Murph and Fun

Last week wasn't incredibly eventful. Just learned some new motions and worked on a few old ones.

Monday was Memorial Day. It was a day where CrossFit gyms across the country were prescribing "Murph," a workout that was created by Lieutenant Michael Murphy. He originally named it "Body Armor," but after he died in Afghanistan, it was decided the workout would be renamed Murph and would become a Hero WOD. Now you can Rx the WOD, which is doing everything with no assistance, or you can Rx+ which was to do the entire thing wearing a 20 pound weight vest.

The full workout is:
1 mile run
100 pullups
200 pushups
300 squats
1 mile run

So on Monday, the gym did a "Memorial Day Murph and BBQ." Anyone that wanted to show up could come do the workout in the beginning and then they'd start grilling. They put a pull-up rig outside that people could use and marked out a mile out on Ridge Rd. They also added a modified and a team version of the WOD. If you did modified, you split everything in half. If you did the team version, everyone in the team runs the full mile before and after, but the reps were split between team members. Because I have yet to run a mile, I went for the modified version.

A bunch of us volunteered to do it inside, so we got everything all set up then ran outside to meet up with the people that were ready to go. Since we were doing half a mile, they just had us run around the parking lot. We started off and I was off jogging 4 times around the parking lot. Since I knew it takes me about 5 minutes to do somewhere around 4/10 of a mile, I didn't know if I'd even be making it the full half. But I did! I don't know how long it took me but I got through it and I actually wasn't tired at the end of it. If I didn't have to get to work on my 50 pullups, I would have just kept going. But anywho. The nice thing about it was that we weren't required to get all the reps done consecutively. So I broke the workout up into 10 rounds of Cindy (5 pullups, 10 pushups, 15 squats). I almost wish I'd made it so I was doing less rounds of more reps because I was dying by the 7th round. By the 8th round, I was numb. I literally could no longer feel anything. So I figured it was the best time to just keep going. I definitely didn't run the entire last half mile, got most of it, but I literally couldn't feel my legs or upper body. Finally finished with a time of 33:06, which put me in a pretty good place considering the people doing the full Murph were finishing between 50 minutes and an hour.

Tuesday I took the day off. My muscles were fairly sore and unhappy.

Wednesday I went back for more...eesh.

Skill:
8-12 GHD sit-ups
2-5 rope climbs
8-12 BB OH squats with a pause at the bottom

MetCon:
3 rounds
400 m run
30 kettlebell swings (35#)

I was not prepared to be trying rope climbs again. After doing them last week I decided that my goal was to just take it easy and go step by step. So I just got my rope climbs out of the way early. I paired up with a couple other girls and we got them done. My arms were really sore so pulling myself up was tough, but I got up one knot a couple times and called it good. I'm still not ready to go higher. I'm not afraid of physically trying to do it, I'm afraid of the fall that will ensue if I don't make it. Fear of falling 10 feet is fairly legitimate in my mind. With the sit-ups, I focused on form. Lately when I do GHD sit-ups, I feel them more in my hip than my abs. So I got some pointers from some people around me and learned how to do them right with the correct extension. The overhead squats were uneventful.

Good God the MetCon sucked. I was not up for running 3 rounds. Also doesn't help that I started out trying to keep up with everyone else and the only thing I achieved was getting winded. But I got through it. Dead last, but I finished. It was somewhere in the 11 minute range.

Thursday was actually really fun! I couldn't move afterwards...but it was fun!

Strength:
5x5 strict press

MetCon:
"E. Rist" - partner WOD
5 pullups
30 tire flips
5 pullups
30 stone to shoulder
5 pullups
30 sandbag walking lunges
*both partners do 5 pullups each, all other reps were alternating

The strict presses were kinda fun. I've never done a barbell strict press and I certainly haven't done any since I started CrossFit. I think I finally maxed out at about 73 pounds. Not too bad for a little weakling.

As awful as the MetCon looks, it was fun as hell. I'm glad they're prescribing more pullups lately because my pullup endurance just ain't there. I partnered up with someone I've never really worked with before. The name of the game is that each partner does 5 pullups then they alternate reps with the other stuff. For the tire flips and the stone to shoulder it adds up to each partner doing 15 reps. With the lunges, each person had to do the 30 reps because then it would be 15 each leg. I love tire flips. Really. I think they're the shit. Stone to shoulder are fun too, except for the part where they shred up your arms. Lunges have always been my enemy. To me, they will never get any easier. But this time I surprised myself. I think in previous times I've been overextending my leading leg leaving me with not much of a range of motion. This time I stepped forward just enough so I could touch the ground with my back leg. Who'da thunk I'd be stronger at lunges after doing that. I guess it goes to show that we are ALWAYS working on form. Even if you know something is supposed to feel uncomfortable, sometimes you're still making your life a little more difficult than it needs to be. The only thing that I hate about them prescribing pullups is that it makes it impossible for me to Rx the entire workout. Like this one for example. I Rx'd the tire flips, the lunges and the stone to shoulders, but I needed an assistance band with the pullups. Gah! One day I will no longer be defeated by pullups.

Friday I was practically gimping my way through life, but it was the last day of the workout week so I was determined to make it through.

Strength:
7 x 3 snatch balance, off the rack

MetCon:
20 burpees
then...
9-7-5 
Deadlifts
Handstand pushups (or hand release pushups)
then...
20 burpees

The strength was a lot of fun. I enjoy snatch balances. So when you come off the rack, you're holding the barbell as if you're going to do a back squat. Then it ends up being kind of a push press/overhead squat combo. The leg portion of it is to dip and end up in a full squat. The arm portion is to push the bar overhead as you dip. You're supposed to do it all at once. I don't know, I guess I just like the fluidity of it. It starts to get hard as you get heavier, but I had fun. Maxed out at 83 pounds.

The MetCon was rough. They put a 12 minute cap on it, I think I finished at like 11:40 or something. Prescribed for the deadlifts was 205 pounds, I went with 185. My 1RM for deadlift is 225 so 205 would have been way too much. Burpees always have and always will suck. They're just so full-body intensive. I think if anything, those are what really slowed me down.

That was the end to my workout week. I spent Friday and Saturday at the pool just chilling out. Felt so good to be weightless. I came away from it super sun burnt though. Oh well.

The other excitement for the week was that I finally got to go to the Public Market. I was so psyched. I went early Saturday morning after work with a couple friends. I was amazed at how much I got for just $30. I got a lot of the fruits and veggies that I love but in more bulk than I usually do. I was going to check out Seven Bridges Farm but by the time I got there I was so laden down with bags that I wasn't in the mood for standing by a glass case for a long period of time. I'm not very well-versed in meat, like with the different cuts and stuff, and I wasn't about to figure it out then. Afterwards we chilled by the pool for a couple hours and then headed off to Trader Joes. I was expecting my grocery bill to be a little lower than it has been, but then I ended up getting a lot of supply type stuff that racked it up. The other issue I had was that by the end of a long day in the sun and feeling lazy, I didn't want to cook that night so I ended up buying myself some frozen fish sticks and sweet potato fries. And this is why we don't go shopping when we're hungry. Take notes, kids.

Another thing I did this week was downloaded an app to my phone called Lose It! It's basically an app that tracks calories based on your weight loss goals and your activity level. I know when you're on paleo, if you're doing it right, you shouldn't need a calorie counter. But I've been wondering lately why I'm so ravenous somedays. I know part of it is because I haven't truly detoxed my body yet. I'm consistently 80% paleo...until I go out for dinner. Methinks I need to go back to how life was in February when I had no social life and ate at home all the time. But regardless. I downloaded this app. The only problem I see with it is that there's no way to get an app to understand the intensity of CrossFit. So I just don't enter my exercise because it's entirely inaccurate. So the app says I should be having about 1800 calories per day, which seems about right. I've gotten myself up to about that level so I'm good on that front. The problem is that I'm exercising at least once, sometimes 2 times a day, so I should probably be adding on a couple hundred to that. I mean, ultimately, I'm not stressing about it because part of this is that I need to start eating 100% clean. I'm eating the same amount as I was during the paleo challenge and I didn't go into starvation mode back then. The only thing was I'm now upping the intensity by a lot. So I may just make sure I'm taking in enough food over the course of the day. I have all these motivating factors to keep me eating clean, yet I'm not exercising the willpower to do it. I'll get there.

I'm kind of stuck in a mental rut. I've been reading so many articles lately about making sure you're fueling yourself correctly and in adequate amounts, and eating at the right time. It's just so overwhelming. I'm trying to do it all right because ever since April I've been demanding a LOT from my body and I don't want to hurt it in the long run. Plus I feel like my mojo for the workouts has been declining a little. Granted the workouts are getting harder and I've been adding more weight, so it's expected that my performance will decline a little. Seriously I need to stop overthinking this so much.