I could not have asked for a better day than today to run a road race for the first time in about 20 years. Val and her friends had previously decided to run this race and Val entered me then told me this after the fact! I used to live in Seal Beach and remember this race well. It has a great small-town atmosphere about it and is certainly not the monstrosity the LA Marathon was a few weeks back. There were 3,500 people running and walking the events today. Val and I met her friend and co-worker, Jeanette at her Seal Beach home, blocks from the start. The previous evening, while dining at Lucille’s in Belmont Shore, our favorite bartender and server decided she would run the 5K on the spur of the moment! Our new friend Tracy proved her mettle and game by refusing to take the 5K turnaround and forge ahead to continue to run the 10K instead. My buddy Brent raced and although we did not have the good fortune to see him, he ran the 10K in 47: something…an absolutely awesome performance by “The Oak” who gets all his running, as I do, by doing Crossfit.

While we are talking about awesome performances, Val kicked butt and finished in 45:52 and took home the third place medal in her age division in the very first 10K race she has ever run! Way to go rookie! Some of her Snail’s Pace team runners also ran and did very well and we all had a great time afterwards at our post-race brunch.

My performance was pedestrian, which I suppose is another way to say I was almost walking. I did the 5K hokey-pokey, with more pokey than hokey in 28:04. It just happened that the next Crossfit WOD for me was to be the 5k run, for time. I did the 5K run, for a slow, but good time! 

The fitness industry is a mega-billion dollar industry with a seemingly endless variety of ways to stay or get in shape. Some work and some are gimmicks. Some are simple and some are complex. But one of the simplest  methods of physical conditioning uses a piece of equipment far more complex than any fitness machine and that is your body.

Back in the day, in PE class we did things like push-ups, sit-ups, toe touches and jumping jacks and we hated them, but they did work back then and they still work and are in wide use today, only now we call them "bodyweight exercises". There is a website that is all about bodyweight exercises for fitness. It is called bodyweightculture.com On that website, they take all those "old school" exercises and add all new variations on the theme. So, when you don’t want to go to the gym, (I didn’t today), or even leave the house to workout, just do some of those bwt exercises and you will be amazed at the results. Today, I did 300 push-ups in the living room. Here is what how it turned out:

3 rounds of 100 push-ups for time, 5 minutes rest between rounds. Proper form observed.
Round 1: 2:40 in 5 splits
Round 2: 3:18 in 8 splits
Round 3: 6:18 in 13 splits

I have never had a pickle and a piece of Belgian dark chocolate together. I wouldn’t think to find penguins in the Amazon rain forest and I wouldn’t expect a Muslim to get some barbecue pork and down a couple of shots with me. Some things naturally just don’t go well together, some you would never expect to see together and others you wonder why they are even together. (I did not mean to make a reference to my dating past). Interesting things can result sometimes like "hey, you got chocolate in my peanut butter" Reeses’s peanut butter cups.

This evening’s WOD was kind of like that. I did high repetition deadlifts and between lifts went out and ran 400+ meters. It wasn’t long before the runs looked like something else, like a cry for help. Here is what I got done in 21:41…

4 rounds, for time,
Deadlifts @ bodyweight (200#) 21, 15, 12, 9 reps
4 x 450 meter runs between deadlift rounds.

My warm-up was two rounds of the standard Crossfit method, which is effective at getting a sluggish body like mine ready for high intensity work. I added to the affect by wearing a 20# weighted vest on all, except the initial 800 meter warm-up run.

This is one of those workouts that you look at and say "Ok, I can do that. No problem."  Except that once I got underway, I understood this would be a "problem" for about 20 minutes. I walked out of the gym tonight in a haze and a blank gaze but snapped out of it in time for dinner.

According to Eric Cressey, "deadlifts enable a lifter to use more loading, thus ensuring that more motor units and, in turn, muscle fibers will be recruited all over the body. The more fibers you recruit, the greater your stimulus for growth. And, if you’re looking to shed body fat, the post-exercise oxygen debt will be larger from recruiting more muscle mass, meaning that your metabolic rate will be really jacked up for longer after the end of your training session". That is a good thing!

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This 48 minute video by conservative humorist/pundit Evan Sayet speaking at the heritage Foundation is quite good and worth your time to listen. Good material and a good speaker. I’ve never hear of this guy, though. Of course, if you are a liberal, you probably wouldn’t like it even f you do listen to it! I enjoyed it and played it in the background while doing other things.

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Of all the sport drinks out there, and there are many, which one is the best for optimal human performance (excluding beer)? Gatorade, Powerade, Cytomax? How about Endura or Muscle Milk? How about H2O. Water. Water is not only the best sports performance drink, without it there is poor performance or no performance at all. I found that out tonight at the start of my workout. I realized I drank very little water today, maybe only a glass and a half.

This is the workout I intended to do tonight, minus the rowing, from the Crossfit site:

Complete 40 intervals of 20 seconds of work followed by ten seconds
of rest. Perform 8 consecutive intervals of each of the following
exercises:

Wall-ball 20 pound ball, 10 ft target. (Reps)
Sumo deadlift high-pull 75 pounds (Reps)
Box Jump 20″ box (Reps)
Push-press 75 pounds (Reps)
Row (Calories)

What happened was just as I was starting the second exercise, the Sumo deadlift high-pull, I just stopped. I was extremely thirsty and I had no stamina to continue, so I didn’t. I went to the drinking fountain to fill up on the precious fluid, but by then, it was too late. Time for Plan B. I decided it would be a good alternative to work on things I want to improve, namely pull-ups, back squats and exercise to the long-injured adductors. It was a good plan and I love it when a plan comes together, even if it is a Plan B.

Here is how it played out at the gym tonight:

•Wall-ball 15 pound ball, 10 ft target. (8 x 20 sec, 10 sec. rest)
•Alternated between 6×3 back squats and
•6 x 25 of box jumps, (step-ups actually)
The weights on the back squats were 175/185/155/175/175/175. The goal was to work on improving form, especially going ass to ankles and holding it before coming out of the “hole”.
•Pull-ups, 10/10/11/8. I am getting a little closer to true kipping pull-ups.
Total time was about 30 minutes.

Lesson learned. Call it what you want, hydrate, drink water-a lot of it and the performance and good health return.

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This WOD just does me in most every time. In the 6 times I have done this, my times vary widely, from 22:00 to today’s 26:31. To remind, Michael is three rounds for time of:

Run 800 meters
50 Back Extensions
50 Abmat Sit-ups

Looks simple, and it is but it is damn tough. (Brent, I could have used you today, especially during the run). Many of these metabolic burners for time go a lot better when you have others close in ability suffering nearby and the times drop accordingly. I got to the gym much later than I would have liked after a long day. (Ok, my excuse is on record).

Michael is a great gut-check workout and I look forward to it. My times have the best chance of dropping during the 800 meter runs. I gotta sell out on the runs. Last time, the push-ups were hardest but today it was the back extensions that slowed me down.

I think I have not been doing metcon workouts as much lately as I feel like I lost a little conditioning but it looks like I will get another good one tomorrow to get back in that groove before doing some lifting.

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All The Rocky Movies in 5 Seconds

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More from guywiththeglasses

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I wanted to skate flat today and the Santa Ana River Trail was the perfect choice.

I started out from home and headed to Back Bay and went under the Jamboree bridge to the SART. This is a great trail that goes on for many miles and is one of the best places to skate long in Orange County. Today, I did a 60 minute skate out and back to the metal bridge near the hockey rink. The distance was 12.75 miles which of course, is the same as my mph. I started off easy to to work and loosen the adductors and I had no pain on the left side. Today, the right side gave me some problems, so I started off easier and the first 15 minutes were warm-up. No big bursts of speed today as this was completely aerobic and I was giving movement to assist the adductors in healing, While the addie was noticed throughout, it was a good workout and an enjoyable skate. 

Each time I do the WOD, I come away saying, "yeah, I need to work more on that", or "I have to do better than this". The reality of it is that as long as you do this, that or on a path to mastery in any endeavor, it only ends when you do, so it is helpful to simply enjoy the journey otherwise you will be unsatisfied and unfulfilled, like going into a French chocolate and pastry shop after a filling, but ordinary dinner as I did with Val and Brent the other evening. My visual and olfactory senses were going wild, but they did not receive the satisfaction they craved.

I believe all that, really, I do. But, then there was today with the weighted pull-ups WOD (check out this video) then look at the  puny numbers I put up. You’ll understand what I am talking about. I have all I can do to crank out a few regular bodyweight pull-ups. Seriously, these guys are mutants or, rather,  "I need to work on that more"!

My  session  included a 20# weighted vest and I used a 3# leather and chain thingy (kinky, huh?) to hold additional weights. After warming up with hangs and bodyweight pull-ups, I donned the vest and did
1×20/2×20 then singles of 33/38/43/38/38/. After that, I did 6×33# negatives and held it up for as long as I could which wasn’t long at all! I hadn’t even seen that video until after my workout. I wanted to go back and "try" it again using the heavy iron! But it was fun. It was a good workout and my pull-ups will improve. Think I’ll go skate this afternoon. It is the closest thing I do that is "weightless".

The Push Press 7×3 made a return visit to the menu. The last time I did this was 1/28/07. In that post, I said I had a little left in the tank and the same was true tonight, but once again, saved it for another day, Even so, I increased my best 3 lift total from 155 to 170 lbs tonight.

This was a good Friday late afternoon workout. It did not take long to do today and was low-key. My 3 reps lifts were: 95/115/135/145/155/160/170 pr/135.