The Oracle of Apollo Snippets from the life of Apollo Lee

CrossFit Day 13

Today’s workout, like Sunday’s deadlifts, was technically impossible without an Olympic barbell weight set. Lacking that, I decided to do something. So, I got my dumbbells and kettlebells out, put each pair up on my shoulders, and attempted the back squat with progressively increasing, albeit very very light weight. While the real workout called for 3 reps per set, I decided to do ten. Back squats with a 53 pound kettlebell require balance.

My heart rate monitor lost my signal for a few moments, as well. It seems that losing weight means losing inches. You have to keep snugging up the strap. Oops.

My results: 6:05, 3:16 zone; HR: 156 avg, 179 max; 76 cal (that’s it?)
Weights: 2×10#, 2×15#, 1×35# (KB), 2×20#, 2×25#, 1×53# (KB), 2×30#

CrossFit Day 12

Today’s workout was a doozy, a brutal circuit that, despite my scaling it down, left me nearly dizzy. I came home, realized I was low on my favorite foods, and postponed the fun until after a trip to Whole Foods and a good meal. Just before 9, I put on my warm kayaking shirt, measured out my distance (about 420 meters round trip) and stretched out for a few minutes.

The workout is the following (my substitutions in italics):

For time:

1. 400 meter run, 60 dumbbell thrusters (2 × 10#), 30 pushups.
2. 400 meter run, 40 dumbbell thrusters, 20 pushups
3. 400 meter run, 30 dumbbell thrusters, 15 pushups
4. 400 meter run.

Yeah, I know! Brutal, right? Well, it was prescribed for wall balls and handstand pushups. I haven’t had the time to convert my cheap glow-in-the-dark rubber basketball into a 20 pound medicine ball yet. I’m still weak enough in the upper body that handstand pushups are just not happening.

I could feel my form, particularly on the thrusters, crumbling as I got more and more tired. I had to subdivide my sets into fives or sixes. My first 20 pushups were good, but I need to shake my arms out too frequently. On the second round, I forgot what I was doing and only did 15 pushups, so I did the extra five on the next round. My initial mapping made me think I was running 400 meters, but it turns out to be about 420. I felt pretty good for most of the exercise, but it’s very evident to me that I have a long way to go to reach my goals. If it was easy, though, everybody would do it.

My results: 25:25; 10:15 zone (hard); HR: 164 avg, 183 max; 384 cal (25% fat).

Onward!

CrossFit Day 11

Today’s workout shouldn’t be too bad. Three rounds for time of: 35 double unders (that’s a jump rope thing where the rope passes under your feet twice each bounce, instead of once), 25 thrusters (I’m at 40 pounds, instead of the 95 prescribed), and 15 pullups.

So, when I got home, the house was full. I decided to set up in my studio on the linoleum strip of floor that marks the hallway. Of course, now I can’t find the rubber foot for my pullup bar. Scratch pullups. I decided to substitute one pullup and one chair dip for each. Okay, let’s dance.

After watching the video on the post, I got some ideas about why I can’t seem to do more than three or four consecutive jumps. Instead of trying to get double unders, let’s just go for single unders today. The thrusters get progressively harder, but they’ll get easier and I’ll ramp the weight up some day. But, today, the thrusters were with 20 pound dumbbells. I didn’t do the full set in one fell swoop in any of the three rounds, but subdivided all the exercises. I especially didn’t want to drop a 20 pound dumbbell on my noodle when I started to get tired.

I definitely have a lot of work to do, but I did about as well as I expected to. After the second set, I was sweating hard enough that I needed my kayaking gloves in order to maintain my hold on the dumbbells. Sweat + Steel = Slip.

My results: 23:25, 8:54 zone (hard); HR: 167 avg, 183 max; 369 cal (20% fat)

CrossFit Day 10

Today’s workout called for seven sets of one deadlift, aiming to find out max lift. Unfortunately, I don’t have an Olympic weight set at my house, so I had to use this one as a supplemental to practice my form on the deadlift with dumbbells and kettlebells. Since I have seven sets of dumbbells and kettlebells, I used those. In about 8 minutes, I did 10 reps on each of them, totally 20 lb, 30 lb, 35 lb (kettlebell), 40 lb, 50 lb, 53 lb (kettlebell), 60 lb.

Someday, I shall have to go to a local CrossFit gym and see if I can do these for reals. I’ll work like this for a while, building myself up. I’ll definitely feel this in my back and legs, and that hike all over.

My results: 7:55; HR: 144 avg, 165 max; 95 cal

Big Basin Redwoods State Park

Today, Ozreiousn, her friend Adam, and I wandered into the Santa Cruz Mountains to hike an epic set of trails in a loop more than ten miles long. We started out fairly early, coffeed up, and headed up into the mountains. Our destination: Big Basin Redwoods State Park, the oldest state park in California, full of old growth redwoods that were large trees when Columbus found land in the West Indies. After winding through more than eight miles of an extremely windy highway 236, which becomes one lane for about seven of those miles, we arrived at the beautiful park headquarters on the highway, explored the visitor’s center, and used the bathroom before a long and grueling journey.

The trail is marked “strenuous” for a reason. It is certainly not for the faint-legged. Huge climbs show off beautiful views inside the forest, which give way to ledged trails cut out of the hillside and through fallen trees. After a few miles, we hooked to the right and started a hard climb northward. Before long, we found the first of three waterfalls. Climbing past the falls was tricky, steep, but well worth the effort. After a quick snack, we connected with Sunset Trail for the journey back. My new GPS unit, the Garmin Vista HCX seemed to be unable to track our progress on the trip computer, the speed box on the compass panel showed us at 0.0 mph quite often, and the map seemed to only grab us every 80 – 100 feet. When we returned exhausted to the park headquarters, the trip computer showed us at 6.25 miles (which is 4.15 short). On saving the route, the GPS calculated the route distance correctly.

The last half of the hike over Sunset Trail was less scenic, but it might have been because we were getting tired of climbing. The first trail we had taken had allowed us to drop in elevation by more than 500 feet. We braved the uphill climbs and allowed for frequent catch-our-breath breaks. That was certainly a strenuous hike, but well worth the effort.

My results: 10.40 miles in 5:24:35; HR: 114 avg, 158 max; 2515 cal (55% fat) => 1383.25 cal fat.

We certainly earned our dinner at Tandoori Cafe this evening. Whew.

CrossFit Day 9

Today’s workout was a choice of two “girls”: Cindy or Mary. I picked Cindy. Cindy is the name of a workout (CrossFit workouts are named for girls or soldiers killed in combat) that consists of doing rounds of five pullups, ten pushups, and fifteen air squats against a timer set for twenty minutes. As many rounds as you can, if you please, Mr. Apollo.

I’m not fully down with full pullups (I have maybe two, if I’m lucky). So, I do a jumping pullup, where I jump until I’m over the bar, then let myself fall back to full arm extension, resisting my downward movement as much as I can. I haven’t been doing very many pushups or pullups lately, so I’m weak in those areas.

I managed to complete six sets, but stopped the clock at 18:28. The first minute or so of the exercise involved me fiddling with my heart rate monitor. It’s been having some issues lately where the contacts don’t pick up the correct heart rate for some reason. For example, I walked 4.30 miles this afternoon at a pace of almost 4 miles an hour and the heart rate monitor had me at 105 bpm most of the time (that drives me absolutely crazy). Once I started, though, I could tell this one was going to be rough.

I’m not very good at pushups, which means I need to do a lot more of them. My wrists pop and crack and my hand position is always screwy. I get tired very quickly. After a few of the sets, I had to subdivide the ten rep sets into threes and twos and singles. There were a few times when I was pushing from the floor and I just didn’t have it and collapsed back down.

Six sets is far less than I expected to do, but I’m going to improve. But, wow. I am really weak. That’s only 30 negative jumping pullups, 60 pushups, and 90 squats. Next time, let’s shoot for ten sets.

Sixty-Four Days

I am 20.5 pounds lighter today than I was 64 days ago. I’m making progress. I now have 10.5 pounds to my goal of 165 pounds. I’m also working on increasing my overall fitness level by an exponent. I’ve been walking back and forth to the train station to work (I got a new job a month ago in San Francisco), which is almost two miles each way (my backpack weighs about 25 pounds). And eleven days ago, I started doing CrossFit workouts.

I’m really excited about the progress I’ve made and I look forward to chiseling myself into a well-oiled machine. Some of the workouts I do, even scaled back to 45%, make me feel like the feeblest weakest thing in the whole world. But, there’s a nice satisfaction with realizing that muscular soreness means progress. It just takes time.

29 Sep: 175.5 pounds (79.61 kg). BMI: 25.18. Overweight by 1.27 pounds
27 Jul: 196.0 pounds (88.90 kg). BMI: 28.12. Overweight by 21.76 pounds

Change: -20.5 pounds (-9.29 kg). BMI: -2.94.

Onward!

CrossFit Day 8

Today’s workout was a timed exercise: Do as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of a 400 meter run, followed by as many pullups as possible. Right now, as I work on my upper body strength, I’m subbing jumping negative pullups for the real deal. Instead of pushing super hard with residual soreness in my arms and upper back (workout soreness, not injury soreness), I decided to see if I could muster up four rounds with ten negative pullups per round.

Part of the difficulty this evening was the run. My 400 meter runs were across a dark grass field and back, then onto the bar. Unfortunately, the bar six feet above the ground rolls around. So, I worked on the five foot bar. I finished five rounds in all, one more than I expected. That’s 50 negative pullups and about 2100 meters running back and forth across grass. Not bad.

Splits (complete rounds): 3:42, 7:32, 12:10, 16:05, 19:27.

My results: 5 complete rounds in 20:00; HR: 174 avg, 189 max; 341 cal.

CrossFit Day 7

Today’s workout is really simple. Run 5 km for time. It’s been years since I ran any such distance. Usually, when I’m running, which has been less often lately than it was a month ago, I do two miles. I decided to go for the whole distance in one kick. My goal was to keep my lap time under 2:30 per lap. That’s not very fast, but it’s a good start at a 5 km distance. Since I had no way of accurately assessing a tenth of a mile after the 3 mile mark, I decided to go a little longer than the prescribed distance.

Thirteen laps came and went. I had a little tangle up with my retractable headphone cable (it doesn’t like to stay where I set it). But, even when I was starting to die of thirst, I just decided to relax into my steps, drop into the music, ignore the beeps of the heart rate monitor, and try to keep myself at a steady pace. I didn’t get on the track until well after sunset, but it was still about 75° outside. I bumped the pace up a little bit in the last lap.

My results: 3.25 miles (5.23 km) in 32:06; HR 175 avg, 196 max; 552 cal (15% fat)
Split average: 2:28. Fastest: 2:14 (last). Slowest: 2:34 (first)

Tomorrow, more running and more pullups.

CrossFit Day 6

Today’s workout called for five rounds for time of: 95 pound sumo deadlift high pulls (15 reps) and 95 pound thrusters (15 reps). I’ve been working at 45%, so I’m using 20 pound dumbbells today (for 40 pounds total). Sunday’s pullups and dips were quite brutal on my weak soft body. In fact, the hardest thing for me to do today, after a rest day yesterday, was to lift my arms over my head. My upper back, obliques, shoulders, and triceps are really sore. But, sore is good. Sore is progress.

It took some time to hammer out all five sets of thirty reps. I am quite certain I’ll feel this tomorrow. The middle set was the roughest. I had a much easier time with the sumo deadlift high pulls than the thrusters. For those not in the know, here’s a short description:

1. Sumo Deadlift High Pull: Legs shoulder width apart, squat down, grab the dumbbells, open to a stand and pull the dumbbells up to your collarbones, keeping your elbows above your wrists.
2. Thrusters: Starting with dumbbells at the collar bone, do a squat with the dumbbells, open to a stand, and press the dumbbells above your head (squat to push press).

My results: 22:05, 6:18 hard zone, HR: 165 avg, 182 max; 339 cal (25% fat).

Thankfully, tomorrow’s a running day. Time to charge up the iPod Shuffle.