Hello!
Happy rainy Monday! (blech)
I hope everyone had a great weekend!
We did – it was so beautiful! – and that’s why I’m just now getting to recap last week’s workouts.
Sometimes, a girl’s just gotta have fun, right? Right! Cyndi Lauper says so. 🙂
Ahhhhh…..
So, anywho, back to last week’s workouts. It was actually a pretty tough and draining week. Here’s how it all went down:
Monday
I was pretty stoked about this WOD. I mean, it’s RUNNING!
Started off building up to my clean and jerk max and got to 95#.
That’s a PR! Whoop!
We were working on the split jerk which is a difficult movement. I tend to be off-balance because I don’t trust my own abilities. I need to work on my confidence level and I know I can definitely increase the weight. Blew me away a little to put 95# over my head!
As for the 20 minutes of running, I got just over 2 1/2 miles done.  🙂
Tuesday
This was supposed to be a YMCA day.
Instead, it was fence drama day. 😦
You’ll be happy to know that we finally have our fence up and it looks fabulous! OMG, my dogs are SO HAPPY!!!!
Wednesday
So, I had been thinking about how to increase my mileage and I decided running to CrossFit a couple days a week was going to be my new thing.
6 1/2 miles.
Busy road.
Afternoon traffic.
No shade.
It wasn’t as fun as I had hoped but it wasn’t awful either.
I’m on the fence about whether or not I’ll keep my new thing.
Of course, running to this WOD may not have been the smartest idea I’ve ever had.
Holy. Hard.
Can you say shoulder burner?
For the strength portion, I mostly worked on form in my overhead squats. I never went above 35 pounds and I maybe got a few good squats out of the 30 total we were to do.
I struggle with driving my knees outward  – they want to come in and I dip forward and end up on my toes. Not really good when you are trying to hold weight over your head. Coach Kat ended up tying a resistance band around my knees to force me to concentrate on pushing my knees out. It worked pretty well. I think I’m definitely going to keep that as a reminder until my body gets used to the movement and can do it on its own.
Now, let’s talk about the reverse wall climb + push up.
That was probably the most miserable thing I’ve ever done.
I seriously only made it through 2 full rounds and got 14 double unders done.
I thought my arms were going to fall off.
Exhaustion doesn’t even BEGIN to describe what I was feeling!
Thursday
Thing 2 and I hit the YMCA for a good treadmill workout.
I did a 3 mile run and then did some hill climbs starting at incline 5, working up to incline 9 and back down.
Oof.
And, just in case that wasn’t enough, I thought I would throw in some plank action.
Friday
I was the only one at the Friday workout. Slackers.
(not that I blame them – it was a beautiful Friday evening!)
Snatch drops are a really difficult move and my shoulders were still blasted from Wednesday so that didn’t make it any easier. I did most of them with the PVC and then a 15# bar. Did my last set with the 35# bar. Coach Danny is pretty meticulous about these movements and honestly, even though I prefer to have other people around to WOD with, I definitely appreciated the attentive coaching I received.
I stuck with 65# for the hang clean and jerks and tried to perfect my form a little more. I tend to muscle the clean a little more than I should – I need to remember to pop my hips forward and pull my shoulders to my ears. Maybe once I get all that down, I can throw a squat in there!
Then we got down to the WOD.
Those sprints were fun but man oh man, was I coughing up a storm after those!
The pollen count was SUPER high on Friday (I think it was a 9) and, as I figured out during the rest of the WOD, it definitely affected my sinuses.
For the Power Clean to Push Press, I went with 75# on the bar and used a band for the ring dips.
I knocked out 5 full rounds and one power clean/push press into round 6. Whoop!
Saturday
I wasn’t completely sure how long I was going to run on Saturday but I was shooting for at least 13 miles.
Flying Pig marathon is right around the corner and I’m feeling woefully ill-prepared.
And Saturday’s run didn’t help that feeling one little bit.
That was a tough 8 miles I eeked out. Really tough. I took walk breaks, my legs felt like lead, my chest was hurting and I felt seriously out of shape.
Perhaps I should have listened to my body on Friday at CrossFit? Probably, but that’s not how I roll. Gotta push, push, push and do more, more, more!
I really need to learn to NOT do that.
Oh, and to add insult to injury (or actually, injury to insult would probably be more appropriate!), my new Mizuno’s chafed the top of my right piggy toe! I felt it rubbing a little when I was running but didn’t think anything of it until I got into the shower.
OW!
So, that’s not good. 😦 Guess Mizunos aren’t my thing. Thank goodness Road Runner Sports allows free returns/exchanges for up to 90 days! Love them!
Talk to me: What did your workouts look like last week? Have you ever had a shoe chafe the tops of your toes? What’s your favorite running gear store?
– jennifer
A Hungry Runner 