Yesterday I took a well-deserved rest day after the race. Flew out to Seaside, FL and will be here all week for a meetup with some people from work. This morning I headed out for a run and a WOD on the beach. I ended up doing my WOD on the flat part of this stairway with a view.
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Not a bad way to start the day!
I ran a 1.1 mile warm-up.
8 Tabata Rounds:
Then I ran back the 1.1 miles again at a faster pace.
This morning I competed in the Out for Blood Duathlon in Mount Pleasant, MI. The event is a 5k run followed by a 20k bike. There are both road and mountain bike divisions, which is really nice. I finished first in the men’s age 26-35 mountain bike division! Official times won’t be posted online for a few days (they aren’t very organized). I did track each leg of the race using RunKeeper, so I have a rough idea of my total time, depending on how long my transition took (I didn’t hurry).
That should put me somewhere around an hour and 10 minutes total I’m guessing. Last year I was in the 30-39 men’s mountain bike division and won, but they switched up the divisions for some reason this year. My 5k run was 24:13, so I cut nearly 2 minutes there. Leading up to this year’s race I only completed one run longer than a mile in the last month and it was a 4 mile run at a slow 9:36/mile pace on a recovery day. You don’t need to run to get better at running. Do CrossFit!
My total time last year was 1:12:32, so I probably improved that by a little more than 2 minutes there. I was really cruising on the bike but in the 8th mile, we turned straight into the wind and it killed my pace. Check out the splits on RunKeeper and you can see exactly where it happened. I went from a 3:36 in mile 7 to a 4:43 in mile 8.
I’m really happy with my run and how steady of a pace I was able to keep. Looking forward to the full results getting posted online so I can see how I fared compared to mountain bikers in the other divisions.
Yesterday was my first real day off since the previous Monday. Unless I count last Friday, which was a light day with some snatch work and HSPUs. I did walk 9 holes of golf yesterday, but that’s nothing intense. This morning I realized my neck is really starting to loosen up. I can almost crack it on my own again, which I haven’t been able to do for over 2 months. I think the big reason for the recovery is that I haven’t done DUs at all in the last 2 weeks. Whenever I get back to them I’ll have to make it a priority to keep my neck in a good position, without chicken-necking.
Only one part in the class today, the Sissy Test.
Burpees & Russian KBS
You can start with 25 burpees or 25 KBS, whatever suits you. Burpees were recommended and I think that’s what everyone did. I might go with the KBS next time for the hell of it. No need to get out your calculators because I did the math in my head before we started. 325 reps of each!
I used a 55# KB and finished in 41:38! I nearly met Pukie for the first time in the round of 24 KBS. This was definitely an endurance WOD. I kept going with as short of breaks as I could. My knees aren’t feeling the greatest and I can tell my back is going to be wrecked. Cardio-wise I felt great after a few minutes of rest. The only time I watched the clock was early on because I wanted to compare to Open Workout 12.1, which was the 7 minutes of burpees. I completed the first 4 rounds of this in just under 7 minutes, so that was 94 burpees and 10 KBS with a paced effort and some small breaks between rounds. These burpees weren’t up to the strict standards of the Open workout when I did 92 burpees, but it’s a pretty good indication of how much I’ve improved in my fitness since then.
Can you complete the Sissy Test?
Surprisingly I’m not sore at all from the heavy deadlifting yesterday.
I thought I was running a nice average pace, but ended up running a 7:00 mile without pushing myself very hard. That’s good news for Saturday’s duathlon.
This was actually two WODs combined for one total time.
I used a 53# KB for the swings. I set a new PR by getting 12 kipping pull-ups right off the bat before coming down for a break. The number of reps went slowly down after each set. I have a new tear on my right pinky finger and a nice blood blister under my last tear on the left ring finger. Seems like I tear my hands in a new spot every time.
The wall balls were no problem because the most we had to do in a row was 10, but there wasn’t much of a break from running, especially at the end.
I finished both WODs in a total time of 32:55. This was a good lead up to the race for me. Some speed work and good conditioning.
After not getting a ton of sleep for a few nights in a row, I finally got to bed early enough for a solid rest. My legs are sore from the 4 mile run and walking 18 holes of golf yesterday, so I went to a night class at 4:15p today.
5 rounds
A nice little warm-up to get the blood flowing.
5 rounds
I used a 55# KB for the swings. I’m starting to get a better kip with the T2B, but have a hard time getting it started without a big swing after the first rep. I think the max I could get in a row was 5 before my grip started to fail. I finished in 12:21.
50-40-30-20-10
Compared to jumping jacks, star jumps are on a completely different level. I was able to do all rounds of sit-ups unbroken. Finished in 8:16.
5×5 Deadlift
There was still time left in class, so some of us started on some deadlifts. We actually ended up doing 6 sets. The weights were 135#, 225#, 265#, 285#, 290#, and 300#. Felt pretty good, especially considering I set my 1 rep max at 315# a few weeks ago.
That may be the most work I’ve done in one workout, but I felt great today and absolutely killed it.
I haven’t taken a full day off since Monday, but didn’t do much of a workout on Friday. Survival Fitness was closed today because over 20 folks were down in Ohio to do a Tough Mudder. I decided to put in some miles on the road because I haven’t run any real distance in preparation for next weekend’s duathlon. My goal was to run a real slow 10:00 minute per mile pace. I went a total of 4 miles in 38:24. According to RunKeeper my mile splits were 9:31, 9:49, 9:39, and 9:25. How’s that for consistency?
Planned on going to the 10am class, but stayed up too late last night, so went in for the 11am, which only had 4 of us.
100 Sit-ups
I knocked them out in 1:55 using the gym standard, which is to have your shoulder blades touch the floor and then only get up enough so you can touch your feet.
20:00 Team AMRAP
We had 135# of the bar, which is a really easy deadlift, so after 2 rounds of that, Matt had me switch to power cleans to slow me down and give my partner more rest. I’m glad he did, because it made things a lot tougher for me. I think we got through 7 full rounds and then I did 5 additional power cleans.
At the end of class we did a bunch of mobility stuff with bands and mashing with the bar, K-star style.
The last 3 days were pretty good WODs, so I decided to just go in to Open Gym tonight and work on a few things. I warmed up with a 300m run. Then I alternated between snatches and HSPU, taking long rests in between. For the snatch work I started at 75# and went up by 10# each time, doing doubles or triples. Made it up to 125# and then failed at 135# before calling it quits. I tried HSPUs on plates and one AbMat for the first time so that it was a true HSPU. I was able to do 4 in the first set! Next set I did 2 and after that I switched to 1 AbMat with my hands on the floor. Nice easy day, but worked on a few things that needed work. Matt took some videos of a few snatches and they were not the greatest. I’m jumping pretty far backwards, which will never work at higher weights. Good to see on video and learn from it.
Stayed with the night class routine I’ve been doing this week.
5 Rounds
Not too bad, but coming up out of the squat hold after a minute is a little rough. Quads and knees felt a bit locked up each time.
20:00 AMRAP
I used an 88# KB for the suit case deadlifts. Not a big fan of those because it’s hard to keep a good position. Burpee broad jumps and box jumps were fine. I used a 24 inch box as usual. I think I got 6 full rounds. It may have been 7, but I’m leaning towards 6. Matt our trainer kept track and I forgot to look at the board after the workout. In addition to the complete rounds I finished the 5 suit case deadlifts on each side and 8 of the broad jump burpees.
Jingle Jangles
These are short sprints. Starting off with 3 lengths in the first minute and then rest for the remaining time. Jump up by 3 sprint lengths every minute until you fail to complete the number of sprints. So each minute you are doing more running and getting less recovery. I got through 21, but thought I was one short one of the girls was a bit ahead of me and went another length, so I didn’t get to go up to 24, which started almost immediately.
I am not wearing my Inov-8 Bare-XF 210’s anymore until after the move to the new location. We did the entire workout outside on the pavement and it was brutal on my feet with all of the pounding. The broad jumps were especially bad so I had to shorten them up. Doing the sprints on the pavement with these shoes was no walk in the park either.
Since I worked out later yesterday it would have been a short rest to hit a morning class, so I went to the 5:30pm again.
3 rounds
Great ab crushing warm-up.
“Angie”
I had only done “Angie” once before, nearly 4 months ago. At the time I did all jumping pull-ups and some kneeling push-ups to finish in 35:10.
Today I performed everything as prescribed, doing kipping pull-ups the whole way and all normal push-ups. I didn’t even rip my hands on pull-ups, so I’m getting better at recognizing when I’m close and readjusting my position or taking a break. I broke the pull-ups down into pretty small sets. It took me just under 12:00 to complete the pull-ups, which is by far the longest part of this WOD. I started out strong on push-ups, but was breaking them into sets of 2-4 at the end to get through. For squats I started out with 2 sets of 20 and then pretty much did 10s the rest of the way. Sit-ups were pretty easy and I knocked those out in 50-30-20.
My total time was 24:42, which is over 10 minutes faster and that’s even doing everything as it should be done!
Nick Momrik's Fitness Logs 