Gearing Up

Last night, Listen Linda posted on her Instagram that she was on the eve of her Whole30 and, just like that, it got my wheels spinning. I took a long hard look at the past couple of weeks of my eating habits and, without going into details, let me just say it hasn’t been stellar. Way more processed food than I’d like to admit to and the sugar has crept back in with a vengeance.

What did I do? I looked online for info about the Whole30, downloaded the Whole30 book from Amazon and am currently in the process of reading it. Why? Because I plan on starting my Whole30 on June 15. That’s why! What do you say? Wanna join me in cleaning up your eating habits?

After all that reading, I was happy to meet up with my fellow fit friends for a WOD in the park. Since we have just moved to our current (temporary) location yesterday, the gym isn’t yet set-up and we decided to take all this fun outside. We only had to dodge a very vicious crow a few times (I swear, it flew about a foot away from my head and Coach Brandon’s head as well). I got there bright and early and we unloaded the Vanna (she’s white and it’s a van) with equipment ready for us to use: Erg, KB and bands (for the pull-ups). I have to admit, it was comical watching Coach Brandon logging the erg, but you gotta do what you gotta do in the name of Crossfit!

No better way to start my day!

We set up shop next to the stairs by Cecelia Ravine Park. Luckily for us, there even was a pull-up bar waiting to be abused.. I was actually stoked to see it had different height levels and I wouldn’t need anything to step onto in order to reach the bar! Yay! I teamed up with Lara and Linda and we were off!

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WOD: Park Station Rotation

I started us off on the erg and we each rotated for about 1min on it. Then we tackled our 1st stairs. We managed 11 climb-ups between the 3 of us. Off to the pull-ups next. I was using the red and blue bands with Lara and Linda was using the red band only. I really should have used the red and purple seeing as I could easily do 5-6 reps in a row whereas my teammates were doing 3-4. Yep, sand-bagged this one! Although, in my defence, adding the purple band would have added to the mess of bands in our faces… Excuses, I know!

Next were the taters and I thought I should use a 26# (same as my teammates), but then found out it was almost too easy to do my 10 reps (we switched after every 10). Sand-bagged this one as well! Oh well, apparently, I don’t do enough of this, otherwise I would know to use heavier KB! 😉

Saw this today and it made me laugh!

Then we were back on the erg. I was way slower on this round, but Linda just demolished it! She also kept it up on the stairs, managing to do 4 climbs while Lara and myself did only 3. We finished off the pull-ups and the KB under the inquisitive eye of a passer-by who stopped to watch us work and asked Coach Brandon some questions. I did the math at the end to tally our score and we finished with 373. Not too bad for a bunch of BAM ladies! 😉

I came back home to do the usual cleaning and laundry and here’s what I had to deal with:

Intricate love art

The above is Rina’s art on her chalkboard in her room. She’s been practicing drawing hearts and when she’s done, she kisses the board!

Then, there was also this:

Wish I had this much fun at the other end!

Béatrice has been doing this since she was a baby. She stands above the air vent on top of the vacuum and loves to have the wind blow in her face!

Now, I am anxiously awaiting the Nanny so I can go nap before my night shift! Don’t forget to join me on my Whole30!

Ramblings Of A BabyMama

This post truly epitomizes the name of my little blog, so either you bear with me or you don’t, I honestly don’t mind either way!

I was awaken at 0430 by my lovely hubby’s sleep talk and I knew I wasn’t going to go back to sleep until 0500 when it was time for me to get up and get ready to attack the WOD.

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Skill: We worked on the hang power clean and strict press in preparation for the WOD. I was hoping to do this WOD with an empty bar to be honest since my strict press is only at 55# and I didn’t think I could do 55 reps at that weight, but once again, Coach Caleb pushed me to do 45# and he was right.

WOD: District 10. This is a WOD I had last done on May 1 of this year. Back then, I had done TG+ with these modifications:

• 45# hang power clean and strict press
• kipping pull-ups with red band

I had finished in 19:34

 

Today, I did TG+ again, but with these modifications:

• 45# hang power clean and strict press
• Strict pull-ups with red and green band

I finished in 21:01. Yes it is slower than what I had done back in May, but it was harder because I was doing strict pull-ups. I don’t always realize how strong I’m becoming. I’ve been hitting the typical 10-14 months plateau at Crossfit and I’m not getting PRs as much as I used to. Let’s face it, I use to PR almost every class I was coming from such a lack of fitness!

Fitness. There’s a word I haven’t used when speaking about myself in a long while. Since we have moved, 3 weeks ago, we haven’t had a full length mirror hanging in the house and while I was out today, I had the nice surprise of noticing my trapezius and they were just right there, in my face! Don’t get me wrong, I still have abdominal fat that I need to lose, but my whole body is reshaping and I can see muscles in place I haven’t seen muscles in almost a decade! I remember putting a picture of myself at 18 years old on my fridge as a motivation to lose weight. I can’t find the pic just now, but I was a dancer with a  6-pack and I’m in a bikini on a boat. I’m nowhere near that body, but I am a heck of a lot stronger (mind you, slower too) than I was at that age and I’m loving the person I’m becoming. Mentally, I am so much stronger, determined and positive about new things in my life. Physically, I still have work to do, but I’m on my way there. Like I said before, it took me years to destroy my body and the changes I’ve done in the past 12 months is more than good enough for me! 🙂

Now, on a completely different topic, letters to the girls.

Happy Rina zip lining!

Rina-Bina, my BabyGirl!

We are both under the weather with a lovely summer cold at the moment, but it amazes me how fast you are changing and how quickly you are growing. You are definitely not a baby anymore and my mind has a hard time wrapping itself around that concept. It seems that only a year ago, you came into our lives, yet you will turn four in 5 short months! When did that happen?

You are tremendously curious, you love going on adventures everyday (which is quickly draining my creativity), you love learning through play and helping out. Your favourite activities are the playground, the beach, baking, gardening and pretending to go to Crossfit. You have your sweet moments of tenderness and you care about each and every one of us so much, always wearing your heart on your hand. You are a tremendous little helper and are very good-natured. I’m afraid you will one day become a nurse as well (wonderful profession, killer hours make for a  tough lifestyle) just because you are always at the ready to help out.

You are also exploding in your learning of letters, numbers and colours, sometimes mixing your English and French, but that’s what makes you unique. The best part of my day is when we sit together to do some drawings or garden the flowers or cuddle. Ok. Cuddles will always win, but I’ll settle for other fun things to do with you as well. I hope you feel better by the morning (and I do too) so we can enjoy the little mommy-Rina date I have planned for us!

Je t’aime ma Cocotte, beaucoup, beaucoup, beaucoup!

Maman Xxo

 

My sweet Béatrice. 

You are my cuddle bug. I’m so glad I have you in my life. You are exploding in your development this month and I can see that for me to be on vacation and spending time at home with you girls is doing tremendous things on the little sponge you are becoming. You are learning French at a tremendous speed. You are a wonderfully mischievous little girl, caring and loving beyond words. You absolutely love reading books and you absolutely hate it when I sing to you! 🙂 

You love to get your back massaged and although sometimes I am tired when it time to put you to bed and you just want to cuddle with me, I try to remember that these days won’t last and soon enough, you won’t let me cuddle you much longer and I need to appreciate these precious moments while they are happening.

I love you ma chouette, through and through!

Maman Xxo

BeZU also zip lining (under Daddy’s watchful and intent eye)!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of Snot, Sweat And Tears

Woke up bright and early wayyyyyyy before my alarm went off and lounged in bed before getting up and getting ready for today’s WOD.

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Skill: The strict press were fun, except I had way better expectations on what I could achieve for them. I thought I could do 85# and it turns out that, even after warming up, 65# was where I was going to be today. I probably could have pushed for 70#, but Coach Caleb said it would be a good place for me to be at.

WOD: I was hoping to do the WOD with 35# KB, but I’m still not breathing fine and decided on 26# instead for FG2. I also used red and green bands for the strict pull-ups and managed to actually DO strict pull-ups! Coach Caleb said not to engage the hips and something clicked for me. I even managed to do 2 rounds of unbroken 6 strict pull-ups with these bands so I’m thinking I should probably upgrade to green and purple bands next time.

I won’t lie though, I left everything on the mat after this WOD. We all know by now that I am not a runner, so running with a stuffed up nose wasn’t ideal. I kept choking on my mucus and needed to take a few more walking breaks than I would have liked. I did appreciate Mark honking at me on one of my runs while he was driving to work though! Thanks for the support, buddy! 😉

It was just Traci and myself this morning and I was hoping to finish this one in 20:00 or less. I finished in 20:58, got down on all four and started to bawl like a baby. I was absolutely spent after this one and the thought of tackling my day was just too much for me to handle: laundry, going to look at 3 houses (our offer wasn’t good enough on the previous house and we were not wiling to offer more, so we walked away), picking up Rina from pre-school, tending to some visitors from out-of-town, cleaning and napping before my night at work tonight, all while still coughing my little heart out and blowing snots galore! Bleh!

After I was done with my mini pity-party for one, I picked myself up, cleaned up my gear and headed on home to do all the above (except for cleaning, it will have to wait until after my night shifts), because really, what other choice did I have?

The 3 houses we saw today weren’t ideal at all. I guess we’ll keep looking until we find something that fits our needs!

Gotta remind myself of that sometimes!

Mother’s Day And Barracks

Friday night, I was working my regular shift when a nagging, burning pain started to irradiate from my neck, to my shoulder and the front of my chest as well. By the end of the night, I took my next night shift off and I couldn’t wait to get out of work and go to the 24hrs drugstore to get me some muscle relaxant. I popped one before going to bed and another one when I got up and took it easy for the rest of the night. By Sunday morning, I was still a bit stiff, but I was feeling much better.

I honestly think I had the best Mother’s Day so far since becoming a mother 3 years ago. It all began with breakfast at a restaurant from the east coast, which reminded me of home. We then headed back home only to pack and get our bikes ready and headed out for downtown. Ben pulled the girls in the Chariot (love that thing for biking as a family with the wee ones!) and we stopped on the way to pick up Aunt Sandy, who joined us on our ride downtown. Once there, we locked up the bikes, put the stroller wheels back on the stroller and headed out for some window shopping and grabbed a quick lunch, before heading back home so the girls could nap. Ben had hooked the GoPro to the back of his seat and we have some pretty funny shots of the girls 🙂

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Béatrice looks scared on all of them and Rina is just hilarious, whether she looks super stoked, unsure or tired. I think the sun and fresh air did everybody some good as both Ben and myself were falling asleep on the couch by 2100!

This morning, after a refreshing good night of sleep, I woke up early to attend the 0600 class. I wasn’t expecting Coach Caleb to show up as he competed in the Canada West Regionals over the weekend. Coach Sarah showed up bright and bubbly and it made for a fun early WOD.

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Skill: I managed to repeat my previous PR at 90# doing the Tempo 3-2-1 Back Squats (3 seconds to get down, stop for 2 seconds at the bottom, get back up in 1 second). My reps were 70#-75#-80#-85-90#. I just need to remember to keep my hips aligned in order to prevent tipping the bar forward when I push up.

WOD: I tried to do the decline push ups from the 20″ box, but it was too hard. Thinking back, I should have set-up some plate lower than 20″, but I didn’t think about it until just now. I ended up doing regular push-ups from my toes. For the strict pull-ups, I used the red and green bands and for the box jumps, I used 20″. I finished with a total of 148 reps (7 full rounds + 1 strict pull-up).

I cam back home and, as usual, Rina greeted me with her: “So Mama… How was Crossfit?” I told her it was fun and she then went on to show me her KB Deadlift at 83% of her body weight, 1 RM 😉

Picking it up…

Almost…

Deadlifting 25# like a boss!

 

I love that she gets inspired by her Mama and she knows what Crossfit is all about! Hope you have a fabulous day!

We’re Doing Good!

It was hard waking up this morning, but I was happy to be up at 0500 to go see “my 0600 crew” at the box!

Today felt like the Skill portion was a WOD in itself and then we had to do Felix. Double WOD this morning means I will probably be grunting at work all night every time I get up from my chair! 🙂

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For the Skill I did my power cleans with 55#, but I think I could have gone 60# for all 5 rounds. I also used the red and blue bands for my strict pull-ups. I really need to work on these. It always feels like I’m somehow kipping, even when I do strict pull-ups. I should ask my Coach to watch me next time.

Once we were done with the WOD Skill, it was time for the WOD. I had done Felix back in August and it was my 1st Rx WOD back then. I had finished in 24:00. I was paired up with Bo today and I think I can credit him for our better time today: he’s super tall and such a strong rower. His technique is very good! That didn’t mean I slacked off though! I chose to go second (Coach Caleb had mentioned that the second partner would have a bigger challenge as there would be less rest time after the 1000m. I challenged myself and opted to go second! We finished last, but I think we were less than 2 minutes after everyone else at 21:44. I was very happy with that. My strategy was to give 10 strong pulls every 500m (for the 1000m), every 250m for the rest of the intervals. Not sure if it was a good one as I felt gassed on the 500m, but I never stopped and we finished close to everyone else. You know it’s been a good one when even your throat is sore from such heavy breathing and groaning during the WOD! 🙂

In other news, I just wanted to get back to a post I wrote back in January. There were some hardship in our relationship at that time and I’m glad to announce we have worked through it. It always makes me laugh when I would talk to some of my friends about it and the first question they would ask was: “Are you going to get a divorce?” Divorce is not in my vocabulary, even less an option. I am a firm believer that a marriage/relationship goes through ups and downs through the years. You marriage will be successful if you are willing to pull up your sleeves and work at maintaining the love and trust it deserves. We have had long talks about our feelings, making sure we were heard, even though we sometimes didn’t share the other partner’s opinions, we would still listen. Most of the time, just feeling like you’re being heard makes the world of a difference, even though it doesn’t change the immediate situation. I am lucky to have such a supportive husband who understands the importance for me to have my own hobbies (knitting and Crossfit) and helps out to make sure I get to do both once in a while. I’ll just have to also remember that he needs time for himself too when golfing season comes around! 😉

We are in such a good place right now, I’m really glad we are over the hump and we will remain the strong couple that we’ve always been since the beginning, no matter what life throws our way.

Good To Be Back

We had a wonderful Christmas and it was so nice to see Rina get in the spirit of Christmas and Santa! Ben and I kept it simple, yet it was a lovely Christmas with his sister and parents. It took me 4 days to be able to walk/sit/stand normally without any pain in my bum after Monday’s WOD, but I was glad to be back at the Box today! I looked at the WOD last night and I thought:

Either I’m not going or I’ll finish an hour after everyone else. This WOD looks brutal!

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I managed a new 1RM (had never done 1RM before today) higher than my previous PR for the press at 65#. 🙂

My sets were: 40#-45#-50#-55#-65#

65# was a struggle, but I managed to press through the block and made it by bracing my core even more. Coach Caleb told us that bracing our cores would be capital in this and he was absolutely right!

Then, it was time to tackle the WOD. To me, this was a chipper WOD, meaning, something I just needed to take in strides and keep chipping at it.  I ended up doing the FG with the following modifications:

• 20″ jump box
• pull-ups with red and green bands (I should have used the purple and green, they felt a little easy with red and green)
• 26# KB for goblet squats.

It was a tough one and I finished dead last, but I was glad to have done it. I had been sore for a good 4 days after Monday’s WOD (even though I made a point of going for walks and foam rolling everyday in order to get some active recovery in) and yesterday, we hiked up Mt. Doug from the Glendenning entrance. It is a little bit challenging and it was made more so from the fact that I had Béatrice on my back (a hefty 19#) for the hike. Ben was helping Rina who made it all the way up the hiking trail and back down the main road with minimal “pick up” from her daddy. Not a small feat for a 3-year-old! 🙂 The best part about the hike? I came back home and I was fine. I woke up this morning and I was still fine. No soreness whatsoever! I guess Crossfit really is making me stronger! 🙂

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I go back to work in exactly 7 days. I’ll be honest and say I’m not looking forward to it. It will be hard to leave my darling girlies after 14 months of being at home EVERYDAY with them. I like my job, but if I could afford it, I would stay at home with my girls. I know it will get easier and I’ll just have to chip at every work day like I do a WOD, but in the meantime, I plan on making the most of my time with my hubby and the girls…