Beautiful Weekend.

The last half of this week has brought on some amazing weather and I've been taking full advantage of it.  On Wednesday, two friends and I went up Grouse mountain in the morning.  The sun was out for the first few hours, then some fog rolled in.  Overall it was a great day up the mountain.  The snow was hard packed, but we found some great powder in the Quicksilver terrain park.  Yesterday was sunny as well.  I spent almost the whole day outside with a buddy of mine.  In the morning we did some archery in the forest behind my house.  My friend owns a bow, so we made a make shift buttress out of styrofoam and carpet.  I still need a bit more practice before I can shoot accurately from a distance.  After that we hit the driving range to practice some golf.  Then we went on a bike ride around Stanley Park.  This was the longest ride I've taken on my new road bike, however it was only 25km.  After we got back from our ride, we went to the hobby shop near Capilano Mall and bought a remote controlled airplane.  It took a beating as my friend was learning to fly it.  Near the end of the battery life he started to get the hang of it.  The weather is supposed to hold up tomorrow.  I hope it does because I'm supposed to go on a long trail run.

L-Sit Madness

Had a fun little workout this morning.
Part one was 5 rounds of:
10 ring dips
10 good mornings
60 seconds rest

My dips were feeling a lot better than usual.  I hit the first two sets unbroken.  I got 8 reps on the third set, then the last two deteriorated more.  The second part of the workout was much more painful.

5 rounds of:
10 push press
30 seconds of L-sit
60 seconds rest

I chose to go with 115 lbs for the push press which felt good.  The later sets got a little tough, but I managed to hit all of them unbroken.  The L-sits on the other hand were horrible.  After the first round I was having a hard time holding it for longer than 10 seconds at a time.  I'm taking a day off tomorrow to go snowboarding, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

Trail Running and Squat Cleans

A few members of our gym have signed up for the tough mudder this year.  It is a 10 mile long obstacle course that is going to be set up in whistler.  To train for the event, we've started doing some supplemental endurance running.  We've chosen a trail run that is roughly 5km up by the Cleveland dam.  I ran it this Sunday, with a bit of a hangover, and managed to finish in 32 minutes.  I'll be taking that time down next time I run it for sure.  This morning I got a new personal record on my squat clean and jerk.  My previous best was 185lbs.  I was feeling fairly good today and managed to get 195lbs overhead.  The split jerk was fairly ugly though.  Next time I'm going to focus more on my technique rather than the weight.

Angie

Today our coach programmed Angie.  100 pull ups, 100 push ups, 100 sit ups, 100 squats.  You are not allowed to break up the rep scheme.  In other words, you must complete the 100 pull ups before moving onto the 100 push ups.  The only bad part of this workout for me was my push ups.  I finished the workout in 26:59 and about 10-15 minutes of that was the push ups.  I realize they are something I should be working on a lot.  After the gym, I decided to go take my motorcycle knowledge test at icbc.  I've been meaning to do it for a while, and one of our gym members pushed me to get it.  I hadn't studied for the test, but thought it would be easy enough to do the first time.  I failed with 75%.  There were a few questions that I should have answered correctly that I messed up.  I need 80% to pass, and I'm sure I'll get it tomorrow.

Open Recap

This years crossfit open was a big success for me.  I learned that I have improved a lot from last year.  In 2011 I finished around the 86th percentile in Canada West.  This year I finished 343rd out of 671 places.  That translates to the 51st percentile.  I wanted to finish in the top half, and very nearly achieved that goal.  I think if my shoulder to overhead and snatch were a bit better, then I would have scored higher on WOD's 12.2 and 12.3.  I've signed up to volunteer at the regionals which will be held at the end of April out at the Richmond Olympic facility.  The next thing I want to nail down is my diet.  I have been to lax recently.  More on this to come, perhaps an April Paleo challenge.

Final Open WOD Finished

After 5 weeks, the crossfit open competition is over for me.  I did the final workout this morning.  Last year I managed to get 78 reps.  I bested that effort this year with 96 reps.  I'm quite happy with my result.  Initially I thought I'd like to get somewhere around 100.  Then after seeing the scores posted before today, I started thinking that 90 was more realistic.  I'll have to wait until Monday to see where I ended up in the overall standings, but I think I'll be around the middle of the pack in Canada West, which pleases me.  After the workout, many of our gym members went for a delicious lunch at Earls to reward our hard work.  This open competition was a great success for me.  It showed me how much I have improved from last year (a lot).  I look forward to watching the regionals and games.

Open WOD 12.5

So 12.5 got announced yesterday evening.  It is a repeat of last years final open workout.  A 7 minute escalating Fran ladder.  The rep scheme is:  3 thrusters, 3 chest to bar pull ups, 6 thrusters, 6 CTB pull ups, 9 thrusters, 9 CTB pull ups etc.  The thruster weight for the guys is 100lbs, 5 pounds heavier than Fran.  Last year I managed to get 78 reps.  My initial goal for this year is 100 reps.  I think I should be able to do the round of 9 unbroken, and then I'll have to start breaking up the thrusters and pacing myself.  I did Fran for the first time late last year. It took me 5:56 and completely messed me up.  Thankfully this workout is quite different from Fran.  If you don't pace yourself a bit, you will burn out fast.  It's still going to hurt though.