Wednesday night, I met Karen, and she made me weak in the knees, and hips, and legs, and arms.
Karen is actually the name of a crossfit workout. It requires you to do 150 Wallballs for time. Jay (trainer) had us pair up for this exercise. One person did the workout, while the other person kept him or her honest. In order to complete one wallball rep, your butt needs to touch the ball or pad below you and the ball must reach a certain height when you throw it. If you miss either of those, the rep doesn't count toward your total. Oh, and the person not doing the exercise counts the number of reps because it doesn't take long for the person doing the exercise to be unable to count.
My partner was Craig, and in spite of me trying to bribe him before we started, he kept me honest. He was great. He called me out on every short toss and pushed me to get it higher. And Craig did an awesome job when it was his turn to wallball. I know that he was wiped by the end of it, but he managed to push out the last 15 reps without a break. By the end of my turn I was doing between 5 and 10 reps and taking a break. I wondered if I could have pushed just as hard. When we do this again, I will be excited to see if I can match Craig's final push.
Karen is a benchmark workout, so we will use this score as a baseline, and we will retest in the coming months in order to monitor our progress. Me baseline is just under 10 minutes.
Rucking
Last night was a night off of the gym; 3 days on and 1 day off. But I’ve got this pesky marathon to train for. I realize that I’m only going to be able to do training runs three days a week. I will do one long run a week and two maintenance runs to get some miles on my feet. I also need to get complete some miles with a pack on to get ready for the challenge.
Jeff (trainer) set me up with weekly mileage and weight goals through November and the challenge. This is my first week, and I am supposed to complete 2 miles twice during the week with a 20 lb. pack. Since I needed to do a 4 mile maintenance run, I decided to combine the two. I thought I would warm up with 2 miles without the pack, but I was still feeling Karen's effects. I ran the first mile without the pack, the next 2 miles with the pack (slowly), and the last glorious mile without the pack. That last mile felt good. I will ask tonight whether it’s a good idea to run with that weight, or if I should just be moving at a fast walk.
After that, it was time for beer league softball. Last night was a double header. I’m like a dog out there. I love playing center field, and I love chasing the ball. As soon as it is hit I can’t help but run after it. I imagine that is what a dog feels like during a good game of fetch. Since scores don’t matter (aka we lost), we just focused on having a good time. Did I mention it is lawyer league softball? We can only take it so seriously.
No comments:
Post a Comment