weight lifting – SuperSonnek

What The Hell Is Happening To Me?

a.k.a. “Carolyn tries CrossFit”

Between being a giant ball of stress and being a giant ball of fat, I’ve had enough. While I have been running and sticking to my distance/heart rate training goals, I’m gaining weight.

It didn’t help that last week Moose ran the show for food since my husband was out of town all week for work.

Oh, yes I did eat Pizza Rolls for dinner one night. I REGRET NOTHING.

I did the math and there was a good two and a half day stretch where I did not eat a fruit or vegetable of any kind. Well, not unless you count the tomato sauce in those pizza rolls as a vegetable or that wine used to be grape juice and that came from a fruit.

Throw in the lovely bloat that comes ever 28 days, and you could put me next to Shamu and you’d have a hard time telling us apart. Ladies, you know what I’m talking about. The fat jeans don’t button anymore! Argh!

Drastic times call for drastic measures. I tried CrossFit.

amypohlerkidding

I know! That’s what I said too!

But I needed that kick in the pants to get me on the road to fitness again. The best shape I had been in my adult life was four years ago when I trained for a half marathon and did a bootcamp style class twice a week. Now while I’m not going to make the mistake of training for a half again, I do want to get back to running that 7-8 mile distance per run – that’s a distance that I really enjoy. Now that I live in a place where I don’t have to stop running outside between now and April, I’ll be able to keep up with the running progress I have made and improve on that distance-wise.

The other issue was the cross training aspect. Do I have access to a gym in my apartment building? Yep. Can I motivate myself to do the damn cross training and stick to it. Obviously not as I’ve used the gym a grand total of once the two and a half months we’ve been here.

I had the opportunity, but not the timing, to take an introduction to CrossFit class at the Automattic Grand meetup. I was bummed I couldn’t go, but going to the Olympic park was way more important. I found a couple of CrossFit gyms near my house and found one run by a woman who’s been doing CrossFit for over a decade. They had a free class on Saturday and I decided to try it out.

I was a skeptic for sure, but it ended up being more fun than I expected. I think that was due mainly to the fact that this one is run by some really laid back people. If it was one those crazy intense places that yelled, I would’ve been out.

crossfitfun

The class was Saturday morning. It’s Monday afternoon and my abs still hate my face. Because the workout we did was:

100m Run
50 walking lunges
200m run
50 situps (OW OMG OWWWWW)
400m run
50 squat thingies with a medicine ball. I’m sure they have a name for them.

Tonight is the next class, so we’ll see how painful that will be. Because I don’t know if I mentioned that my abs hurt…but by the way, THEY HURT LIKE A MOTHER. I sneezed earlier and I cried.

I didn’t gain this weight in a day, so I’m not going to lose it in day either. We’ll see what happens tonight!

Weekend Plans!

We’re coming up to another weekend and once again, it’s going to be busy.

Tomorrow, I’m going in for an eye exam because I need to get a new pair of glasses. Also, hopefully get OK’d to get contacts again.

The last time I went in for a lens fitting, my doctor wouldn’t let me get any until an alleged eye infection cleared up. Well, pretty sure it was my allergies being a bitch, but that’s another story.

But, I’m hoping whatever he saw the last time is cleared up this time. Because if not, I also need to get a pair of sports RX sunglasses. While I can get an awesome pair of glasses from Warby Parker for less than $150, getting sports RX sunglasses is fucking expensive. With the move, I want to spend as little as possible. But I’m also running with my regular RX sunglasses that have an 8 year old prescription.

The weight lifting routine has been going well so far. I did another upper body routine over my lunch break today and am planning on getting in at least a 2 mile run after work. I’m hoping to pass out from exhaustion by 10pm. I am seeing some results – especially in the upper body. I suppose I’m seeing more upper body right away because I didn’t do much upper body anything before this. Unless you count swinging my arms while running an “upper body workout.” 😀

What plans do you have this weekend?

Thank You Mother Nature!

Yes, I know it’s been a while. The burning question you have in your head is nearly exploding!

“How did your half marathon go?”

Well, it didn’t.

See, Mother Nature must’ve felt pity for me because she sent some wicked thunderstorms to save the day!

Posted in response to people complaining that the race officials were delaying (and eventually canceling) the race.

When my alarm went off at 5am, the weather report was saying that there would be thunderstorms all morning. Emails/updates from the race officials were few and far between, so I decided at 5:45am (the time I would have needed to leave to get to the start on time) to stay home. I wasn’t going to risk electrocution to stubbornly finish a race.

Then the race officials said the start would be delayed an hour to 7:30am. Finally, officials and law enforcement cancelled the race right around the time of the start. Mainly because of the weather (which turned out to not be a problem after all) but mostly because of the permits that shut down streets throughout the city expired at 1pm, which was the cut off time for the marathon runners (had the race started at 6:30am).

There was a bunch of backlash over the decision, and mostly from whiny people who said things like “I wanted to put that ‘13.1’ sticker on my car.” Really? The months of training didn’t mean anything? So go run your 13.1 miles and put the sticker on your damn car!

Spoilers: those stickers drive me insane. I saw one at Road Runner Sports for a “0.0” sticker and I’m tempted to get one and put it on my car. Trolololo!

Which leads us to what am I up to now?

Since I’m moving, it seems all my free time is taken up with moving preparations. It also means that any friend I’ve ever made in Minneapolis has decided we “MUST GET TOGETHER” before we go. It sucks having to turn some of those down because I’m already booked that day or am out of town.

I’m also starting some weight lifting thanks to my bestie E. She’s a total meathead. I had taken some time off before WordCamp Philly to visit her last week for a much-needed vacation. She took me to the gym a couple of times and came up with a lower and upper body workout that I could get started with. Guess we’ll see how that works out. I cancelled my gym membership, but still can go until the end of this month, so I’ll have a month and a half of no gym access until we get to our new apartment in Oregon. It has a pretty nice (and brand new) fitness center, so hopefully I can bridge that gap without much trouble.

Expect more blathering nonsense in the future!