Its Working!

I realize it has been awhile since my last post.  There wasn’t a whole lot that was new…yes, I could tell you about the workouts I do, but that is boring.  I wish I was funny enough to make it interesting, but I’m not.  I am still doing Cross Fit and dare I say, now that I am through the “want to vomit after each workout” feeling along with knowing how to do most of the exercises, I actually kind of enjoy going.  I don’t think I will ever enjoy the 5:30am alarm, but I do enjoy the feeling on my drive home knowing that I’m done with my workout for the day.  I have also noticed that on the days I do crossfit, I am a lot more productive and actually have a lot more energy too…that is until about 9pm when I crash in a ball of flames.

Anyway, I realize nothing I said above is even remotely exciting so moving on to what happened this morning…this part is exciting to me at least 😉

If you have read any of my previous workout posts, you will know I have ZERO upper body strength.  And I mean zero…I think that is slowly starting to change.  I’d say at least half of our workouts include pull-ups.  I started out using two huge rubber bands under my feet for assistance to using one rubber band, which happened about a week ago. This morning, I came in and the instructor (who I love, named Laura), told me that I was going to try a pull-up without any assistance because she thinks I am ready.  And then what does she do?  She gets the rest of the class to watch.  Ummm, ok, my first thought was “hell to the no am I going to do this in front of a group. ”  It was like Laura could read my mind as she told me that I needed to trust her, the people around me would help motivate me.  Yeah, motivate me to not fall on my a** maybe.

I got up on the bar with Laura below me in case I needed it (mind you, I had already wiped my hands down twice as they were sweaty from nerves).  All of a sudden, the rest of the class started clapping and cheering me on.  I will admit it was extremely motivating…and what happened?  I did my first unassisted pull-up!  I’m sure I looked like a flailing fish getting up there and I did knick my chin on the way back down but I have never in my life done a pull-up without massive amounts of help! I hopped down to a round of high 5’s from the class which made me feel really good. Granted, the whole act took about 2 minutes, but it now puts a smile on my face every time I think about it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t look like She-ra or anything and no way in hell could I do two in a row, but I never in a million years thought I would even get this far.

Waiter Arms

This is what I felt I looked like for most of the Thanksgiving weekend, thanks to Murphy.  It hurt like hell to move my arms past 90 degrees to the point where I couldn’t pick Mac up from the floor.  I had such good intentions of doing another CrossFit workout over the weekend, but didn’t want to shred my biceps into a bazillion pieces. I haven’t felt pain like that for awhile and other than the puking feeling, it puts the pain felt after my first workout to shame. Again, my arms have NEVER had a workout even close to what I did last week.

Finally, 4 days later, I felt somewhat normal again, so I went to CrossFit this morning.  I met Damian, who is the owner of the gym and built like he could run through a wall and the wall would cry. I really liked him though because he made us go through all of the form work first before we were left to the wolves. It ends up being the majority of the same people in the classes I go to, which is really nice because I’m getting used to things, who to ask for help, who to partner up with etc.

 

 

 

Today, after our warmup, which consisted of clean press, jump presses and squats, we did the following workout – for time.

3 sets of each

7 thrusters (a press starting from a squat)
7 pull-ups
7 burpees

5 thrusters
5 pull-ups
5 burpees

3 thrusters
3 pull-ups
3 burpees

I did all of my thrusters with the bar + 10 lbs (equaling about 35lbs).  At first I thought it was going to be too little weight, but I was definitely glad I took Damian’s advice on that one and go with less.  I made it through all of the sets until the last set of 3 before lactic acid crept in and I reintroduced my cheek to the floor a few times ;).  I have a feeling since this was another mostly arm workout that I am going to look like the waiter above for a few days.

I’m going to go finish my “to do” list before I no longer have use of my arms…

Well, hello Mr. Murphy

I was introduced to my first hero workout this morning.  A hero workout is a workout named after/dedicated to a person that was killed in combat.  I now realize that the hero workouts are by far the hardest workouts in the crossfit bunch.  Still a little sore from Monday’s workout, I was hoping for an “easier” workout today.  Negative ghost rider…today was the “brutal workout” of the week as our trainer Tim said.  Meet Murphy:

1 mile run
100 pullups
200 pushups
300 squats
1 mile run

My first thought was “how in the hell am I going to do this?”  It was as if Tim the trainer read my mind when he told me and the other relative newbies to cut the workout in half. I don’t think he wanted to administer CPR that early in the morning.

It has been really nice that one of Reese’s teachers has been dumb enough to go on this journey with me so I had a running buddy (I aspire to be teacher Colleen, 3 older kids and has arms like you wouldn’t believe).  Randomly enough, Fuzz’s hockey coach (who also has kids two of my kids age) is doing it with us too.

We headed outside for our first 1/2 mile run and while it is supposed to be gorgeous today, it was 46 degrees when we started so with a nice dash of blood lung taste in my mouth, I completed the first 1/2 mile.

Cue pull-up bar, which has now turned into my enemy.  I HATE pull-ups…did I mention I HATE them (I’d rather run on the treadmill if that tells you how much I dislike them :))?  Luckily, they have rubber bands to help or I couldn’t get up for one.  Colleen and I accidentally did 100 pull-ups.  Accidentally you ask?  YES, accidentally…who in their right mind does 100 intentionally?  And trust me, I wish I hadn’t.  I looked like a jumping salmon by the end of the set though as I was flailing all over the place.  I took plenty of breaks and then was extremely motivated by the woman next to me who didn’t use ANY rubber bands.  I will call her iron woman from now on.

After I could barely raise my arms high enough to itch my nose, we headed to the push up mats.  This whole workout is done for time but in my mind, I just wanted to finish…and not die.  I immediately flashed back to preseason my freshman year when part of the fitness testing was a 60 second pushup test…see how many you could do in 60 seconds.  I learned what lactic acid could do to a person in that test.  I was reminded of that hard lesson this morning as in about the 70’s I slammed my face into the mat multiple times as I lost full feeling of my biceps. I took plenty of breaks about every 5 after that and did finish (it was not pretty though).

Squats x 150…you think, how hard can this be?  I fell over after the last one…but I finished that too…

Back outside for my second 1/2 mile run.  Thank god, my original running group finished about the same time so we could all run together again.  We did a good job of staying motivated to just finish and get home 🙂 Time today – 33:44.

One of the women in the class today was talking about how in 6 months, she has lost 30 lbs and she looks AMAZING.  I am going to measure/weigh myself this weekend so I can start keeping track as I feel like I’m a great “before” picture now 🙂

And let’s be honest…now I won’t feel as guilty eating my weight in food tomorrow at Thanksgiving :).  Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Now That I Can Feel My Legs…

I’m writing this blog quickly before I lose use of both of my arms.  Today was CrossFit Workout #2.  Lets back up a step first and let me describe to you the state of my body after  last Tuesdays workout #1. I didn’t have great use of my legs until about Thursday.  Visualize this…a 90 year old woman, waddling, looking like they wanted to sit down and take a break every 10 steps.  That was what I looked/felt like.  Except in my case, add an infant car seat carrier or a hockey bag at different points of the day.  Finally, on Friday, I started to feel somewhat normal again.  And then I went and played soccer Friday night.  Except for my back being uber stiff, my legs felt ok.

Now, back to this morning.  I woke up with the nervous butterflies because I kind of knew what to expect.  The nice thing about CrossFit is you won’t do the same workout twice, which means I didn’t know the exact location of my body that was going to be in the most pain, but I knew I was going to be sore.

Once the workout went up on the board, I knew it wasn’t going to be my legs that took the brunt, but my arms. Introduce the wallball.  Aka, my enemy this morning (and I’m sure the next couple days).  I have ZERO arm strength…and when I say zero, I mean zero.  When I was in 1st grade, a coach in the gymnastics class I was taking told my mom it probably wasn’t going to be my sport (aka, take her out of my class) when I couldn’t hold myself up for a handstand.  And that handstand was against the wall ;).  I never played a sport that took a lot of arm strength, so I never really focused on it. All those years of no arms came slamming down on me today.  After the third set of wall balls, I could barely raise my arms to open my car door.  Don’t worry, this isn’t me in the picture.  I didn’t want to scare you with my form or the look on my face as I was doing the exercise, but this was the exact exercise we did.

On the positive front, I didn’t ever feel like I was going to puke today.  Bad news…NO idea how I am going to get Mac in the car.

Ok, for real this time…

Clearly there has been quite the gap since my last post.  I also was signed up to do a few races that I didn’t end up doing.  Having kidlet #3 took way more out of me than I cared to admit.  I thought I was going to be able to do it all, workout, be supermom, coach soccer and be Martha Stewart.  Hahahahahahahahahahahaha, apparently the drugs they gave me during my C-section made me delusional. The only one I succeeded at this summer/fall was coaching soccer and that was because I got to leave the house.  Don’t get me wrong, kidlet #3 is a very easy baby and has been sleeping through the night since he was very young.  But on the flip side, adding someone else that needed things from me on and off all day was emotionally/physically exhausting. That meant the first thing to go was working out.  Most of the time my brain went like this…”hmmm, should I go workout on the treadmill downstairs while he is sleeping, or should I  sit my ass on the couch and have some caffeine while I watch Real Housewives of NY.”  And 99.999999999% of the time, option B won out.

About two weeks ago, I was staring in the mirror with a formal dress on (to head to a charity dinner).  For the first time ever, I couldn’t stand what I saw.  With kidlet #1, I bounced back almost immediately and was in my pre-baby jeans 3 weeks post delivery.  Kidlet #2, I think it was a month (maybe 5 weeks post delivery).  This past time, I just assumed it was going to be that easy again…especially since I was in the best shape of my post college-soccer playing life going into the pregnancy.  Again, delusional…This past time, I dropped the weight as quickly as I did with the other two and was back in my jeans relatively quickly too.  BUT, I didn’t “feel” as good as I did after the other two.  Things didn’t bounce back like they did before and there is nothing worse than looking back on pics of me last summer and wondering how in the hell I am going to get back there.

As of about a week ago, I decided that no matter what it took, I’m getting back on the workout train, no matter how difficult it may be.

For those of you that haven’t read my blogs before, I HATE running.  Hate it with a passion.  I was looking for something that was challenging but had a great variety.  And I knew that with my age, comes the need to add some weights in there.  And like divine intervention, as I was researching new gyms/classes/workouts, one of my old teammates “liked” a crossFit gym on facebook.  I figured it was worth a shot to research.  Then, again, almost like fate, I realized that there is a well known crossFit gym about .5 miles from my house (I drive past it at least 15 times a week). The more research I did, the more I realized this could be a great option.  They don’t have child care, but they do have 6am classes and David has no problems going in to work a little bit later than normal because he realizes how important this is to me.

Cue class #1 on Tuesday. Two words…HOLY SHIT.  For those of you that don’t know what CrossFit is (from their website):
CrossFit workouts are comprised of constantly varied functional movements (like pushing, pulling, squatting, lifting, running) executed at high intensity. The workouts themselves are completely scalable, which means that a new participant and a CrossFit veteran can complete the same workout with changes in load and intensity. CrossFit workouts will deliver phenomenal fitness in and of themselves or as a compliment to your sport-specific training regime.

Again, a little background…when we had “lifting” practices in college, I got excited because that meant I could sit in the corner pretending to workout.  Or maybe throw 15lbs here and there around, again pretending to actually  work.  Oh, and don’t forget, every time the weight coach would tell us to do “clean and jerks,” I would have to turn away so I didn’t giggle out loud (my 12 year old boy humor at play).

So when I walked into the gym, I was beyond intimidated as weights are not my strong point athletically.  Normally, in most sports/coordination situations, I have been graced with athleticism that will carry me through.  Not so much on pure strength. And what was worse was on the WARMUP, there read, “pullups.”  My stomach dropped as at my strongest, I could do 2 maybe 3 pullups. And this was just for the warmup. Ugh, I thought, what did I get myself into.  Then, as if the instructor was in my head, he came over and walked me through everything.  “Its ok if you can’t do pullups. That is very normal for this stage. You will eventually be able to do pullups if you continue on with the program.”  Then he introduced me to a woman named Sarah that was probably early 30s and had been doing crossfit for a year.  She showed me the ropes for the next hour and was beyond helpful/friendly/sympathetic with my pain and intimidation.

So after an hours worth of situps, pushups, burpees (which by the way, I have been doing wrong my ENTIRE life), squats while dead lifting and then again with dumbells, I had a phenomenal workout.  My legs were shakier than I ever remember them being and I was breathing extremely hard.  I chugged my entire water bottle and then another when I got home.  After I got home, I had to sit on the couch for the next 15 minutes to get my bearings back.  It took oh about……15 minutes post workout for me to be the sorest I have ever been in my life.  It puts preseason soreness to shame.  It puts post race soreness I have ever had to shame too.  I had about 5% capacity of my quads making it very difficult to accomplish even the simplest of daily activities.  Had the toilet seat been any bigger, I would’ve fallen in due to complete lack of quad control.  I had visions of carrying the car seat down the stairs and throwing it as I lost all faculties (luckily that didn’t happen).  Kidlet #1 did ask me a few times over the course of the day what was wrong with me as I was groaning and moaning every time I moved.

Day 2 post workout (today) – more parts of my body are sore as hell.  Add my back and my upper arms today.  I can barely walk still and bending over is not happening.  I know this will go away though and it means I pushed my body hard.  I think I am hooked…

Based on recommendations from the instructor, I am going to take the rest of the week off and attempt 2-3 classes next week…stay tuned as I’m hoping this will be a fun ride!

Things you never thought you would see…

I went for my first outdoor (non-treadmill) run today.  I went early enough in the morning that the humidity wasn’t killer and it was so quiet running through all the neighborhoods.  I went on auto-pilot with my route to the 3.5 mile route I ran all the time last summer.  What I failed to remember was that it hits some pretty major hills…one hill that I will never again give the soccer players crap for whining about running it during tryouts. My only goal was to get up all of the hills without walking and I did that.  Granted, I ran at a snails pace but I did it.  The other thing that sucked was the killer hill was about .5 mile into my run so I had some shaky legs at the top and still had 3 miles left.  I found a good song to get me through the next painful 4 minutes or so (Eminem…), which was a huge help.

As I was running through a very wooded area, I get the sense something is behind me.  I turn around and there were 5 or 6 turkeys standing about 15 yards behind me.  All of a sudden, they started going faster and faster.  Sweet…just what I want to do immediately after the hill, sprint.  But I didn’t want to have to call David and tell him I was trampled by turkeys more, so sprint won out.  I sprinted about 50 yards (just as I thought I was going to give in to the turkeys or a heart attack),  turned around and they had gone into someone’s yard. This was the only evidence I could get as I was trying to catch my breath at the same time 😉

As soon as I got home and stopped running, I realized how sore I am going to be tomorrow.  After my treadmill interval workout early last week, I could barely walk the next day. My goal today is to stretch as much as humanly possible and drink a ton of water!  My other goal is to not walk like I got off a horse all day tomorrow 😉

Shaky Legs…

Today was my first morning of what I am hoping is dedicated gym visits and daily exercise/cardio as the first race is T-5 weeks away (oh boy…that makes me sweat just thinking about). Now that Lil Man is 8 weeks, I am able to drop him off at the gym day care and today I dropped all 3 kids off there (hallelujah).

I met my training partner, Aly there and had found what I thought was a good “start” for a training run.  It was intervals that started at 4.0mph on a 2% incline and went all the way up to 8.0mph and varied speeds and inclines.  It wasn’t easy but it wasn’t a killer either.  I’m not going to lie and say the 8.0 didn’t hit my legs and my lungs though ;).

It was really hard to keep my mind off what I was doing last year at this time as I was starting to struggle at the end of today’s run.  A year ago, right now, I was about 3 weeks away from running my half marathon and was easily averaging 7-something minute miles, even in my longer runs.  I know it isn’t fair to compare the two, but 6.0mph was my recovery speed and today it was my upper speed and I struggled towards the end. Tomorrow, I am going to do my best to forget about that and just run to get some stamina and strength back.

When I got off the treadmill, I thought to myself, “I feel pretty good,” but my legs were shaky. By about 2:00pm, the soreness had crept in and I could feel it in my entire lower body.  I also still had shaky legs.  Well, fast forward to 7:45pm and my legs are still spasm’ing and I am definitely stiff AND sore.  Although, I kind of like it.  It means my legs are getting a good workout again.

One of my friends at the pool recommended this website for treadmill workouts: http://iowagirleats.com/workouts/. Since I am going to be on the treadmill for most of my workouts due to the kids, I can’t wait to start working my way through these workouts.  Intervals are so much easier for me than straight runs.  With the straight runs, I get “shiny object syndrome,” and can’t concentrate and immediately start to think about how much running sucks.  Doesn’t bode well for my times 😉

I am also going to make myself a new workout playlist and will post here as soon as I’m done.  I will say my new favorite workout song is, “Some Nights,” by Fun…

Today’s workout: 2.65 miles
Time: 30 minutes (intervals ranged from 4.0mph to 8mph)…I’m not doing the minutes per hour because I know myself and won’t be happy with it

Nice way to “ease” myself back in

Last night was my first soccer game (and first real form of exercise) since Lil Man was born.  When I got to soccer, the heat index was 103 degrees and we only had two subs.  What an easy way to “ease” myself back in (I hope you sense my massive sarcasm).  I had a ton of fun though and didn’t realize how much I missed playing.  I played sweeper (last defender before the goalie) for most of the game so I could pick and choose when I needed to sprint. The more fit I get, the more I like to get in the offense but I knew that wasn’t going to happen last night.

One big thing I noticed is I have ZERO leg strength.  Full strength, I can kick the ball 40 yards pretty easily and I struggled to get it 20 last night.  I know that will come back, but is definitely an adjustment.  The other thing is my lungs, which I fully expected. After my first sprint last night, I was definitely heaving ;). I also stretched for about 20 minutes when I got home last night because I knew I was going to be sore today.

I woke up this morning and my back and knees hurt the most, I think from the pounding.  My quads and hamstrings are sore but not as bad as I thought they were going to be, but I’m sure tomorrow will be a different story.  I feel like I’m midweek preseason, which many of you will understand. It felt SO good to be playing again and I can’t wait until my next game!

Back on the Horse…

For those of you that don’t know, my hiatus is due to the pregnancy/birth of my third child, born on 5/11/12…my 2nd little man (3rd kid).  Today, I went back to the doctor for clearance to return to all physical activity and I have been chomping at the bit to be able to do anything!  I got clearance today and decided to try workout #1.

I put lil man in the Baby Bjorn and decided to pick up kids 1 and 2 at school. It is probably a .75 mile from my house but along the way, there are some good hills.  Walking up the first hill, I was out of breath pretty quickly and started seeing stars. I was able to walk through the pain of wanting to vomit and was able to get the kids and walk home with them.

I recognize this feeling from many things…sprints in college, first soccer game back after time away, long distance running in heat and interval training on the treadmill.  It is a feeling I HATE!  There is nothing worse than the feeling that I have a  LONG way to go to get close to where I was last summer.  I am trying to come to terms with the fact I probably won’t get to that fitness level (after training the entire summer for the half marathon and playing soccer), but I do have the following races to keep me in check and give me a goal.

Saturday, 8/11 – Mud Run (10K).  I am doing this with two of my best friends (old college roommates), which will make it MUCH more bearable.  It is also in the mud which will hopefully take my mind off the fact I want to die, considering I am 6 weeks away from this one.
Saturday, 9/1 – Women Rock (10K).  I am doing this one with two of my great mom friends and hopefully will have time to get in pretty good shape for this one.
Sunday, 9/23 – IronGirl Duathlon (2m run/22 bike/2 run).  I’m doing this with my best friend who just kicked the sh** out of a 65 mile bike all climbing and my tri partner and her sister.  I’m really looking forward to doing this one.

Workout 1 in the books…while it was not the most fun thing in the world, it did feel good to get the legs moving again.  Tomorrow I get to play soccer which I am beyond excited about.  We shall see how my legs and lungs feel about it though 😉

 

 

3 Races Down, 1 to Go!

I realize it has been awhile since I’ve written, but with being in the full swing of summer and training, I haven’t had time for much else.  Good news is that I have finished two more races in that time and only have one (by FAR my favorite race of the year) left.

5 for the Y

The first of the two races was a 5K benefitting the YMCA and it was pretty much run in my back yard.  The course was through the Braemar neighborhood.  While it was a pretty course, running along the golf course, there was one BIYATCH of a hill that covered the last .25 mile of the course.  Yeah, not so fun.  It was also a pretty hot day, but I did it with my race partner, Cheryl so it made the whole thing a little bit easier.  I was pseudo happy with my time.  I really wanted to break 8’s and came in averaging 8:07/mile. Damn hill killed that dream 😉

The other fun part of this race was that lovely child #1 also got to run in the kids race!  He has watched every one of my races and lately had been asking when he got to do a race.  He ran about 100 yards and it was the cutest thing ever to see the look on his face as everyone was cheering for him.  Hopefully we can get him liking running early since at the ripe age of 32, I still can’t stand doing it 😉

Urban Wildlife Half Marathon

This race was the one I have been training for the better part of the summer.  I was actually pretty nervous because this was the first half I have ever done AND I was doing it by myself.  I had been really diligent at following the training program through the first 10 weeks but the last 3 have been tough.  I got most the long runs in though and I was hoping that would carry me through 😉  I had also loaded up my phone with a ton of new music which is always a great motivator for me.

The weather was cooler when we started but you could almost taste the humidity so I think all of the runners were grateful that it started at 7am.

The gun went off and I immediately had to force myself to slow down that I had plenty of running left to do ;).  At least the experience of adrenaline at the start from all of the other races came in to play here to help me gauge how fast I should start.  I got in a nice little pack of people that seemed to be going the pace I wanted to go.

I must say, the first 7 miles went really well and smoothly (I actually averaged the pace I wanted)…miles 7-10 weren’t bad but I was starting to lose my legs.  Then I hit a wall at mile 10.  I found a great song (Move Like Jagger – Adam Levine/Christine Aguilera) that helped get me through it.  I found that if I took it one mile at a time, one water stop at a time, it didn’t feel too bad…that was until mile 12.  I ran into a bigger wall and this time,  it was hard (not going to lie virtually impossible) to break through.  From one one side, it was a relief to know I only had 1.1 miles left, while from the other side thinking, “Holy sh**, I still have 1.1 miles left!” I was also starting to get some random pain in my achilles (of all of the places I have hurt on my body, my achilles has never been one of them), so I forced myself to slow down again.  And this time, I also allowed myself to walk through all of the water spots.  That seemed to do the trick…and the end of this race was a long path out of the nature preserve so there were a TON of people cheering the racers in which was just the boost I needed to finish strong.

The race was also in quite a bit of residential Richfield, so I got to see David and the kids about 5 or 6 different times.  The last time could not have been timed more perfectly.  I was having an inner battle whether or not to walk and I hear lovely child #1 yell, “GO MAMA, RUN FAST” and that was just what I needed to hear. So thanks to David for getting the kids out of bed and supporting me when I needed it the most!  Here are some pictures below and a description of where I was in the race:

 

This was the first time I saw David and the kids about mile 7…still feeling good here 🙂

This was at mile 8…still feeling pretty good 😉

Heading into the park for miles 8-10…went in feeling good, came out starting to hurt

Running through the park…I can tell I’m starting to get tired here as my arms are tight to my body. I normally run with pretty relaxed arms.

Coming out of the park…hit first wall, right about here.

This is where I hit the Great Wall of China…1.1 miles left.

Good news is that 2 days later, I’m feeling really good!  And this experience definitely did not scare me off from doing it again. Definitely NOT this year, but next summer for sure.

Now I get to start training for the Iron Girl which means BIKE TIME!!!!!!!  WAHOO!!!!!!!!!