Christmas Cold

I haven’t posted in a bit. My last night shift, Rina got sick with a fever and a sore ear and Ben brought her to the ER to get checked out. It turns out she is fine and we have been managing her symptoms with Tylenol and Advil, but I finished my night with a sore throat and when I woke up from my nap, I had a full blown cold. So, to recap, Rina is sick, Béa is sick and I’m now sick as well. To top it all off, Ben has finally caught it as well and we are a couching/sniffling/sneezing mess of a family.

A little head cold didn’t stop me from making my way to the Box on Saturday and this morning as well. I probably could have gone lifting on Thursday morning, but Ben was able to come home early and we spent the evening together, just chatting about life and things. It was nice and by the time he reminded me about lifting in the morning, I had missed my bedtime by about 2 hrs in order to get up at 0500, so I chose not to go.

This morning though, the girls didn’t have school so I took the opportunity to go back to the 0600 class and that meant waking up at 0500. It was nice to see the old crew again! Here’s what we did:

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Skill: Back Squat 5×3 (Tempo 3-2-1) E2M

I had done these 2 weeks ago and had finished at 100#, with a 10# PR. I remembered I was struggling with these and I wanted to try 105# for a new PR. I paired up with Gail and we got working. Here were my sets:

85#-90#-95#-100#-105#

I was pretty pumped about this new PR!

WOD: Thriller

We had tackled this one last June and I had done FG1 @55# on the 20″ box. Today, I was really wanting to try 65#, but with my cold and being back on the 20″ box for the first time since my rehab, I chose to stick to 55#. Good thing I did too because I kept gripping the bar unbalanced and that screwed up some of my reps. I had to re-adjust my grip at the top of the thruster and it made for some lost time.

The first round went well and I was really focusing on trying to be explosive from the hips on the BJ instead of just pulling my feet up onto the box. It was hard since I also had to focus on bracing my inner abs while stepping down from the box in order not to jut my butt to the side (which aggravates my sciatic pain). Sometimes when I think too much about a movement, it’s almost like it’s too much for my little head and then my body is all wonky. That’s what happened today.

My third round was horrible for my grip on the thrusters and I had to put the bar down after 6 reps. I was also really cramping out at the bottom of the squat on the BJ and Coach Caleb came by to remind me to use my hips. I was tired and not sure I could do just that, but I made a mental note to try it on the next round.

My 4th round was better. I didn’t have to put the bar down, I just rested at the top of the thrusters and kept going and was trying to be more explosive on the BJ. I’m not sure I managed, but Coach Caleb told me he could tell I was at least trying. I guess, that’s “A” for effort! Lol! 😉

Here were my reps today vs. back in June:

• 1:29 today  vs. 1:29 in June
• 1:34 today vs. 1:35 in June
• 2:03 today vs. 1:36 in June
• 1:41 today vs 1:48 in June

Had it not been for me dropping the bar on my 3rd set, I think I could have PR’d this WOD, but I didn’t do so bad considering I’m stuffed up and coughing a bit. My time for today was 3:32 vs. 3:17 back in June, which is only 15s slower. I’m not too upset about that one and so far, no sciatic pain from the BJ step down! I’ll take it!

The girls are home with me today and surprisingly enough, I don’t have any cooking, cleaning or laundry to do. I had planned on taking them on a short hike, but it’s raining outside so we are doing collages and playing with Play-Doh. I’m hoping to get to wrap some Christmas presents today and tonight and be done with that before I head back to work tomorrow.

So Close I Can Taste It

I’m tired. I have been on mommy duty by myself since Friday and I’m pooped. The girls are good, but I’m exhausted and trying to get the last-minute purchases done for the girls while I am married-single-parenting is exhausting. Thank goodness I had planned ahead and booked Nanny to the rescue for today. She came in just in time for me to go to Crossfit and since she was curious about the whole thing, we packed everybody in the car and Béa and Nanny came to watch me workout!

I did my usual solo warm-up and then I went onto the rig to try some TTB. I managed the usual 2 and went for an extra one and managed this one as well! I got greedy and tried for a 4th, but no luck. Still, a PR during the warm-up was nice! I teased Rob about it on Facebook (we have a bet as to whom will get to 10 TTB first. Although, now that I think of it, I don’t think we’ve ever established what the winner gets… Rob, if you’re reading, I say bragging rights!) and then moved onto the team warm-up:

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I teamed up with Marie who recently graduated from the OnRamp and since we’re about the same height, I figured it would take us similar time to get through the erg.

 

Skill: Back Squat 5×3 E90s

I was trying to PR on this one and go for 140#. It would have been a 5# PR. It didn’t happen, but I was close and considering I was still feeling my new depth at the bottom of the squat, it felt REALLY good. I felt strong, more able to keep my chest up and didn’t feel like I was “butt-stripping” getting out of the squat. Here was my progression:

120#-125#-130#-135#-140# (managed 1 rep and bailed coming out of my 2nd).

I think there was a lot happening for me on these:

1. I was seeing stars coming up from my 1st rep @ 140# and I didn’t take a long enough pause to breathe and recoup at the top
2. I was in my head a lot. I knew that if I managed to do this today, I was literally 5# away from my bodyweight back squat and I’ve been chasing this one for close to 2 years now. My heart was pumping fast and I could tell I was in a hyper mode.

I may not have PR’d my 5×3 and I don’t have a 1RM, but I’m confident that 140# was an amazing 1RM for me! The fact that I felt so good and strong during my reps gave me a ton of confidence. Also, being able to bail out of the lift safely made me feel good too. It’s nice to know that I not only have the technique to do my lifts in a safe manner, but I also have the knowledge to get out of them if I can’t complete a rep.

WOD: 4 Hundred

I paired up with Marie again and even though she was doing the FG+, I firmly believe that we both were working equally hard at it. I decided to try this one RX and it did not disappoint! I started us off on the wallballs because, well, in all honesty, I just wanted to get them done and over with! Lol! We broke them up in sets of 10 and I then had to break my sets into 2×5, pretty early in the game. Marie was doing squats while holding the med ball because of shoulder issues, which meant that she was done a lot quicker for her sets and I had less time to recover. She was nice enough to get us started on the push-ups and surprisingly to me, I was really struggling through those. We both did them all RX and Marie was so strong and straight throughout them all, I was super impressed! We split them up into sets of 5.

I took over for the reverse lunges and I was apprehensive about those as any split movement is usually what gives me sciatic pain. I tried my best to brace my deep abdominals and so far, *knocks on wood*, no butt pain! We split those up into 10s and got through them fairly quick.

I started us off for the Plates ground to overhead and it was my 1st time using the 25# plate for those. They felt really strong. It felt like I was really able to keep the plate close to my body and really use my hips to get it overhead. There were two reps towards the end where I struggled to get the plate to actually touched the ground, but even if we finished last, I felt really good about our work today.

Once I was done, I clean dup quickly in the bathroom and BeZU, Nanny and I were off to hit the stores. I managed to find one item on the girls’ Santa list and I was happy with that. I hid my purchases in the trunk and Béa was none the wiser.

After lunch, we came back home where I finished laundry and relaxed a bit on the couch. We then went to pick-up Rina at themes stop and we trooped everyone to a smaller mall where I was hoping to get the girls’ picture taken with Santa.  I had scoped the hours ahead of time and I knew the big guy was supposed to be there until 5pm. To my surprise, there was nobody in line when we got there. I forked out the $14 for one 5×7 pic (not without some grumbling) and approached the jolly red dude. Béatrice was scared to death and wanted nothing to do with him. She kept hiding behind my legs and I could feel her little body shaking against my leg. I asked Santa if I could sit next to him to warm her up to him and once he said it was fine, she climbed on my lap. I tried to get her to sit on his lap: No. I tried to get her to sit next to him: No. I tried to get her to stand in front of here sister (who was, by then, telling Santa everything she wanted for Christmas): No. In the end, I decided it was going to be a family picture and I got in there with the girls. After all, I wanted them both to have their picture taken, but I wasn’t gonna hang around there forever!

It turned out much better than I thought and at least both girls are smiling. I look like an exhausted, sweaty mom (because I am), but I couldn’t care less!

Once we were done, I went to get the envelope with the picture and noticed there was another sheet in there. At first I thought it was an order sheet to order extras, but when I took it out, I saw this:

Rina, handing Santa a drawing she had done

I was so unaware that the photographer had taken this one and I was really touched that she had included it in the envelope. I thanked her profusely and we all went on our merry way home, where we had dinner, I bathed everyone, made lunches for tomorrow, took my work clothes out and now, I’m about to make myself a cup of broth with my hot water bottle on my back and do my version of #NetflixandChill which is #Netflixandbroth 🙂

 

When Crushing Your Goal Is Disappointing

I had my last Pelvic floor physic appointment yesterday and I’m also all done with my regular physio, with only my “homework to work on at home and at the gym. Although rehab from sciatica is far from over, it’s a work in progress and I’m slowly moving forward with it.

I looked at the WOD last night and I set myself some mental goals:

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• do the rowing intervals unbroken.
• attempt the thrusters @ 65#
• Finish sub 30′

It was a whole different ball game when I started to warm-up for it. I had talked with Heather before the WOD and she had suggested to drop down to 55# for the thrusters. In my stubborn set-up mind, I told her I would still try at 65#. YEAH. RIGHT! I warmed up and because I’m still figuring out a safe depth for me to drop to in a squat (not as deep as I CAN go, but still below parallel. Goldilocks I tell you!) I quickly figured out that staying at 55# would be safer and smarter for me.

It was my 1st time back on the erg since my sciatica flare-up and I was very apprehensive. My splits were horrible and I only managed my 4th round unbroken. That’s right! I stopped, sometimes more than once, rowing during the row intervals. Talk about wasting time. I even got into the ugly, bawling cry on my last interval. Breathing through that was fun… Not!

So, although I did manage to finish sub 30′ (my time was 18:49) I still wasn’t super impressed with how I did today. Maybe next time, I need to cut myself more slack. Although I was glad I was done, I wasn’t proud of how I managed to get it done, if that makes any sense. I guess, WODs aren’t always all roses and unicorns and sometimes, they are ugly, even when you get through them!

Anyway, I got through it and I survived so I came back home for a well-needed shower.

“Do Crossfit” they said, “it’ll be fun!” I don’t know if I had fun, but it sure gave me funny hair! 😉

Now, I’m back to being a mommy and looking forward to some knitting when Béa goes for her nap/quiet time!