The good people of @norcalcrossfit putting in work before the weekend. #crossfit #wod
Lifestyle
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!
It’s official – my product launch has taken off and it looks like I might have my life back during the foreseeable future. What a relief! I hate turning into a stress monkey during the start of the holiday season – it takes the fun out of it. I’m almost thankful finals were scheduled before the holidays to prep me for the endless projects in my professional career. Not.
I know promised a video blog with one of my Rebelles, but Friday night turned into wine, cheese, Vampire Diaries night instead so you’ll have to wait a little while longer…
Saturday morning I had every intention of going for a long walk with Rosie or at least going for a run, but alas, the cold weather kept me inside where the bacon breakfast was residing. Seriously, I wish I had more time during the weekday mornings to cook up a beefy meal like we do on the weekends. Mmmmm…bacon.
As I mentioned, Dave’s company holiday party was on Saturday so we hiked up to Berkeley for some horse racing. Yes, the company party was at a horse track. I’ll take it – I’m a sucker for the holidays. **Cue Johnny Mathis**
I used to ride horses until I was about fourteen when soccer became the number one focus and I wish I had more time to practice dressage. Sigh, aren’t they beautiful? I’m not going to lie, I can barely handle watching racing on TV let alone live. The images of Barbaro are still burned into my mind. 🙁
Anyways, the party was super fun and Dave even one a raffle prize…
Tequila! You can imagine how the rest of our night went…
Sunday morning started like Saturday – intentions of working out with Catherine, but the Bay Area storm had other plans for me.
So we decided to stay in, watch the pathetic 49ers and wait until the rained passed before heading to the tree lot for our majestic selection.
This looks like a bad Home Depot advertisement. Ha!
To make the day more interesting, Home Depot ran out of wrapping so we had to macgyver our tree onto my little car. And pure comedy ensued:
Luckily, the tree stayed put and didn’t cause an accident. Props to my Eagle Scout for remembering how to tie knots.
I’m still giggling about this.
The rest of my day was spent meal planning and watching Dave put lights decking the halls.
Ever wonder what a CrossFit family eats for dinner? Check it out:
First two meals were killer. I’m obsessed with slow-cooker beef stew. Meat, broth, veggies and anything else you can find in your fridge. What else could you need? Our grab bag section is seriously lacking, but we’re not big snackers. If anything, it’s usually a piece of fruit. Creative, no?
We usually shoot for one night out a week (sometimes it’s two). It helps us save money and stay within our clean eating lifestyle.
Do you plan your meals for the week?
Hey, isn’t this a fitness blog? Sure it is, and now that I have more time – I’ll be able to drag my ass to the box (including tonight – WOD & coaching). Yipeee!
Change of Plans.
Change of plans, folks. I was going to blog about my morning WOD, but as life happens, things don’t always go according to plan.
Late last night Dave came back the gym in near-screaming pain. The poor guy went to re-grip from a front squat to a jerk and dumped the barbell on this knee/quad. It wasn’t pretty and he ripped his favorite work out pants (salt on wound). To make matters worse, the barbell landed inches away from the knee he had surgery on a year ago (almost to the date).
I don’t do well with bad injuries – after destroying my knees playing soccer, I can’t even watch football replays when a guy injures himself – it makes me want to vom. I think last night I even asked Dave before I came over to help him, “Is this going to make me sick?” LOL, what a great girlfriend, right?
As you can imagine, I didn’t make it to the box this morning as planned, but here’s the WOD that I will be doing at some point:
- RxD
- 400m run
- 15 DB thruster
- 10 chest to bar pull-up (scale to 10 pull ups or 10 ring rows as needed)
- Amrap 15min
Spicy! Anyways, I’m taking advantage of my free time to go shopping with my mom for our Thanksgiving dinner. I haven’t mentioned this before, but I’m hosting this year. Cray. I don’t know what I got myself into. Granted, it will be just Dave, my parents, sister, grandparents and uncle, but still — pressure’s on, people!
This is one of the first years that we’re not all going up to Chico, where my mom’s entire family gathers every year. I’m talking 20+ people in the past. My aunt and nana’s spread puts Paula to shame. It’s that good.
Needless to say, I need to step up my game.
So what’s a clean-eating girl to do? Well, the plan right now is serve up the traditional dishes and have some paleo options available.
Here’s what I’m thinking for our menu:
Apps:
- Cheese plate with olives
- Buffalo chicken dip
- Goat cheese dates
- Crispy Prosciutto Cups with Pear
- Kale Crisps with Sea Salt and Lemon
- Spinach, Bacon, and Onion Dip
Dinner:
- Turkey (doy)
- Gravy
- Candied yams
- Green bean casserole
- Salad with feta and pecans
- Bacon and Chive Sweet Potato Biscuits
- Sweet Potato Casserole
- Cranberry sauce
- Traditional dinner rolls
Dessert:
- Apple pie
- pumpkin pie
- Berry cobbler
- Pumpkin cheesecake?
Am I missing anything? Too much? LOL. As you can see, I’m trying to mixed it up so my family doesn’t protest the paleo options:
Don’t get me started on the table decor. My friend Liz and I have been brainstorming since July…I can’t wait to show you the final product.
Have you ever hosted Thanksgiving at your house? How did it go? And what’s your favorite Thanksgiving dish?
Dare you to move.
It’s Friday!! I don’t know about you guys, but this week draaaaaaaaggged on. Time change? All I know is that on Tuesday it felt like Thursday — and that’s just plain wrong.
Before I jump into my plans for the weekend, I need to give a shout out to Coach Cheryl for a real ass-kicker workout this morning. It was rough and I’m not going to lie, I have a little “Fran cough” going on as I write this post. Don’t know what that is? Do Fran and you’ll know.
Now, I’m already the type of person who takes forever to warm-up. When I was playing soccer, it wasn’t until a quarter of the way through a game or even conditioning that I found my legs. It sucks, but I embrace it. I especially have to be diligent about warming up in the cold weather (I know, I sound like a 90 year-old woman – but that’s what surgery on both knees will do to you…). Luckily for us, Cheryl ran us through a spicy little warm-up to get our old-people joints moving: 400m partner prowler push, stretches and a series of sets that mimic the WOD.
Without this warm-up, I would have crumbled in the first minute:
- Int
- 1min squat clean (125/85)
- 1min shuttle runs
- 1min Jerks (125/85)
- 1min Rest
- 3 Rounds
Note that this is the “intermediate” weight suggestion, the RX is (155/110) for both movements. Yeowzaahs! Now, I know I’ve discussed the balance between going heavy (RX or somewhere around there) and going light to speed through a workout. Katie Hogan (a true CF badass) recently wrote an exceptional post about finding your intensity balance. Honestly, I feel like I’ve become better at pushing my limits and going after heavier weight, but today I just zeroed in on the intermediate weight. Why? Because that’s what my body was telling me during the warm-up.
Really, people. Use your warm-up as a chance to “check-in” with your body. How are you feeling? Muscles sore/stiff? Take a extra minute to stretch out or going for an extra little run to loosen up.
I see it in every class – someone sand-bagging the warm-up, and I’m guilty of it too. It’s hard not to take it easy when you have a monster of a WOD on the whiteboard staring back at you, but don’t let up on that warm-up – you need to give your body a chance figure out what will work for that day and what won’t. As odd as it sounds, self-reflection during your WOD can be a very powerful thing.
Ironically, this little gem popped up on Pandora – what’s the connection? I used this song as an intro to a speech I gave at a high school retreat a few years back and I believe everyone can take away a positive message from it – even CrossFitters.
CrossFit, work, personal, life, love – what ever it might be today, listen to your gut and don’t let your fears cloud your dreams.
Okay, enough of the emo soapbox. What is everyone doing this weekend? My plans include a movie date, Saturday morning WOD, a bachelorette party in Santa Cruz, with a nice little yin yoga sesh on Sunday to wrap it all up. Yahoo! I can’t wait. 🙂
Rat Race.
Warning: Part of this blog contains a mini-rant. Okay, I’ll keep it to a minimum. Lately, my professional life has been feeling like a rat race/groundhog’s day/whatever you want to call it – I’ve hustlin’ countless hours on the computer and my thoughts aren’t streamlining into blog posts as I’d hope they would this week. So much is going on! I don’t know about you, but the daylight saving switch makes me feel like I’m entering the Twilight Zone. As in, every time the clocks fall back or springs forward my work load/pace switches into over drive and I’m left scrambling to get the job done. Maybe it’s a PR thing? Who knows…
So where have I been? For starters, I took last Wednesday off to attend the SF Giants’ Victory Parade.
Fast forward to Saturday: Dave and I attended an epic wedding. It was so perfect it almost was silly. The bride and groom were as cute as could be. We both felt so honored to be a part of their love fest.
Sunday was an epic relaxation day and it was exactly what I needed. There’s something to be said to vegging on the couch for a solid block of time and completely turning off your brain. o_O Consequentially, Sundays have turned into our meal planning day for the week and I’ll start posting our meal plans to give you an idea of what we eat/buy. Typically, we cook a laborious meal on Sunday and plan for shorter, easier meals during the week. Let me tell you, good people – you need to purchase these three cookbooks. They will change your life. Seriously, they have become valuable resources in our kitchen:
- Well Fed: Paleo Recipes For People Who Love To Eat – Melissa Joulwan
- Practical Paleo – Diane Sanfilippo
- Everyday Paleo Family Cookbook: Real Food for Real Life – Sarah Fragoso
It’s no accident the first book is on the top of my list. The recipes never cease to amaze me. Sunday’s dinner was her Chocolate Chili. OH MY…You have to try. I don’t think I’ll ever want another type of chili again. It’s that good.
Switching gears to CrossFit. The last WOD I posted wasn’t so hot, so I’ve been eager to get back in the box and redeem myself.
I dragged myself to the box on Friday morning and was surprised by a little burner warm-up that nearly did me in. Heavy prowler pushes in the dark plus cold weather is not the business, especially when your WOD looks like this:
- 15m OH walking Lunge (25 lbs)
- 10 pushup
- AMRAP 10min
Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit on this one. Sure, the warm-up of heavy/spirit pushes made my quads turn to goo, but the actual WOD was pretty fun. I managed nine rounds. Not bad…
Yesterday’s WOD I found the start of my redemption road:
- 9-7-5
- Power Clean (95 lbs)
- DB Manmakers (25 lbs)
This might not seem like much, but I was drenched in sweat when it was all said and done. The RX programming called for muscle-ups and to be honest, I’m sure they are much easier than “manmakers”:
This video makes me LOL. Love the visor…
Today I was reminded of the reasons I love CrossFit. I can write a whole blog post about the mental gains I’ve been since joining this community, but the real magic for me lies in seeing significant strength improvement. Our class started off with a 400m farmer’s carry. I carried 1.5 pood kettle bells and nearly ripped open my entire palm, yet I felt like the incredible hulk. That, or, a grocery carrying champ.
Once we made it back into the box we went after our 1 rep max for OH squats. I haven’t attempted and OH squat max since the first month I tried CrossFit nearly ten months ago. I think I was barely making strides with 45 lbs. Barely. Today, I can proudly say I hit 105 lbs. Not going to lie, I felt like a badass hitting that weight. I was so happy and I’m sure I had a stupid grin on my face for the rest of the class…
Psych! There was no smiling because we still had our “surprise” element. Drum roll, please… 5 burpees on every 30 seconds for 8 minutes. Yes. Eighty burpees. BOOM. I’m sure I’ll regret mentioning this in the future, but I kind of like burpees and feel like it’s becoming my ninja movement…Needless to say, I was very satisfied leaving the box this morning.
Remember my October goals? I should probably give you an update on those and set-up something up for November:
- Practice double-unders everyday for 10 minutes – yeah this didn’t happen 🙁 BUT I did purchase the DU training kit from Again Faster to motivate me through Novemeber
- 5 kipping pull-ups – Honestly, haven’t tested this out, but it’s now November so it doesn’t count either way…
- 5 new paleo recipes – Done!
- Film a cooking session with one of my fellow Rebelles – Couldn’t make it happen, but we’ll film something for the holidays.
- Finish reading “The Happiness Project” – Sadly, no. This book is great, but boy does it make me fall asleep!
What’s my grade? I’d give myself a C- for the month. Poor.
Here’s hoping for a better report card in November:
- 10 unbroken double-unders
- 5 kipping pull-ups
- Film cooking video with my Rebelles
- 10 push-ups
- Finish reading “The Happiness Project“
- Post 3 vlogs
Phew, that was a lot to catch up on, and I’ll do my best at keeping you all updated – even with quick updates.
Dirty Girl Mud Run + Halloween + World Champs
Happy Monday! I don’t know about you, but I felt like the weekend went by in a blink. So. Many. Activities.
First, let me say that I haven’t been to CrossFit since Thursday morning and I’m going through withdrawals. Thankfully, my weekend plans kept me on my toes.
Saturday was incredibly fun. My good friend, Sara, flew into town for the weekend and a group of us participated in the Dirty Girl Mud Run in Pleasanton. I say “participated” because it was not-timed, non-competitive, which was a nice change of the usual “pace”.
If I haven’t mentioned before, I have some truly creative girlfriends. Seeing that it was the weekend before Halloween, we decided to dress up with a theme, “Swamp Goddesses,” sadly, when the idea was tossed out I instantly was estatic because I thought we’d dress up like Princess Fiona from Shrek. “Umm, no Belle. We’re going for leafs and glitter…” “Ooooh…”
Each of us interpreted the outfits in different ways, but overall we looked green, leafy and athletic. BOOM.
More on this shirt later…
So, this Dirty Girl Mud Run was listed in “San Jose,” but in reality, the race took place at the Alameda Fair Grounds…in Pleasanton. Not the same place. Thus, we had to hike it to the East Bay and mentally prepared for the amount of mud in our future.
Unfortunately, we didn’t drag along anyone else to take pictures of our adventure, obstacles, scratches or bruises, but we did manage to take some awesome after shots.
Oh, hey…Notice I’m without my tank top? Yeah, that POS freakishly expanded in the mud and when I came out of the first pit it was down to my knees. No joke. It was hanging off me like I was wearing one of those giant white t’s. It gave us all a good laugh…
After the race, we grabbed a bite to eat and headed back home. Miraculously, I cleaned up (enough) to enjoy the night’s festivities. Dave (Davey Crockett) and I (Indian Princess) popped over to a friend’s house party and had an absolute blast.
It’s safe to say that both Dave and I were exhausted come Sunday morning; however, being the crazy pumpkin hoarder that I am, I forced our little family to Half Moon Bay for some pumpkin-pickin’.
Did I mention the Giants played last night? Or that they WON THE WORLD SERIES!?!?!?! Holy smokes! It’s almost hard to believe. Being a life-long Giants fan and witnessing them win two World Championships in three years seems like a dream, especially because it was a SWEEP. Unbelievable. When they finally won last night, Dave and I were in this odd state of celebration, do we psychotically freak-out? It didn’t feel right without the series TORTURE, they put us through in 2010…Whatever, man! We can’t wait to celebrate at the victory parade on Wednesday (on Halloween, because SF knows how to party).
During the final tense game, I somehow manged to cook up spaghetti squash and bolognese (via Practical Paleo) , roast two pumpkins and bake paleo pumpkin muffins. Oh! And some paleo pumpkin granola (recipe TBA as I’m still perfecting the crunchiness).
I must say the muffins were bomb dot com and I enjoyed two of them this morning as I prepped our Crock-Pot with Robb Wolf’s Beef Stew.
Paleo Pumpkin Muffin Recipe (inspired by the recipe here):
1½ cups almond flour
3/4 cup canned pumpkin (or cook and puree pumpkin yourself)
3 large eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1½ tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/8 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup raw honey (optional)
2 tsp almond butter
2 cups raisins
1. Preheat oven to 350℉
2. Coat muffin tins with coconut oil (or use paper muffin cups and add 1/2 tsp melted coconut oil to batter)
3. Mix all ingredients and pour evenly into tins
4. Bake for 25 minutes on the middle rack
If you love pumpkin, you have to try these out! So good.
Overall, this weekend was a smashing success. Rosie even struggled to keep up.
Did you survive the weekend? Who were you rooting for in the World Series?
Something Good Can Work.
Have you ever been afraid of your own potential? I know that sounds cheesy, but really–has there ever been a time in your life when things are falling into place and you feel frozen by fear? I’m not one to read inspirational quotes all day, but I ran across this statement and I thought it was worth sharing:
Recently, I’ve had this overwhelming feeling that I’m at a crossroads in my life and self-doubt has been clouding my shining, yellow-brick road. Honestly, I think I’m not focusing on what truly matters–the small victories in life.
Don't sweat the small things.
— Bob Harper (@MyTrainerBob) October 8, 2012
Amen, Bob.
On to the small victories. I have some very exciting news to share — I previously mentioned I was going to attend a CrossFit Level 1 Trainer Course a week or so ago…well (drumroll): I passed the test and have been awarded the ANSI Accredited CrossFit Level 1 Trainer Certificate! Yay! I’m soo happy that I can say I’m a CrossFit Level 1 (CF-L1) Trainer. It has a nice ring to it. 🙂
Second victory: Last week I jumped into a FitFluential twitter chat titled “Making Fitness a Priority: #GetAfterIt with @Reebok”. Fitness bloggers from around the world joined the conversation and shared their insight into creating an active lifestyle. Long story short, five random participants were selected to win a gift card to design their own pair of Reebok sneakers – and last Friday I found out I won! How cool is that?? I’m so pumped, especially because I’ve been dying to get a pair of Reebok Crossfit Nano 2.0s – if you are curious–here’s the design I’m thinking about:
Not bad, eh? I’m going to make this neon trend last all winter…As soon as I get these puppies in the mail, I’ll make sure to post a little review. Stay tuned!
Third small victory: I got my first pull-up! Okay, I might be fluffing this a bit because I think I’ve had it in me for a while, I just never really “tried” to do a kipping pull-up with a live audience. It was more of a “cool, no one is looking in this direction — I’m going to jump on this bar real quick and see if I can make it happpeennnnnn…yep I think I got it? Maybe? Was that one? Anyone? No…? Ok tight.” Thankfully, Dave came to our Saturday WOD and put me on blast by filming me trying. Needless to say, I rose to the occasion:
Luckily, my victory/happy dance was cut-off–but not to worry, I’m sure you’ll see it soon enough…Also, this means I’m on to string five together (not to mention my kipping form)–hello October goals!
And there you have it: My three sweet, little victories on display. Unfortunately, it took me until I was drafting this blog post to really appreciate them. Let’s be real for a moment and get back to how this blog post started — sure, it’s not always possible to take every chance you get to stop and smell the roses. There will be times when your personal rain cloud will follow you all day, a week even, and you will need to dig out that umbrella, pop it open and start singing.
Without getting too sappy, I leave you with some beats from one of my favorite bands: