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All Things Fitness: Long Run + 15.4

Hey guys! It’s been a little while, hasn’t it? I currently sitting at home, brushing fur off my laptop. I’ve made it to spring break!

I’m going to save my buildup of food pictures for tomorrow, but for now, let’s talk fitness (ok, and some food). I was excited to be coming home Friday-because my home Crossfit does the Open workouts on Fridays, it doesn’t interfere with my work schedule so I can go! I was pretty excited. I watched the live announcement on Thursday night and was happy to see cleans featured in 15.4. Because I can’t do handstand push ups, I of course did the scaled version.

My thoughts:

-The scaled version was a lot more boring than the Rx version. I thought it was strange they changed the rep scheme. That being said, it was nice not to have to try and figure out all that weird counting.

-It was harder than I expected. I thought I was just going to fly through. That being said-I can’t remember the last time I worked on cleans, and my Crossfit near school almost never does barbell movements in WODs. I have an incredible lack of wrist strength as a result and that tends to be what burns out first for me in this type of workout.

It was awesome coming back to my home Crossfit. I got the glowing introduction of being the person with awesome lifting technique, so the pressure was on to keep up quality reps throughout the workout!

The 8 minutes passed quickly. (15.4 was 8 minutes of 10 push presses at 65# and 10 cleans at 75#). It was hard but not as painful as 14.5 last year-neverending thrusters and burpees was the worst.

I ended with 4 rounds+3 push presses. I’m not sure how that compares to anything though!

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It was a great way to kick off spring break!

After that, I met up with a high school friend for dinner.

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I had a crepe with mozzarella, chicken, sundried tomato, olives, and pesto.

We stuck around chatting long enough for the restaurant to close, so we headed out for ice cream.

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Chocolate malt frozen yogurt with heath pieces. We closed that place as well! It was so, so nice to catch up.

Fast-forwarding to Sunday, I had my 11 miler on the schedule. Traditionally, my 11 mile runs have been the worst runs of my training cycle, for some reason. Maybe it’s because I

m still tired from the volume of running 10 miles the week before, but I don’t have the fitness that I do by the 12 miler?

Either way, this run ended up being my fastest 11 mile run to date.

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(Note this is a recycled picture but this is where I went.)

I tried to run at a comfortable pace without looking at the numbers too much-for better or for worse. I reached the halfway point with a 9:39 average pace, which is pretty fast for me for a long run. I think the speed cost me a little bit on the second half, but I still finished with pretty good stats.

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This run kind of knocked me out afterwards though! I think I didn’t drink enough water, so I’ve had a vague headache since then, and my foot is less than happy.

In terms of this race, I’ve said this before, but I’m definitely not trying to PR. I just want an enjoyable race where I don’t fly at the beginning and die at the end. I seem to always kill my legs by going out to fast, and then it’s just not fun at all.

Stay tuned tomorrow for lots of delicious food 🙂 For now, here’s a little selfie action.

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Did you do 15.4? Thoughts?

 

 

I Ran a Lot and Lifted Some Heavy Stuff

 

Happy Saturday! It’s such an incredibly beautiful day here! Which will likely hold lots and lots of studying for me! I’m sorry I’m back up on comments-it gets a little bit confusing with all the Quest giveaway entries! (You still have until tomorrow night to enter!) I’m so glad I’m doing the giveaway-I am constantly tempted to eat them but now I know I can’t! And thankfully my skin is returning back to normal!

I have a few random pictures that pretty much tell my story from the past couple of days.

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New haircut.

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New favorite breakfast-whole wheat pancakes with plain Greek yogurt and pineapple. I had to carb load up-I did my long run for the week on Friday afternoon, and I wanted to have a very light lunch before!

I drove to the same park where last week’s 5k was held. It was farther than I expected! But the weather was slightly nicer. 

Last week:

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This week:

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For some reason, lately when I’ve been doing long runs, the goo I take makes me cough like crazy. I decided to try something new.

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I taste tested these beforehand so I’d know what to expect. The verdict? They TASTE good but I have no idea how people eat these while running! They’re SUPER chewy, and I had some difficulty not even on the run! Since this wasn’t a race, I decided to use them anyways and just take a lot more time to stop and chew them which was a bit difficult…plus since a serving isn’t just a pouch, you need a way to actually carry them, which was a pain.

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I used this little handheld water. I’ve used it before without problem, but for some reason every time I turned it upside down, it leaked. Which was unfortunate given it was more comfortable to carry with my watch hand…All in all, it was a good run! But…11 miles is far! It felt really far!

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I took Advil beforehand for my Achilles, and it really helped and was a nonissue. My foot pain/numbness though was a different story. It started early and was pretty bad. At the halfway point I took out my heel inserts which help my Achilles, and it helped the foot pain. Even still, starting at mile 7 or so I had to stop every mile and shake out the pain in my feet. Since I’m doing longer distances now, I think I’m going to try and cut out sugar for the next week before my next long run to see if it helps!

Last night was very low-key for me because this morning I did the Crossfit Open workout 14.2! It was hard. Very hard. Harder than it looked. Like, I’ve never gotten so shaky in 6 minutes before. I used a box to reach the pull up bar, and I almost felt off a few times because my legs were shaking. The workout was this:

3 minutes of:

2 rounds of 10 overhead squats and 10 pull ups

If this is completed, in the next 3 minutes, so 2 rounds of 12 of each. If that is finished, then 3 minutes to complete 14 rounds of each. And so on. 

I made it to the second round, and finished with 84 reps, 4 pull ups away from the moving on to round 3! Of course though, I did banded pull ups because I’m not that strong! One guy in my class made it all the way to the 4th round! I’m pretty sure I’m going to be sore. Yes, from 6 minutes. 

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I need to go study now and do a lab report! But first, I need to share this.

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This dining hall parfait. Looks pretty good, right? I was expecting oreos on top, with yogurt, granola, and raspberries/raspberry jam. Umm…I was right about the Oreos and granola, but it also had cool whip and cherry jello…that was a little bit too weird for me! I’m really not a jello person, especially not cherry!

Jello-yes or no?