but it’s good to know that some days, when I just need to get away from everything and forget about what’s going on, I now feel like I have somewhere productive to go.

On the bright side, since all I’ve had today is a fried egg, some lunch meat, and now a protein shake, Day 1 of the Paleo Challenge has been a success…

Day 35: Paleo Challenge

Whoa, it has been a big weekend.

Yesterday I worked for 14 hours. You would think that on a Saturday, I wouldn’t be working at all. Oh, but you would be wrong. I worked for 9 hours catching people as they zoomed towards me on a zipline, then worked for an additional 5 hours chatting and taking drink orders at a nearby tavern. I mean, ziplining is fun but ziplining for 8 hours and then 5 hours of being exceedingly talkative and bubbly is exhausting. Also I would like to take the time now to point out that no, I have not yet seen the new South Park episode about ziplining. But I bet it’s pretty accurate.

Anyway, because of my double-shift I missed the kick-off to my gym’s Paleo Challenge coming up, so had to make it up today. Starting tomorrow, I think there are about 20 or 30 of us who are going to be eating strict Paleo for the next 30 days. We get points for each Paleo meal we eat, plus bonus points for things like taking fish oil, drinking 2 liters per day of water, getting 8 hours of sleep, and doing 3 or more WODs each week. We lose points for caffeine, alcohol, and cheat meals. The BF isn’t doing the challenge since, as I’ve mentioned, he needs massive amounts of calories to survive, but I am going for it. I’m pretty excited. Since starting Crossfit, I have transitioned to about 60%-70% Paleo, but haven’t really had the motivation to make the last push and go for it. And all the people at my gym are super supportive, so I have high hopes for this coming month! We also took some “before” photos and measurements, and I don’t remember what all of mine were, but I did notice that I have lost a full inch from my butt since my original measurements last month!

I am also excited because I think that the 2nd month of Crossfit is the perfect time to do something like this. My body is no longer in shock (most of the time, anyway), and is even starting to get into the rhythm of muscle recovery. Also as far as weight loss, I still have only lost about 3 lbs. since starting Crossfit, although I am continuing to notice the composition of my body changing. I think that now that I’m in more of a routine with my workouts, going the extra mile and spending a month eating strictly Paleo might help me shed just a little bit of weight.

As the last component of the challenge, this morning we did “Jackie,” a benchmark WOD that consists of 1000 m of rowing, 50 Thrusters at 45 lbs, and 30 pull-ups. After my day of zipline-catching yesterday (which included a lot of pulling people towards me while they were suspended in mid-air slash trying to roll backwards away from me while I tried to keep my footing on a platform on the side of a hill), my shoulders and upper back were pretty exhausted. I didn’t feel very strong for the WOD and finished in 14 minutes flat, but we will do it again in a month to see what our progress is. I was pretty happy with my performance on the rowing part, though – 2 summers of raft guiding finally paid off!

This also means that I am going to get a lot more annoying with the food journal posts, and I hopefully will also be posting some paleo recipes! Stay tuned and have a great Monday!