Pushing The Envelope

Well, actually, I’ve been pushing weights, more than an envelope, but you get my gist, right?

After a restful night of sleep where NOBODY woke up in the middle of the night (Whoot! Whoot!), I woke up at 0500 again for the Oly class.

I wasn’t sure I was gonna make it there as my gas light turned on, on my way to the Box, but I managed to make it and there’s a gas station across the street so my plan was to fill up after class. Worst comes to worst, I knew I would be able to push my car to the station! 😉 BAM!

Today marked my 8th training session in 14 days. I’ve never trained this much in my life! It’s my last week before my month-long vacation comes to an end and my plan was to squeeze as many workouts as I can before I go back to my usual 2-3 sessions/week. I am definitely starting to feel it though and combined with it being my 1st week back on the Whole30 and all the cloudy/rainy weather we’ve had this week, all I want to do is sleep. Unfortunately, I have 2 cuties that have other plans for me:

Every time I tried to nap on the couch, they would come bother me!

Who needs sleep, right?

Anyway, back to Oly class, here’s what we did today:

I wonder if those Forehead Jerks made me look as stupid as they made me feel??? Those were weird!

C&J EMOM X10 @85%

That meant 76.5# for me. Coach Caleb told me I had soft elbows on my jerk during my warm-up to that weight, but apparently, I corrected once I reached my target weight. Maybe I just needed more weight in order to really lock my elbows? I was trying not to pause between the clean and the jerk all while keeping the lift smooth and I was tired by rep 7. I started to take a few breaths in the transition and I was glad when we were done.

OHS 6×2 E3M

I teamed up with Linda who saved my hair crisis this morning. You know the drill: you go to put your hair up and your elastic just breaks in your hand and you realize you don’t have a spare one? Well, Linda gave me one of hers and my life was perfect again! So, we teamed up together and we started low (I’m not strong and Linda is recovering from a back injury.

I knew I could do 65# since I had done that weight for 15.2 during the Open. Looking back, I should have aimed for 70# or 75#, but I’m sore everywhere and my wrists have taken a huge hit with all the freakin’ cleaning I’ve been doing lately. Here were my reps:

40#-45#-50#-55#-60#-65#

My wrists were hurting on the last set, but I felt stable in my core and getting out of the bottom of the squat felt relatively easy. Oh well, my previous number for OHS was 6×3 @60# so I think that’s a new PR for me. I’m amazed I can still have PRs this week as I’m feeling so sore everywhere! I can’t wait for my massage Friday!

I came back home and did some laundry with the hubs (OK, he did most of the laundry while I cleaned and vacuumed the upstairs).

Look Mom! I’m hiding! (Typical Béa on laundry day)

I also did some food prep for the Whole30 since I had nothing but eggs and avocados left (I had thawed some chicken thighs and ground turkey) and I feel better now that I have healthy options in the house.

I managed to close my eyes for about 10 minutes after lunch and I tried to cuddle to the girls on the couch while they watched Frozen (I may have turned the TV on with hopes of napping next to them. Don’t judge!) but they kept poking me, pulling my hair and staring at me. Major fail, but we still watched the movie! 😉

I just have to make it through tomorrow’s class and possibly a last training session with Kathleen on Sunday and then I can go back to slacking off my regular training/work schedule.

 

Apprehension

I looked up the WOD last night and was uneasy about the entire thing: from the warm-up to the WOD.

Source

 

Ever since I came back from Cuba, I’ve been feeling off my game (jet lag or just vacation mode?) at the gym and it doesn’t help that my calluses have been exfoliated down to nothing by the sand and ocean. Crossfire problems, I know!

I had looked up the warm-up and thought to myself: Geez, even that looks like a tough one. Yet, when I did it, it went way better than anticipated. I was really focusing on keeping the bar close to my thighs on the DL and keeping it close to my body on the power clean. I was afraid of landing the bar on my lovely bruise from the dropped bar on Monday (it’s nice and tender and turning a nice shade of brown/green), but it turns out I was landing the bar in a higher front rack, closer to my collar bone so I was good and never hit the bruise.

Skill: I teamed up with Tracey for the skill and she was beasting it at 140# for the entire 10 reps. I couldn’t remember what my 1RM was so I looked up my previous 10×1 EMOM and decided to go above that, which brought me to 110#. Turns out that was 96% of my 1RM and Coach Caleb had said to work up to 85-90% of our 1RM. Whoops! I managed all 10 reps fairly well, I just have to watch the dip on the up part. I was super nervous about the front squats because of the last time I had attempted them , my quad had seized up on me. Turns out I was fine and my sciatic didn’t even bother me.

WOD: I thought I had done Half Cindy before, but it turns out I had done different variations of Cindy, just not Half Cindy. I really wanted to try to do the pull-ups with the red band only, but had to add the purple band as well on my first round and I was upset at wasting time to do that. I really tried to not waste anymore time in-between each different exercises and would try to do a few reps before resting. My aim was to keep my elbows close to my body for the HRPU and  I also really tried to hustle on the front squats. I managed to finish 6 full rounds + 1 pull-up for a total of 181 reps. I don’t know how to compare that since it was my 1st time doing this WOD. Coach Caleb said that 10 rounds was good, so I’ll assume that 6+1 was somewhat ok for me.

Overall, the entire workout was much better than I had anticipated and I felt like I had my energy back. Hopefully I can keep it up today and really give a big push on the house cleaning. I’m so fed up with it and am now on the main floor, i.e.: kitchen, living room, dining room and half-bath. Not looking forward to cleaning all the kitchen shelves and behind the fridge 😦