If you happen to have a Costco membership, they sell these awesome tasting and surprisingly healthy frozen breakfast sausages.

Ingredients are real, with no chemicals added. They have a little sugar in them which sucks, but aside from that faux pas they are clean.

I’ve been eating them for quite some time and they never disappoint 🙂 A ~$10 bag lasts quite a while.

I felt pretty good yesterday and decided to do the WOD.

I had been bothered by what I learned was a strained or pulled hamstring. Not sure what the difference is and don’t really care, but since it seems to temporarily ‘heal’ right up after a night’s rest, I’ll assume it is just a strain. Yesterday’s WOD was not hamstring-friendly. As soon as the WOD started I felt the tightening of my hamstring and was concerned it would be a problem. But it turned out to be fine. If you read my post from Wednesday’s WOD, my primary concern then was my knees but that turned out to be fine. My insistence on pushing through these aches and pains has worked out so far.

Warm-Up

• 400m run
• Spiderman stretches
• Broad jump and air squat combinations

Kelly

5 Rounds for Time of:

• 400m Run
• 30 Box Jumps (21″ for men)
• 30 Wall Balls (I forget but I think it was 24lb ball prescribed for men)

Needless to say, I scaled it quite heavily to my ability by using a 17″ box and a 14lb ball.

Recap

Let me start by saying I have been extraordinarily fortunate to have guessed properly when it comes to the scaling. There is no way I could have completed this had I not scaled it as much as I did. I might have been able to go higher on the box jumps, at least for the first round or two. In fact, the first round when I started jumping it felt like I was jumping way too high. But by the end of the 2nd round I was worried I was going to catch my toes on the front edge of the box and….game over. Fortunately that didn’t happen.

This WOD was a real bitch. I suck at running – I seem to have much less cardiovascular endurance than others do. It’s something I’ve struggled with forever.

Some Perspective on How Bad My Running Is

When I was in the Navy (age 17 – 23), we  had to do a physical performance test once every 6 months or so. Looking back now, after just a couple of weeks of CrossFit, the test was a joke. But at the time it was horrifying for me, and I could never pass it:

• 1.5m run – I remember specifically that if you were under age 20 you had 11:45 seconds to finish it, and then when I hit 20yo I had a whopping extra minute or two to finish it
• situps (I don’t remember the requirement but I want to say 30 or 40?)
• Pushups (again, I don’t remember how many but it wasn’t all that many – maybe 10 or 20 max?)

I almost always failed the run. And the push-ups. Fortunately, aside from boot camp, there were always so many other sailors taking the test along with me that it would quickly turn into a ‘What was your time?’ situation, so I could just tell the recorder whatever time I wanted and get away with it. Believe me – I never felt good about this, but the alternative would have been some serious consequences. And besides, I was a Fire Controlman and not an infantryman or Seal. I could do the job. And truth be told – I hated my time in the Navy. I slept fine at night knowing I was lying my way through the physical test. I used to grit my teeth in disgust to every “Yes sir!” I’d hear a 40-year old enlisted guy having to give to the 21-year old recent college grad officers. I still don’t get that. But I did what I had to do and did an okay job at everything during my 6 year enlistment. I’m mostly proud of it. Mostly glad I did it.

Back to the point of this post – “Kelly” – I finished in 38:34. Considering the heavy down-scaling, that’s a relatively slow time, but I’m proud as hell. To be going at full intensity for that long is pretty miraculous for me And I look back at a mile and a half and I wonder if I could actually run that distance and beat the time I couldn’t do, even with the possibility of a dishonorable (i.e. ‘General’) discharge hanging over my head at the time. I’m almost certain I could do it now, at age 40.

The Hamstring

After the workout, I hung out at the box for about 15 minutes catching my breath. I then ran home, microwaved a sweet potato and took it to the park to meet up with my family for the kids’ baseball/softball games. While sitting there my hamstring was really aching, much worse than at any point the prior week. Went to bed early and couldn’t sleep (as usual) so spent time on Wastebook. The hammy was bothering me still.

Then, I wake up this morning and it’s fine. When I extend my leg while sitting I can feel it slightly, but all in all it’s fine. I’ll see how it feels tomorrow and decide whether to give it another go or wait. I’m currently on a 2x per week membership and have used up my two sessions this week, so if I go tomorrow or this weekend I’d have to bump up the membership for the month.

So yesterday morning was my second CrossFit group WOD.

Based on the experience of my first group WOD, I was bracing for the worst. I was committed to going no matter what the WOD was going to be, but I figured I’d better at least know what pain was coming my way in advance so that I could mentally prepare. And, to my surprise, the WOD didn’t look too bad:

Choice of 2km or 5km row

Then a “Cash Out” of:

10 Kettlebell Swings @ 55lb for men and 35lb for women
5 Burpees

The cash out was to be done quickly, within a minute, starting on the minute, for 5 minutes. If that’s too confusing for you (it is for me) – basically the cash out had to be done 5 times in a row. I was too slow to actually do it within a minute so I didn’t even look at the clock while going through them.

I was very concerned about the 2km row (you didn’t think I’d try 5km, did you?). I had rowed 500m numerous times as a warm-up and it was always the same: fine for the first 400m and then that last 100m started to hurt. It didn’t help matters when the warm-up for this WOD was….guess what? Rowing! So, after all was said and done, I wound up rowing 2.25km and then the kettlebell swings and burpees. I finished the 2km row in 9:33. I went with the prescribed kettlebell weight for women, 35lb, as I wasn’t sure if I could do it well. That weight turned out to be just about right, though I might have gone a bit more. I don’t think I could have done the 55lb one more than one or two rounds, max.

The result of this WOD for me was that I ACTUALLY FINISHED IT! I was so pleased with myself to actually finish it. The first WOD was such an epic fail in every respect that I figured it would be months before I could complete any. And I was bracing for that reality. So to finish one, and do pretty well on it, was a great confidence boost. Of course, I’m well aware that I got pretty lucky – this WOD played to my strengths (or, more appropriately, my strongest weaknesses). While the first WOD was seemingly perfectly designed to destroy me – a complicated olympic lift followed by a complicated jump-rope technique followed by hand-stand pushups. I was still very sore in my shoulders before starting the rowing yesterday. Today my whole upper-body is very, very sore. I can walk though!

I am forcing myself to do no physical activity today. Tomorrow, if I wake up and am not too sore, and my work schedule permits, I may go back to the box for more torture. Otherwise, I’ll wait one more day for my body to recover, and go Tuesday.