Walls and Balls

I do not like wall balls (deep squat with a weighted medicine ball that you have to throw at a target at least 9 foot high, catch and repeat).  I am going to say that again, I do not like wall balls, just in case anyone missed it the first time.  News of WOD 13.3 has crashed in and ruined my day.  I am signed up for tomorrow's class and therefore I have to face the wrath joy of 13.3 *sigh*.  12 minutes as many rounds as possible of 150 wall balls (7kg), 90 double unders, 30 muscle ups.  As many rounds as possible???  Only someone superhuman is going to get past the first round!!!  The excessive punctuation is an indication of my incredulity.  Made worse by the fact that my Karen time (150 wall balls for time) is longer than 12 minutes (just under 15 minutes in fact and that was with a 4kg ball to 9ft) so I won't even get onto the double unders (which I can't do either so actually not an insurmountable problem).  Now I've calmed down from my original WTF state I am simply going to concentrate on seeing if I can get my Nancy time within 12 minutes with a 5 or 6 kg ball.  I have watched K* and his crew with their top tips and I will have a go at battling my nemesis for 12 minutes of sweat and fury and possibly some tears (wall balls tend to be accompanied by a teeny huge reasonable amount of swearing).

Oooh I nearly got into so much trouble today - I had a battle to get out of bed to go swimming, little voice was urging me to stay in the warm and to avoid the pain and horror of the pool, other voice reminded little voice that if I didn't get my ample behind out of bed, into my swimsuit and off to the gym that I would receive a scolding text from Mark Durnford - beastmaster and evil genius.  That prospect was enough to get me scuttling to the pool.  I was, of course late, and informed that the scary text had been about to be dispatched *phew* .  So today's swim session involved lots of er....swimming unfortunately.  I scrimped on the warm up and we set of on 10 x2 length sprints 2 easy lengths 5 x4 length sprints (although this is all relative, my sprints are other people's warm up pace), 2 easy, 10 x2 length sprints followed by a very long lie down for the rest of the day cool down lengths.

  I am still slow but I can hold my head up high in that I keep my pace consistent even when my body is telling me to give up and go home and eat a cadbury's creme egg instead.  

It's weird what goes through your head when you are trying to swim faster than is comfortable - when you glide up and down the pool nice and slowly you can draft shopping lists, go over conversations, analyse them, rewrite them just in case you get the opportunity to have the conversation again except in a more mature and ultimately victorious way, plan what you are going to wear to impress that certain someone at the weekend or go through the plot of your next novel.  When you are made to swim like a demented octopus up and down the pool while an evil maniac with a stopwatch grins at you, you don't really think about anything apart from, "holy sh*t I need to breathe, my legs won't go any faster, why do my arms feel as if they are pulling through treacle...mmm treacle, aghh breathing, dammit, forgot, now I've inhaled a lungful of water bleurgh, ah at last the end, cr*p, I've got another length to go....." or maybe that's just me.  I suppose in a way it's more truly meditative than slow swimming because you really do just live in the moment concentrating on your breathing and very little else - no other intrusive thoughts poking through (other than the occasional "holy mother of God I'm going to die if he makes me do any  more!")

 So actually maybe that makes Mark a spiritual guide, a guru or a yogi as well as an evil sadist who inflicts physical torture swimming coach/personal trainer.

Still in the cave

I've fallen off the paleo wagon a little but I am still probably about 65-70% paleo.  I am going to ramp it up a little to try and lose a little more lard and the Lenten vow to give up chocolate and sweets is helping to keep my sugar intake down.  I have discovered a couple of brilliant recipes that are healthy but yummy so I don't feel as if I am missing out.  The first is the paleo pancake for which I shall be ever thankful to the lovely Jules Hawkins.  I have had it for brekkie virutally every day for the last couple of weeks - in various forms.  It goes brilliantly with bacon and a trickle of maple syrup, sausages, avocado and berries, and even this morning with fried, diced chorizo, peppers and courgette (for want of nothing else being in the fridge).
The recipe is really really really simple - for one person, take 2/3 banana and 1 egg, blend them into batter with a hand blender (or you can use a goblet blender for larger amounts), melt butter in a little frying pan, put a ladle of batter into hot frying pan - make pancake.  There should be enough for two pancakes and they taste blissful.  I have tried them out on friends and family - my especially fussy ones and they have all given it the thumbs up, even after initial scepticism.  My 4 year old niece Holly, who may be the fussiest person on the planet after her little sister Lottie, described them as "too delicious" and insisted I make some more.

The other thing I have discovered is paleo pad thai - I have to confess that thai and indian food are one of my many weaknesses, and I still haven't been brave enough to attempt cauliflowe rice.  However zoodles are the answer to my prayers when it comes to noodles.  Thin slices of courgette made with a sharp vegetable peeler or mandolin- maybe we should call them coudles over here?  http://www.health-bent.com/sides/paleo-pad-thai and I topped mine with some king prawns fried in butter and a few chilli flakes - totally delicious. 


I have also started to use model farm to deliver meat and veg.  I ordered the month freezer pack and a large bag of veg in the morning and it was delivered that evening.  They deliver in Bristol every Wednesday and I was amazed at the value for money.  It's all organic and the beef and lamb is grass-fed.  The pack was enough for me for three months, with a huge chicken, a pot roast, a leg of lamb and pork, plus a couple of packs of braising beef, a whole load of mixed flavour sausages, two large pork chops, 6 little lamb chops and 2 packs of minced beef.  Good thing I have a new freezer in my sparkly kitchen!  The veg bag was actually a sack nearly the size of me.  Loads of potatoes, parsnips, carrots and a turnip, plus beetroots, leeks, onions and a cabbage.  I couldn't quite believe it, and they threw in 6 free range eggs as a welcome gift.  I suppose I don't really have an excuse now not to fuel myself properly for my workouts.
 
 Talking of workouts, the intro video for the Open WOD 13.2 says "this will show how fit you are" uh oh!  I managed to get onto the 0700 class, which means I have seen 0600 twice this week (this may be a new record!).  10 minute WOD - 5 shoulder to overhead , 10 deadlifts, 15 box steps or jumps as many rounds as possible - the introduction of steps has caused all kinds of controversy on the crossfit discussion threads I can tell you!!  The RX was 34kg for girls - and as my workout log said 25kg is my 1 rep max for the shoulder press I was looking at 22.5kg but Andrew persuaded me to go to 25kg as that was the masters RX (I think for this competition Masters are over 55 but I'm claiming it because I'm not in the competition), and in order to do the whole think RX I had to use a 20 inch box although I was allowed to step rather than jump as there wasn't a hope in hell I could jump on the 20 inch box (it's my 1 rep max).   Watching the intro video was a real help so I managed 1 box jump short of 7 rounds (note to self keep going when the countdown reaches 1, you'd be surprised what you can manage in 1 second).   I'm now full of the joys of spring, a combination of the sunshine, warmth (well it's not subzero), and nailing a workout RX(ish) for the first time ever.  The great thing about crossfit is that everyone knows each other and there is an amzing sense of camaraderie so if you do well or work particularly hard you walk out with lots of congratulatory messages ringing in your ears - you don't get that in your bog standard gym :-D

I hate pyramids!

Pyramids!! Not the ones in Egypt I hasten to add.  I haven't seen the ones built by the pharoahs although I have sat beneath a crystal one to have my chakras balanced (don't ask!).  However I can definitely say that pyramids in the swimming pool are to be avoided at all costs (especially if you swim as if you are towing a brick - or possibly a wall in my case).  It was pointed out at 8am this morning that I hadn't written anything for about a month and to be fair this isn't a reflection of my training history.  I have been working like a demon (mainly to avoid eyebrow raising from chief nagger encourager Hugh, who is OC the Masters Team for the Raise the Bar competition in Cardiff next month.
After the wall ball epic that is Karen last week  I was traumatised delighted that the WOD the next day was 5 sets of 5 pull ups followed by a 100 20kg sumo deadlift high pull ups  interspersed with 3 ring dips every minute until all the sumos had been completed.  That was fun!

March has had some fairly horrendous workouts starting with a team WOD involving 6 minutes of rowing, thrusters, running, dumbbell snatches and situps- luckily I had the lovely Nina as my team and she's a ninja runner, while I run like I swim (see above).
The next killer little bundle of joy was 5 rounds of 3 overhead squats with 20kg interspersed with 3,6,9,12 and then 15 lateral crawls.  Lateral crawls are my new least favourite exercise in the whole world (and there is quite a long list to choose from) .  They involve you lying on the floor (that was the only bit I liked) and then pushing up into a press up and scuttling sideways like an asthmatic crab for about a metre and then doing another push up, ad nauseum (literally!).  Now I know that that doesn't sound a lot but you try doing12 of them especially after you've done 18 and 15 overhead squats!  But of course that wasn't enough because this was followed immediately by 5 rounds of 4 alternating split jerks with 25kg interspersed with 4,8,12,16 and then 20 squat bar jumps - ooosh!  Cue Bridge lying on the ground at the end attempting to breathe through every orifice.

Pistol squats seem to have featured frequently (or maybe I just notice them because they hurt so much) but I have been able to lower the box I've been using to aid me - 15 inches and counting.   I've even had a go at skinning the cat - this is not a euphemism!  It's a sort of somersault while holding on to gymnastic rings - I can't do it - that is all!
I have been daft unfortunate enough to schedule my visits to the box to coincide with the London throwdown workouts (Wednesday) and the Crossfit Games Open workouts (Fridays).  90 wallballs (my fave!), 70 kettlebell snatches, 50 over box jumps, 30 toes to bar (in my dreams), and 10 muscle ups (ditto).  I needed to have a lie down after that one.  It didn't get any better with the Open WOD - as many reps as possible in 17 minutes of 40 burpees 30 snatches (15kg) 30 burpees 30 snatches 20kg, 17 burpees (that's how far I got).  Burpees have moved quite a way down the list of my least favourite exercises and I was pretty surprised that I seem to have got the hang of them (although that is relative - having watched Annie Thorisdottir doing the workout on you tube I realise that I burpee like an epileptic grasshopper, except with less of a jump)
Now you might be forgiven in thinking that after all those epic workouts that I would be safe in assuming that Saturday would be a reasonably easy option - big mistake...huge!  Murph, one of the hero WODs (named after soldiers who have died in Afghanistan) holy mother of God! 1 mile run 100 pull ups 200 push ups 300 squats 1 mile run - I nearly turned round and went home.  I was allowed to do 3/4 of the exercises and used a massive band for the pullups, did the push ups on my knees and found out I can't do basic mental arithmetic when I'm blowing out my a** so I ended up doing 250 squats.  I have to confess I walked quite a lot during the run (especially the uphill bits) and I was totally in awe of the guys who did it in a weight vest!  I finished though and my time was under an hour, on the downside I looked like a tomato
I have been interspersing the crossfit with run/walking and swimming, which brings me back to the pyramid.  I don't have an excuse about getting up before 7am anymore as it's starting to get light,
so I started another 6 week session of swimfit.  I groaned inwardly as I slid out of bed and propelled my body in a somnambulent walk towards the pool.  Mark greeted us with a cheery smile (it's an evil facade I swear!) and after a warm up that was more than enough swimming for me - set us off on a sprint pyramid- 2,4,6,8,6,4,2 twice.  All I can say is that while I may be the slowest swimmer, by far, in the group - I am consistent...I'm always last-but I do manage to swim each of the steps of the pyramid in pretty much the same time, I swim 4 lengths in the same time regardless whether it is the first or last leg.  Spent the rest of the day unable to hear anything because I had water stuck in my ear - it does mean people tend to avoid me as I walk around with my head on one side, shaking it and grumbling to myself.