One thing at a time

Hello friends! Hope everyone is having a great week.

Yesterday's vitals:

B: Egg & 2 pieces of bacon, with smoothie - orange, applesauce, coconut milk, spirulina, spinach, ice

S: larabar

L: leftover roast from Sunday (no sauce this time!) with red peppers, spinach & olive oil

D: Went to the Mocs radio show for the first time in forever at B dubbs, got a bunless burger with lettuce, tomato, onions and.....eek.....pepper jack cheese

S: apple & banana with almond butter & cinnamon, I was starving! Crazy WOD at Crossfit Brigade. 

As a team complete in any order:a possible 3 people working at 1 time
(bar, jump rope, row)
Rotate teammates whenever and as often as you like
90 Power Cleans, 90 SDHP, 90 DL 3000m Row, 1000 DU
You get 1 Bar which will start at 60kg for RX MEN and 45kg for Scaled MEN and RX Ladies (other scales TBD).
For every lady on your team subtract 5reps, 100m, and 50DUs. (guys and girls use the same bar)
Scaled will sub attempts for Doubles (no multiplication scale – you must try to DU or find someone who can)
You may have several ropes on hand but only 1 person jumping at a time.
The rower will count down so you know when you are done with that.

My team finished in about 43 minutes- I rowed about 1000 I think, I only did 10 of the SDHPs- thank goodness, 35 deadlifts & 30 power cleans at a 25kg weight. I did end up carrying my team in double unders! I did about 340 of the 750 we needed to do-- hit a couple of great strides, but towards the end of each 100 I was only getting one at a time and attempts. 

We also did back squats, my legs were so tired from the DU's that I could barely do my 80%. Instead of 80, 85, 90 I did more like 70, 75 & 80- did two at 80% and failed the third try. It is funny how its kind of good to fail in CrossFit, in fact I think someone said "Good fail Ali, way to end it." When you fail, you know you've pushed yourself hard enough for that day! I think it makes sense, sometimes you gotta fail to know how to succeed.

Now I'd like to address dinner. Soooooooo, I know I said I would subtract a point if I ate any dairy, well I ate dairy, and I'd like to take back my statement if I can. I feel like I should be in the no excuses zone, Biggest Loser style--however, let's be honest, they eat grains, etc.-- but this challenge is hard enough, and by challenge standards I didn't cheat, and I don't want to lose any more points if I can help it after the pie. 

Talking to Brandy tonight, she made a good point with her food adventures when she simply said: one thing at a time. 

This can be applied to more than food and ties in nicely with patience, worrying less, not being perfect and being good to ourselves. Quite often, I get excited about something, or multiple things, and sign up for it all and try to everything at once and try to give it my all and I end up overwhelmed and not able to keep up, like eliminating dairy completely for the rest of the challenge, when I'm already eliminating a ton of other stuff!

Let's focus on my dairy consumption pre-challenge:

typical B: oatmeal - not always with milk but sometimes, eggs loaded with cheese, an egg & cheese quesadilla with three different kinds of cheese, and most often before work a bolthouse farms dairy chocolate sugary drink (it had lots of iron and included coffee! I thought I was so healthy and smart-- can't wait to have one of those again actually...but wont be having them often)

typical L: wrap, salad or sandwich- all with cheese, sometimes more than one kind, about once a week I'd have a side of mac & cheese- with lunch or dinner

typical D: quesadilla with different cheeses, pizza, spaghetti with meat & cheese, some sort of baked meat with melted cheese, tacos with cheese

I had dairy for every meal!! Now look at me, one piece of pepper jack cheese-- and I am saying take away a point (granted it was punishment for cheating)...but I mean come on, crazy strict Ali, give yourself a break...one thing at a time already!

So again, I will attempt to go without dairy as long as I can- but I'm not losing anymore points in this thing if I can help it! That being said, there may be a glass of wine in my future this weekend with Jenn visiting...but I'm going to try hard to resist-- 10 days left people! 10 days...

Day 31's vitals:

B: 1 egg, banana & almond butter

S: larabar

L: cajun turkey and veggies (pre-made paleo)

D: spaghetti squash and chicken, roasted red peppers, pablano peppers & roma tomatoes seasoned in italian, pepper & garlic-- drizzled with olive oil, delish!! Leftovers for lunch tomorrow!

S: apple with almond butter and cinnamon

WOD was FRAN (not sure about the music choice for this demo video, but whatevs...)
- a CrossFit benchmark favorite!

Warmup: Run, Row, or Jump Rope for 2 minutes, then 2×10 of: Shoulder Dislocations, OHS, Leg Swings, Rolling V-Sits, Leg Wipers, Lateral Lunges Skills:  Kipping techniques – C-swing & Butterflying + Thruster (grab a bar & focus on form & technique – add weight for 2 sets of 5)

Work:  Fran-- I did it in 4:42 with 17kg
Three rounds, 21-15- and 9 reps, for time of:
95 pound Thruster
Pull-ups with black band- straight leg

Strength:  Shoulder Press 3@70%, 3@80%, MR @ 90%

I dropped over 2 minutes in my FRAN time-- crazy. Granted I saw in my notes I was sick the last time I did FRAN- but I added 2 kgs to equal 17kg on my thruster. After the workout I thought, I went pretty fast, I should've added more weight closer to 20kg, used a smaller pull up band...blah blah shoulda woulda coulda crap. One thing at a time! I went faster and got the speed and am excited about that, now next time I'll add a little more weight to challenge myself. One day, I'll also be able to do butterfly pull ups. 

Interestingly enough at church this past Sunday, the parable was about baking bread. To bake bread, you have to do three things 

1. Fold 2. Push 3. Turn

This is a lot like our faith, and we are all at different stages at different times. We need to fold by listening to his word, push it in to an area in our life- reflect/ apply, and then turn to push the word in another area of our life. It's a process, and it takes time. Our pastor shared that its good practice to take in one word at a time and really let it process and do good in our life-- one thing at a time! :)