Ecstatic

Just home from our first rugby practice of the season. After a dynamic warm up we basically spent over an hour and a half sprinting, interspersed with core exercises in payment for dropped balls and short lectures about the drills. My hip flexors HATE me right now, but I am absolutely ecstatic to be playing rugby again. We all are. You could absolutely feel it, especially after practice as we all dispersed. Tonight promised to be cold and wet, but turned out to be just cool enough with nice soft ground. Rare conditions for Texas.

And it's crazy, but I can tell my fitness has improved since November. Or maybe it's my motivation and core strength that are better. And maybe the dieting is helping, or maybe it's just got me eating better. Who knows, but I'm totally excited for the 2009 season!

Sore

Yesterday's workout was tough.

AMRAP, 20 Minutes, 16 kg KB:

kettlebell clean and press 6 right/6 left
40 yard sprint x2
kettlebell snatch into an overhead squat 5R/5L
American swing with a lateral step 10R/10L

I finished four rounds in just over the 20 minutes. I felt like I'd really accomplished something after finishing, but it was definitely tough. And my body is telling me ALL about it today. My shoulders, my quads, my thighs... Chris, my coach, commented that he could tell the Zone dieting was making a difference, which was cool to hear especially since my attempt fails as much as it succeeds.

food and fitness

The Zone has its ups and downs. Weekends are when I'm the worst at sticking to it. And most days I only manage to get three or four meals Zoned. But I keep telling myself that it's a start. Better than nothing. Today for a very late breakfast I had eggs scrambled with feta, spinach, and avacado. Quite tasty. And I've found that roast beef and provolone with fruit and almonds is my favorite lunch. Greek yogurt is too expensive, but it's sooo good.

Rugby practices start a week from Monday. My activity levels will go way up as our coach has been reported to be gleefully thinking of inventive fitness torture. And I'll be thanking Crossfit.

40/30/30

Just under a year ago when I started the kettlebell class at CrossFit Central Jeremy, who was my coach at the time, tried to convince me to start Zone dieting. No way was I ready to be that serious about things. I was just there to get in better shape for rugby, not to win a triathlon or even lose weight, as I told him vehemently. (I tend to push back when people try to push me into things.) Over the summer I started to consider zoning, even more once rugby season began and I could physically tell my nutrition wasn't up to par with what I was putting my body through.

Still, even that feeling wasn't enough to get me over the hump of actually bothering to measure my food and worry about conforming to the zone-prescribed macro-nutrient proportions. Tonight I'm still not sure about it. Food shouldn't require a calculator. Nor should it take over half an hour to make a salad. But, I decided if I'm going to do this I Am Crossfit thing I'm going to do it right. And, like any lab procedure or fitness movement, though, I assume one gets better with experience.


3 Block Dinner:

• Salad (2.65 oz spinach, 0.5 cucumber, 2 slices ham, 1.5 oz feta cheese, 2 T (1 ounce) avacado)
• 2 Triscuits
• 3 cashews
• 1 cup milk

What I learned:

• It takes a heck of a lot of spinach to get to 5.333 ounces (1.333 cups) worth.
• Food shouldn't require a calculator.
• The right amount of spinach is way more filling than the zone equivalent of Triscuits.
• This is going to take some will-power and time and mindfulness.
• That left over pumpkin bread is looking really tasty, even after a delicious salad.

I am Crossfit part I

Crossfit Central is doing the "I Am Crossfit" program to kick off 2009 - intense workouts outside of class in addition to the usual and zone dieting, keeping a food journal, before and after measurements, the whole bit.

Benchmark workout is 3 rounds of:
400m run
15 pullups
7 hanging cleans

I chose the 65 lb weight and attempted pull ups with a band and today I didn't finish in the given 12 minutes. Disappointing, but there's nowhere to go but up. And, not doing olympic lifts very often or being able to do even a single real pull up I knew I was really challenging myself. So, here's to 2009. Fitter, faster, and more of a bad ass on the rugby pitch.