Didn’t really mean to take 3 rest days, but it just worked out that way with my schedule and other things that were planned. Did more adventuring around Portland for most of the weekend. Hung out at CrossFit Pearl District for a little bit on Saturday to socialize and cheer them on for Fight Gone Bad.
Rode to work and back. LOVING my new bike. Love it.
5:45pm - Yoga at Inner Elements Yoga
Went to yoga with Willow at Inner Elements. She started a new curriculum this week, so this particular class I go to is on a 9 week cycle starting this week that goes over all the foundational elements of yoga - poses, terminology, practices, etc. I’m very excited about it, to have a better understanding of everything. Her husband, Robert, who I’ve known for years was also in class and we had a great talk afterward. Awesome class experience tonight!
Rode to work and back. Keep getting stopped by this darn train in the mornings that makes me late to work. It crosses my path twice and is ridiculously long. Going to try leaving a little earlier and see if I can avoid it. It makes my 10-15 min commute a 20-30 minute one.
Legs were TIRED this morning from Bear Complex activities. Not sore, just tired.
I was excited for the workout today and to start moving real weights around again! I am also doing some product testing and had myself all taped up on my lower back and collarbone with RockTape and put some Rock Juice on my lower back as well. I am going to use it a few more times before totally deciding, but I think it actually did make a difference in my pain level and recovery after the workout. I am taping up everything from now on if this is the case!!
5 rounds, for time:
4 Bear Complex (power clean, front squat, push press, back squat, push press) - 85#
10 knees-to-elbows 17:00??
The clock got turned off before I was done. :(
Also, the no-chalk thing at Woodstock is KILLING me. LOL It makes me so nervous to kip K2E with no chalk that I end up going really slowly. GRRR. I think this is also the heaviest I’ve gone overhead in a long time, since even before my move I was avoiding overhead stuff due to neck/migraine issues…and I got a migraine this morning. I took my magical herbs from Alyssa and that helped, but still frustrating. Got to get into the chiro and acupuncturist here and get in a health care routine and see if I can fix this whole deal.
I really have no idea how far we biked, but it was at minimum 30 miles. It was a bit of a cruising speed/tourist ride, with a few parts where we decided to get serious for a while. Some was city biking, some was awesome awesome scenery along the Leif Erickson trail in the hills north west of Portland, and then went over the St. Johns bridge, which was really cool…and lots lots more awesome scenery. Oh, and we took the sky tram up the hill to OHSU and then coasted like maniacs all the way down the hill. Way too much fun. Somewhere in there we stopped for BBQ, too - that was good, too!
I was using a new bike that the bikeshop let me borrow for 24 hours for no charge and part way through the day I decided it was the right bike for me so I called them up and officially bought it. So the Kona Dr. Dew is mine. Gotta get a rack, bags, lights, etc, for it but I officially have a bike! YAY!!
Was in so much pain last night, muscular soreness, that every time I rolled over in my sleep it woke me up. Ugh! Felt much much better throughout the day, but hamstrings still really tight.
After work - I went bike shopping!
Haven’t committed to anything yet but the bike shop gave me one of the bikes on 24 hour loan, a Kona Dr. Dew. Gonna ride it 40 miles or so on Saturday and then decide if it’s the one!
I have trained with the owner of CF Stumptown before - he previously ran CF Gresham out of the Team Quest MMA gym and this is his brand new second location. It’s literally about eight blocks east of my apartment, and Portland blocks are shorter than LA blocks. The crazy thing is if I go eight blocks west of my apartment there’s another gym, CF Portland. They are reaching saturation level here!
The workout had sumo deadlift high pull and toes to bar in it, which I have done entirely too much of this week, so Tony, the owner, swapped stuff out for me. I possibly shouldn’t have even worked out, as my body felt wrecked, but I went light and didn’t push super hard. Lungs feel, maybe, a tiny bit better?
I think it was like 22:31 or something in there. They don’t have a big clock and I can’t remember quite what Tony called out from his stopwatch. Got distracted being social afterward and didn’t take a picture of the whiteboard.
Tomorrow is a REST day…and buy my new bike day, too! Going after work to get it, then scheduled for a 40 mile ride circumnavigating Portland on Saturday. Yay!
Rode to work and back - 6 miles round trip. Getting better at steering the behemoth of a bike I am currently riding. ...annnnnnd I am getting my own brand new bike on Saturday! So excited. Bringing in a pinch-hitter bike expert to help me pick one out. He even called ahead to make sure they have bikes built that are my size and in my price range. Yay for my own more-awesomer soon-to-be bike!
6:00pm - CrossFit Woodstock
I’ve worked out here a few times now. Each time with a different coach. This time the head of the affiliate, Winslow, taught the class. Lots of foam rolling built into the warm-up and cool-down, which was really good. Made my back feel much more open and my calves less achy. I really do feel like a slightly mobile ball of scar tissue and adhesions some days. Felt much better after the workout tonight!
12-9-6-3
Sumo Deadlift High Pull (65#)
Deadhang Pull Ups 6:55
SDLHP at this weight is no problem. Can totally rock on those. Winslow’s rule on DH pull ups, though, was that you had to be able to totally open your shoulders at the bottom, so if I wanted to do supinated pull ups I had to do them on the rings. Umm…hard! Did a few, but was super slow so he had me switch to pronated ones with a rubberband. Ugh. I suck at pronated deadhang! Guess I know what I need to practice.
Feeling so good to get so many workouts in this week! I mean, my lungs feel awful and I’m neither fast nor strong, but I feel GOOD.
Soooo…is it rude to bleed all over somebody’s barbell the first time you ever visit their gym?
Realized too late today that I have done so little CrossFit lately that I haven’t cared for my calluses…and there were 75 toes-to-bar on tap.
5 rounds, for time:
15 deadlifts (125#)
15 toes-to-bar 18:34
I was sloooooow, but I’m 100% okay with that. It felt good just to move weights and make big motions with my body. Deadlifts I did in 2-3 sets each time. RX was 135# but I’m trying to be sensible since I’m ramping back in. T2B I suck at kipping. I kind of got a few in the beginning, but pretty much just enough to jack up my hands.
I liked this gym a lot—clean, neat, organized, really great bunch of people, supportive, cheering, helping each other out. Even ran into someone I met before who used to be a coach at another gym up here, CrossFit HEL. This place is about a half mile from my office and has a shower, too, so I could work out at 5:30pm easily or come in the morning and shower. Hmmm…still going to do some more visiting before I commit, but this one is looking like a good prospect.
So this whole Portland thing continues to be…well…“funny” in how it’s worked out, but I’m not questioning it at all. I knew one of my friends from high school lived here, but I ended up moving into an apartment less than a mile from her house. And this past week I discovered something else. A friend of mine I’ve known for years who used to manage the gym of the fight team I worked with up here, his wife runs a yoga studio. Well, it turns out it is 2 blocks from my apartment.
A few years back I took yoga diligently for over a year in LA, but then my yoga school restructured and I wasn’t able to go anymore. I never found another teacher that I liked or length of class I liked (sorry, people, 90 minutes is way too long). Willow, the owner of Inner Elements, teaches 60 minute classes and teaches just how I liked them - mellow, but not slow pace and lots of anatomical description.
Things I learned in yoga today:
Crow position kills my triceps - how do you do that without horrible pain?
Breathing - we practiced the different types of breathing and I discovered I have ZERO ability to intentionally relax my core while holding a position. Too many years of keeping it tight! lol
~28-30 Mile Bike Ride - Springwater Corridor, Portland
So last Sunday, as I mentioned, was my second time on a bike in the last five and a half years, since my two ill-fated attempts at adventure racing. The only time I’d been on a bike since those adventure races was this past June - I did a three hour bike tour of Portland while I was here for the World Domination Summit. I loved every moment of it.
Last Sunday my high school friend, Kathy, loaned me one of her bikes, helped me figure out how to get to my place of work and back and then biked one of the street fairs with me. We covered about 12 miles total, but most of it quite slowly due to foot and bike traffic at the street fair. But again, I totally loved every moment on the bike.
Logically, based on these two leisurely affairs I decided I should become a cyclist and this would be my new sport. I even learned about criterium racing and thought, really, what could be cooler than a sport where you get to go fast AND elbow people?
So, with all this in mind, I got it in my head if I rode my bike to work and back every day that coming week, I should be acclimated enough to do a 30 mile bike ride that upcoming Sunday (today). I am not entirely sure this was a smart or accurate thing to have in my head, but there it was.
And so, today is Sunday. And I rode to work and back four out of five days. And I found a map and a route that would cover 30 miles. And I bought new bike shorts and a bell.
I’m totally prepared, right?
The weather was perfection today. I started at the Eastbank Esplanade, went south and found the start of the Springwater Corridor - a paved path 21 miles in length, converted from old railway to a biker and pedestrian only pathway. I successfully navigated the Sellwood Gap by myself (a section of the corridor…where there is no corridor and you have to use city streets to find where it starts again) and I made it to Powell Butte Park before I turned around and came back.
The one thing that didn’t work today was my newly purchased odometer, which I will have it fixed by next time, but the corridor has markers every half mile. So, it’s approximately 28-30 miles that I covered today.
11:00am - CrossFit Excellence park workout at Foothills Park in Lake Oswego
Met up with Cody and Jennifer of CrossFit Excellence for a fun workout in a gorgeous park! Lengthy and slow paced warmup - which was good, ‘cause I am old, slow and creaky right now. Collarbone is super irritated. Gonna double dose on fish oil and see if that helps.
3x
50 squats
Stair sprint
200m (ish?) run 10:46
Squats felt pretty steady, the stairs weren’t too high, but ugh I had no lungs for the run. This was perfect stuff for me right now to just get the heart and lungs going.
Afterward we had a potluck in the park. Beautiful day!
Gotta get a rack, bags, lights, etc, for it but I officially have a bike! YAY!!