Countdown to Ironman: Week 46

Forty-six weeks to an Ironman that I'll do at age 46. How's that for synchronicity! Forty-six is a year that, according to Google searches at least, women are concerned with crow's feet, tummy tucks, anxiety and depression meds, and the onset of menopause. I don't know about you, but that sounds downright depressing! No wonder we have midlife crises. But triathlon can give us a wonderful gift - a desire to concentrate more on what our body can do than what it can't do, to look at what it's capable of and not so much what it looks like (because for sure I have crow's feet and grey hairs and all that fun stuff). So, forty-six. Is it an age at which you could expect to feel at your peak, mentally and physically? I'm hoping the answer is yes.


It's hard to believe, but at age 45 my body feels fitter, stronger, and healthier than it ever has. It's not the lightest it's ever been in my adult life (thank you anorexia, I don't want to go there again). Nor is it the heaviest (I always did tend to gain a *lot* of weight when pregnant) but it feels like I can ask it to do almost anything and it responds willingly. It sleeps well and trains hard, it craves healthy food and feels mentally alert and creative.

This last weekend saw me do about a 70.3's worth of training. Three miles of swimming, 57 of biking, and 12 miles of trail running over two days. Considering that I took a fair bit of time off of training to heal my arm, it all feels fairly easy and I'm not sore or overly tired. I think I can comfortably lay a good base down this winter for my Ironman specific training. Now that my kids are older, I can train a bit more than I did last time and hopefully feel even better prepared than I was for the first.

Paleo-style training nutrition this weekend included my Banana-coconut custard, some fruit leather for the trail run and bike, and my chia gel before my swim. At-home meals were grass-fed hamburgers and salad, shrimp-veggie stir fry, and chicken masala.

ERG? URGH!!!!

Wow, it's been awhile since I did a workout intense enough to bring on an attack of the almost-pukies. In triathlon training, almost nothing comes close to approximating the intensity of an erg (rowing machine) workout. Probably the closest thing would be doing crazy sets of killer 200s in the pool. When you're biking or running, half of your body is more or less resting, and while the intervals can definitely be tough, they are not the all-encompassing pain of a total body interval that you get in the pool or on the erg. I've heard it said that competitive swimmers have to have a higher pain tolerance than the general public, and I'm willing to bet that competitive rowers are right up there with them.

With the arm out of commission, almost anything you can do in Crossfit that's puke-inducing (burpees, wallballs, thrusters, etc.) were out of the picture for me for a long while. Today's workout was 5 x 500m on the C2 Rowing machine, with a 3 minute rest interval. Crap that was hard! Well, first of all I wrote down the workout wrong, it was only supposed to be 4 x 500, so we did  a little extra. But I'm glad we did because mentally, you can do four of almost anything, but that fifth one is a killer. 

So two weeks ago, the arm wasn't to a place where I could row under 2:00 for a 500 meters. I had to take it slow and deliberate. While I still don't have my full range of motion and extension so my pull stroke is still pretty short and choppy, I was able to go 154.7, 152.7, 151.7, 153.3, 153.0 for my five intervals. That's a big improvement in just a couple of weeks, and I should see those times drop a bit more as I get my arm mobility back.

Gettin' All Rocky Balboa in the Garage Gym

I know those of you in the great far frozen North will scoff, but it's been a chilly 12 - 15 degrees Fahrenheit here the last few mornings and that is C-O-L-D to be getting up and getting a workout in. Our garage is approximately one degree warmer than the outside air temp I think, though without the wind chill it feels just a teensy tiny bit warmer. Over the past few months, Wayne has been working really hard to sort through old tools and camping gear and turn half of our garage into a home gym. There has been several motivations for this. The first of course is just that in the long run it will save us a fair bit of money. He was able to drop his club membership and we both dropped going to an outside Crossfit gym, and we will have the equipment for the garage just paid off in savings from all of that within a reasonable timeframe.

There are other factors at work though. For one thing, I hate to drive anywhere that I don't have to. As much as I would've loved to ride my bike out to do Crossfit all the time, the reality of the class schedule there was that I had to wedge it in among other commitments and the kids' schedule and so most of the time I had to drive. There's something in me that really rebels HARD about driving somewhere to go workout.

And then there was the injury/overtraining issue. I found that in doing something as intense as Crossfit in an environment that fostered heavy competition for times and rounds, and in a place where I was being pushed to do more weight than I really should've, I was always nursing some nagging injury. I know I'm a highly competitive person by nature, and so for me it's way better to do the same kind of workouts by myself, or with Wayne or a few friends in a much mellower more supportive atmosphere. I'm getting just as much out of the workouts, but am able to concentrate more on holding good form and on making sure I get the most out of each exercise in range of motion.

So it is that on these 12 degree mornings I find myself in the company of a few solid die-hard friends facing down some tough WODS (Workouts of the Day for those of you not familiar with the Crossfit slang). I love how we look all Rocky Balboa in our sweats and watchman's knit caps. No fancy schmancy gym garb here!

On Monday we did our home garage version of the Lumberjack 20, a tribute workout on Crossfit's main site to the victims of the Fort Hood shootings, 4 of whom (and 11 wounded) who came from one Crossfit affiliate, Lumberjack Crossfit. Since we live on a big hill, by necessity the 400 meter run that repeated 7 times in the workout was down and up the hill, which we have knicknamed Heartbreak Hill. And at a chilly 12 degrees, our lips were about freezing to our teeth during the hill runs! Here's the workout in all its glory:

20 Deadlifts (54 pound Kettlebell)
400 Meter Hill Run
20 Overhead Squats (45 pound bar)
400 Meter Hill Run
20 Kettlebell swings (1 pood = 36 pound kettlebell)
400 Meter Hill Run
20 Burpees
400 Meter Hill Run
20 Pullups
400 Meter Hill Run
20 Double-unders with jump rope
400 Meter Hill Run
20 Medicine Ball Squat cleans (20 lb ball)
400 Meter Hill Run

Yah, I know most triathletes scoff at Crossfit, and many are turned off by Crossfit's own sometimes-overbearing rhetoric. But expect to hear more from me about how Crossfit is having a positive impact on my overall fitness. Sure, triathlon is great for endurance training, something most Crossfit athletes seem to lack, but that's only one aspect of fitness. I'm working on a personal program for ultimate health and fitness balancing out areas of strength, endurance, speed, agility, flexibility, coordination, balance, overall body health, and more.

Crossfit Update #4 and The Inadvertant Monster Hill

As I've maybe mentioned before, one of the things I like about Crossfit is the ability to measure and track your progress over time. So when I saw that yesterday's workout was going to be "Grace" (many of the Crossfit workouts have women's names), I was excited because I did Grace in mid-March and knew what my stats were. Grace consists of 30 reps of the Clean and Jerk at a weight you can manage to complete that, and it's done for time. Coach Jeremy puts a slide on the wall showing our stats from the last time we did this workout - in Crossfit, all stats are written on the whiteboard in the room, and then photographed by the coach. Additionally, many gyms use Beyond The Whiteboard to track stats online, with graphs and other cool features. In March, I was able to lift 60 pounds and it took me 8:47 to complete. Yesterday, two months later, I could lift 70 pounds and it took me 4:28. Ten more pounds in half the time! Yet I remember back in March being completely tapped out trying to complete it in 8:47. Now that's amazingly cool! Can't wait to see what I can do next time. I'm reasonably sure this newfound core, arm, and shoulder strength is behind some of my swimming gains lately.

On the other hand, in the afternoon I went for a bike ride and headed out on a new road I'd never explored before. It was really lovely, one of those roads you want to just keep going on and never turn around. I was hoping to find out that it looped around to one of my favorite rides. After a couple of miles, it started climbing what looked like a small ridge. My legs were a bit toasted from the morning's Crossfit, but no worries I just took it easy and spun up the hill. Then it started climbing some more. No problem, I still wanted to take it light on the spent quads, so since there was no traffic I zigzagged across the hill. Then the grade REALLy went up and I was standing on the pedals AND zigzagging and my quads were screaming but by that time I could see the top of the hill above me and no way was I going to give up at that point.

When I finally puffed out on top, I realized that I had inadvertantly climbed up the back side of one of the most killer hills around these parts. Ha ha, joke's on me. So much for a nice light afternoon ride. Still all told, my legs felt okay and didn't even hurt too much at today's Crossfit workout where we got to squat with big heavy weights. Yeah, that's me on the right saying "oh my achin' hamstrings!":

Crossfit Update #3

About a month and a half into this Crossfit experience now, and I'm just starting to feel like I'm getting the hang of things. I really like seeing myself progress, this week I switched up to a lighter band for doing pull-ups, which is one step closer to being able to do them without a band.

As you might guess from a software engineer and triathlon nerd (you know all us triathletes just love our stats and spreadsheets) one thing I like is the trackability of Crossfit. Many of the workouts are named and come around every so often, so you can see what you did last time (weights, reps, time) on a particular workout and evaluate your improvement. Most Crossfit gyms use a whiteboard to keep track of everyone's time for the day, and ours utilizes a website called beyond the whiteboard where you can track your workouts on cute little graphs, and compare with your gymmates and with Crossfit members from other gyms.

I'm continuing to struggle with integrating Crossfit into my triathlon training however. Because my schedule as a homeschooling mom, and a new puppy owner, and an urban gardener, and swim coach, etc. is so sporadic, I've always just slotted in my triathlon workouts whenever I can. However, that doesn't work so well when a Crossfit workout is scheduled at a particular time. For instance on Thursday I was planning to go for a 1.5 hour bike ride in the morning, and then do the 5:00 pm Crossfit class. However, life intervened and I didn't get to ride my bike until almost 3:00. That means I finished my (hilly) bike ride and rushed off to Crossfit. After the Crossfit warmup (pullups, situps, squats, ring dips, back extensions, etc.) this was our workout:

Walking lunge 100 ft.
21 Pull-ups
21 Sit-ups
Walking lunge 100 ft.
18 Pull-ups
18 Sit-ups
Walking lunge 100 ft.
15 Pull-ups
15 Sit-ups
Walking lunge 100 ft.
12 Pull-ups
12 Sit-ups
Walking lunge 100 ft.
9 Pull-ups
9 Sit-ups
Walking Lunge 100 ft.
6 Pull-ups
6 Sit-ups

and that all was topped off with a 2 minute Max Squats (how many squats you can do in 2 minutes). Needless to say, with the hilly bike ride, starting into all of those lunges my legs were already toast! About halfway through the Max Squats I could feel that they were just going to seize up on me and I had to stop. I think our Crossfit coach maybe thought I was nuts or something (these Crossfit folks usually don't just stop in the middle of a workout). But at some point, something has to give and that day it was getting the full benefit of a Crossfit workout because I had already really taxed my legs too much.

Same thing happened the next day when I ended up doing a 7-mile run way too close to the evening Crossfit. I don't honestly know how all this will work out in the long run. I can easily see integrating Crossfit into winter base training, but it remains to be seen whether or not I can continue working it into my training as I approach the more intense months of summer race schedule. First race is in three weeks, so I guess we'll see how that goes. I definitely think I should not Crossfit in the taper week!

Crossfit Update #2

This last week was my third week of Crossfit workouts, and so far I have nothing but good things to say about the program. It has really challenged me in ways that I hadn't thought about. Being a coach, I think it's good sometimes to put yourself in the position of being a beginner at something, of being new and maybe intimidated and frustrated with yourself. It definitely gives you a lot more compassion and insight into how the people you're coaching feel.

That's how I've felt from time to time with Crossfit. Many of their exercises do intimidate me. I've never done any kind of powerlifting moves like the clean-and-jerk or the deadlift. Even though I've intermittently gone and hit the weight machines in the gym for years, I've never done any kind of lifting that maxed out my muscles. All of the coordination necessary to do these moves is new and feels awkward to my body. Even looking at the big round black weights on the bars kind of wigs me out a bit, to tell the truth.

To the credit of our Crossfit coach Jeremy, I've felt very comfortable with the level of skills instruction in the Crossfit program. Each time we did a move that was new, we practiced it over and over with a piece of PVC pipe while Jeremy gave individual feedback on technique and position. Despite my worries (especially with my recent back injury), I never felt so much as a twinge when we moved on to doing these moves with weights. I've lifted way more than I ever have in my life, with way more repetitions than I imagined I could.

The great beauty of the Crossfit program though is the intensity of the workouts, the fact that they're timed, and the fact that you're doing them with other people which ups the ante and makes you really really push yourself. On Wednesday I tried to swim right after the Crossfit workout and it was hilarious because my body really just didn't work, at all. My muscles were limp noodles, I could barely raise my arms to take a stroke. After about 800 yards or so, I felt like everything started responding again, but that was a really strange interlude, and it shows how taxed you get during these crazy intense workouts.

So bottom line is that Crossfit has exceeded my expectations for workout intensity, general fun, safety, and good technique. I feel like I've learned a lot and been able to push my body in new ways. I'm starting to feel good results in my swimming and running too. My hips especially feel stronger in the run (all those squatting moves) and my lats and shoulders in swimming.

So far, this program gets an A+ in my book.

Crossfit Update

I'm in my 2nd week of Crossfit classes and am really finding it challenging and fun. I went last Tuesday and Thursday, and when I swam on Saturday I even thought I felt a little more power in my stroke. Maybe all those pullups! This week I'm going Monday, Wednesday, and Friday which is a little more challenging since on Monday I also have karate and swimming and by the time I was done with 3,000 yards of swimming on Monday night I had to call it quits. I could feel a soreness in my arms and legs that didn't feel like good soreness, it felt more like if I swam another yard I would regret it tomorrow kind of soreness.

So I think the challenge for me with Crossfit will not be in the workouts (though they're seriously challenging, but in a good way), it will be in how I manage to get my regular triathlon workouts in without either blowing up my body or just having fatigued tri workouts that are mediocre in nature. I'm still trying to work out how I'm going to accomplish all of this. I have nothing but good things to say about Crossfit though so far!

First Crossfit Experience

I did my first Crossfit workout this week and so far I really like it. I'm not doing any this week, since my karate test is this Friday and I don't think it would be a good idea to be all sore and stiff before that. I am testing for my brown belt (ulp!)!!!!!!!

Overall, I think it's a great addition to a training routine. For me, I am especially interested in adding strength and power. I know I have good endurance, decent flexibility, and through karate I have been developing my speed, agility, hand-eye coordination, etc. My weakest link is strength. For instance, I cannot do even one pullup, and never have been able to in my life. I don't think I have very many fast-twitch muscles, I'm just a slow-twitch kind of gal. So, since I think we should always push our limiters, Crossfit is right up my alley.

I went to an early morning class, along with several other people. I was impressed by the level of technique instruction and monitoring for good technique. We started off with a warmup, then had some technique instruction on the clean and jerk, just using a piece of PVC pipe. Then we did some standing floor jumps, measuring how high we could jump. I can still jump a foot and a half into the air, not too bad. Before long-distance endurance training and 20-some odd years ago, I had a helluva vertical leap so I think I could improve on my vertical leap again with some practice and strength/power work.

We progressed onto using a medicine ball and the WOD (Workout of the Day) was 21 medicine ball cleans then 21 pullups, repeated 3 times. For me, I used the assistance of a big rubber bandy thing to do pullups which was great because for the first time I could get the feel of the total pullup movement, even though I can't fully support my own weight yet. I made it almost through two repeats, having to stop in the 2nd set of pullups after 16. Still, that's 37 more pullups than I've ever done!

It was a very positive experience with the other people there all encouraging each other and me. I really liked it. I knew I'd be sore the next day, but thankfully I stopped before I really wrecked myself.

I'm looking forward to more workouts!