So What's Next?!

I finished my first Ultramarathon.

Sure it was just a 50K, but I DID it, and I'm very happy about that.

But now what?

I feel like there is an ever-present gloom shadowing me right now... And it is very frustrating because things are GOOD!

Had some busy birthdays and lots of time spent with family. We even set up both of my slacklines in my sister's backyard - using the 25m line to almost it's full 82 foot extent! We ended up putting the monkey cage climbing thing in the middle because it was too loose.

Me and my son on the blue ENO line

Mayurasana on the 82ft Gibbon line!

BJJ has been going good - I think I'm getting places where I can avoid and escape submissions -but I still am not very good on the offensive!

So what can I do to get rid of the FOG OF DOOM that is lingering at the outskirts of my life right now?

Should I sign up for another 50k? Maybe bump up to a 50 miler? Maybe sign up for a beginner BJJ Competition? Ooh or I could sign up for a Natural Bodybuilding Men's Physique contest!!

No matter what I do - I need to use some of my accrued vacation time and get out and commune with Nature!

Pain in My Spine

That's what happens when you aren't quite used to the rigors of BJJ, but you do 4 days of training anyway!

Needless to say - it was still awesome!

Monday was a normal Yoga and stretching day, with a few parallel grip L-sit pullups - which come into play for treating the spine as well actually... ANYWAY beyond that, nothing too amazing that day workout-wise.

Tuesday morning I got up early and did the 5 miles up and 5 miles back down the canyon with the Davis County Crew for a nice 10 miles.

Later Tuesday was my first BJJ for the week -we talked about Takedowns and unfortunately I'm going to need to review those because I definitely don't remember enough!

Wednesday morning I got up early (again!) and went in to work for BJJ. We worked on how to take your opponents back while they are in your guard. Good techniques, and I took pretty good notes so I can review them. Definitely helps me remember better! Like I've mentioned before - eventually I'll get those notes on here again. For now they are in a nice big draft on my dashboard.

Thursday morning I debated getting up to run with the Davis County Crew again, but I was starting to feel the lack of sleep and my back was beginning to hurt so I decided to sleep in. That was nice! In BJJ we had a female show up. Now we wouldn't really have a problem grappling with a girl, and really I think a girl is going to benefit from learning how to defend herself from some jerk on the street if  she gets to practice the techniques on a guy - BUT because we do BJJ at a corporate workplace, they have decided that if a girl wants to learn jujitsu she needs to have a female partner to practice with. SO, since there wasn't another girl there, we went over basic self defense moves instead of grappling stuff until she had to leave. We might have found some other girls, so hopefully we can get some to show up so that there isn't awkwardness.

'Progress' post BJJ 02-07-13

Friday morning I got up for Yoga, it definitely helped with some of my spinal issues, and then I took some time on the climbing wall. Before climbing I went over to a pullup bar and tried to do Muscle ups, since I haven't practiced those for a while. I was able to get 5 done, but DANG it was a lot harder than it used to be. I need to practice those more! I don't think my back situation helped much either. Friday lunchtime we were planning on going to Fusion again to grapple with the same guys as last week, but the main contact with the 'in' at the gym was unable to break away from work, so we just had a normal style class at work. I was able to successfully defend against quite a few submissions from Mark AND Micah, but eventually lost every time. Still we stopped throughout and went over a few of my shortcomings, so that was really helpful. I have a lot of shortcomings!

Saturday morning we had planned our normal run - but there were some other scheduling occurrences that made the plans a bit goofy. Kakes got up and ran early with Alicia, then Matt and Craig and I met up at the base of the canyon and we showed Craig the "Winter Outdoor Treadmill" which we've been doing a lot of running on. We went up the 5 and back down - putting that 10 miles at close to the fastest (which very well could have been Tuesday's run) I've done that 10.
The rest of that day I tried hard to REST and stretch out - my back was hurting!

 Short vid of Craig running up from the bridge:

On the run Craig said, "Here's a tip for you... Don't do jujitsu after Tuesday next week!!" since we'll be running 30+ miles on THIS SATURDAY!!
So I'm going to try to go to BJJ to learn technique on Tues-Thurs, but skip the rolling/grappling practice at the end, since that's where the crunching and overextending happens. Also I DEFINITELY won't be going to Fusion on Friday!!

Tomorrow morning I'm meeting up with the Davis County Crew - but we are doing the Firebreak/BST from Farmington to Bountiful and back, so it should be a nice 11 miles. Hopefully the trail isn't too crappy and I can get farther than the last time I tried that this winter!

With my back, this morning it was hurting a lot - but then after Yoga today, I did more regular pullups, which I haven't been doing as regularly. My back is feeling much better and I wonder if I just need to get back to my former amount of pullups as a therapy along with the Yoga to maintain spinal health. We'll see!

Cindy and Clean and Press!

Started the morning off with a private yoga lesson...

Nobody else showed up to the class!

It felt really good and was nice after a crazy pre-holiday week.

I had to leave to attend to a family matter after that, so I was unable to climb. Probably all right because I tweaked my elbow and shoulder on my right arm... so a little rest would be good.

Since it was the last day of working this year - and I didn't want TOO MUCH rest - I decided I wanted to make it to the Crossfit class one last time.

Warmup:
Half Mile run (treadmill) - 3.5 minutes
20 KB Goblet Squats
10 KB Push Press each arm

Workout
1 Round of Cindy (5 pullups, 10 pushups, 15 bodyweight squats)
1 Clean and Press (I used 2 35lb Kettlebells because of the number of people there using the other bars and stuff)
1 Cindy
2 Clean and press
1 Cindy
3 Clean and press
... continued up to 10 reps Clean and Press with a Cindy at the start of each round.

at the 6th rep of the round of 7 clean and press - I had changed to an 80 lb curling bar for a few rounds - I pinched something in my lower back... OUCH! So for the remaining 3 sets I went back to the 2 kettle bells.

In the end I finished in 23:45 seconds - which was 2nd fastest overall.  My arm was twitching from my elbow up to my neck... and it hurt. Thankfully the majority of that pain went down pretty quick.

Unfortunately that back pain! YOW! Stiffens the whole spine up pretty quick!

Here's what I looked like after:

Not bad.

I'm not sure why but I've been taking progress shots like this in the locker room mirror for comparison lately... And while I'm quite happy with my progress...

It's just...

So weird.

Oh well!

Yay Finally made it back to Crossfit!

This week has been pretty crazy.
First week of October and I've already had more running miles than last month!
Monday I wasn't feeling great - some sort of cold hit me after the awesomeness of the weekend.

I felt like I needed SOMETHING to try to break through the funk. So I went on a run on the BST from just above the neighborhood where I grew up to a big flood-debri catcher thing that looks like it should be on Jurassic Park holding back the Raptors. Seriously. Crazy.

Watch out for Dinosaurs!

5.37 Miles - decent pace - SOO many gnats and allergy issues at the end that I had to rush to the sink and douse my head and eyes with cold water they were stinging so bad.

The gnats weren't stinging - they were just everywhere, it wasn't nice at all! I think they didn't want to eat the rest of this:

That was a BIG Hoof too!

Tuesday felt a little better, but not great, still a lot more cold-like symptoms than I liked. Ended up having a running night with ITLeesha and UMBro - just Kakes and Matt and I ran. I took it really easy and it was a nice just over 4 mile jaunt up on a Northern part of the BST up to Adam's Canyon. Beautiful fall colors - and it felt good to just be doing something but taking it easy in the beautiful fall outdoors.

Autumn

Wednesday had a great Yoga for Strength class at work. That was pretty much it, other than chopping off my crazy loads of hair. See look at my awesome haircut!!

NO I didn't keep it like this sheesh (unfortunate I know!)

Thursday in BJJ we moved the mats from where they've been in all the videos back out to the yoga room. Tweaked my neck a bit carrying the mats on my back with my head bowed forward. Learned some good Passing Guard and breaking Guard techniques, along with some Butterfly Guard stuff.

I also impressed some people with some quick L-sit Pullups after BJJ... This one gruff Bosnian fella I worked with back in the day was really effusive in his praise. Honestly I think anybody can do that with a little dedication. Seriously I love the L-sit Pullups and Chinups, they add some very nice difficulty to the moves - but they aren't anywhere near as hard as a muscle-up!

Friday, Today - Went to work early for the 7:30 yoga class which was fantastic. Opened me up for a fantastic day... then I went back to my desk and FROZE because of the crazy AC.
I was going to climb too (and was interested in seeing how my feet wounds from Dirty Dash would handle it!) but the person with the keys was a bit late, so by the time she got there it was time for me to get to my desk.

I was really looking forward to Crossfit - I needed to get some blood flowing in my body it had all STOPPED from freezing. Went down and saw what the workout was.

Awesome!
So started with a warmup of each of those moves 5 times (I did 10 pushups and 15 squats for warmup just because) with whatever weight you were planning on using. For KBs I had 35s, for Dumbbells I had 60 lb'ers (heavy!) and for the Sled I had 90 lbs on the carpet.

Workout:
7 Double Kettlebell Clean and Jerk
Rack Walk with Both Kettlebells down the full basketball court and back
5 pullups, 10 pushups, 15 air squats,
Push the sled down and back
10 Burpee Deadlifts - MEAN where you do the burpee with your pushup hands on the dumbbells, jump your feet inbetween, and deadlift them. Since I got a bit ahead on my second round I actually used 70 pounds for this part. But switched back to the 60s for the next part.
Farmer Carry down and back (about 200 ft for each of these carries)
REPEAT for AsManyRoundsAsPossible (AMRAP) in 30 minutes.

I got 4 rounds, and nobody got more than that so I'm pretty happy with it.

Now I get to work out another Tough Mudder workout in the morning! One more week!

Runnin' The Mile!

I need to give people awesome nicknames for this blog, I mean Kakes is awesome as a person and a nickname, and Warlordblade too! So yeah - everybody gets nicknames!

Back in Jr. High Gym Class every Friday morning was the dreaded "Mile Run".

EVERYBODY in the class had to do it - AND they'd post a list of the fastest kids in the coaches window outside the locker room.

I think my top ranking (somewhere around a 6:45 minute mile, but I don't trust my own memory on that!) was 11th or 12th once, and usually I was more in the middle to back of all the boys my age.

Awesome right?

The past two weeks have been our Olympics at work - I shared my plank results in the last entry. Today was the 2nd to last event - the "Triathlon". Yeah it's not REALLY a triathlon, not even close. The only thing related is that it has running in it. 3 people from the team pick one of the 3 events, Mile Run, 25 Burpees, 100 Jump Rope - and the combined time from start to finish is the teams score.  I took the Mile Run because a month ago in our anniversary HIIT warmup I ran around our block in 6:33 and thought I could do it faster on a flat course.

So this morning for some reason I was REALLY nervous about this mile race. There are only 5 teams in this Olympics... so there were only 4 people other than me! Almost all of the fastest runners, the hardcore runners, marathoners, triathletes, crossfitters, etc were represented in this group of 5. For some reason the whole thing brought up memories and doubts WAY back from Jr. High.

So anyway, we lined up, started, and I took off in the lead - setting a very fast pace which I kept pretty steadily for the first quarter mile, then asthma or SOMETHING kicked in and I fell back a bit, allowing the verrrrry fast CrazyCrossfitter (who I expected to win but wanted to try to beat him!) to pass me. I held onto 2nd for the rest of the race even though I let 1st place get even more ahead of me.

I finished the race SECOND place in 6:07 - but since it was closer to 1.1 miles... my one mile pace was FIVE FORTY ONE!!!! CrazyCrossfitter ended up beating me by 30 seconds!  He kept a FAST pace the full time! He told me he didn't think he'd be able to keep my pace at the beginning - but then I faded so he didn't have to! He usually beats me in the Crossfit workouts too so I don't feel too bad. He's an amazing guy. Motivation!

The air has been HORRIBLE lately due to fires and inversion - so all 5 of the runners (not one of us was over 7 minutes for the mile - fast group!) had breathing issues afterwards. I'm still dealing with severe allergies right now! (Essential Oils and Neti Pots are helping - not essential oils IN the neti pot though... I'm not that crazy!)

Our burpees guy ("MatTime" Micah, who is also my BJJ instructor) did great and handed off to our jump roper. Our original jump roper had a sick daughter, so she had to stay home today. We had to have one of our other two girls fill in, and only Ajax was in today and she had to scrounge up some suitable attire for jumproping! Ajax is AWESOME, but she's not so fast at jump roping. I'm glad she could help us do the event. We ended up with 4th place, which is consistent with all our other finishes! SO close.

Speaking of 4th place finishes, the 'Sit and Reach' contest that I thought I'd be fairly competitive in with all the yoga I do was held on Tuesday. I tied for 4th at 24". Doh!

OKAY. So back up to the rest of the week that didn't get covered:
Monday morning great yoga class at work. That night we ran with UltraMarathonBro (Matt... not sold on this nickname yet!) and "ITthisisleesha" (Alicia always answers her phone like that - but I'll have to come up with a better nickname sometime!) UMBro and I decided to take the Shepherd Creek trail up to see where it goes - looks nice now and we were only a few miles (ha ha ha 'only a few miles') from Francis Peak. We went not even TWO times as far as I ran today, in NINE times the time! Pretty rough uphill. But I think that's why I can run that flat ground so fast now. It was nice and dark when we turned around which made for fun downhill trailin', but we had to get back since it was a school night for my kidlets.
Took some pictures of the nasty air, it was better up high than it was today down low for sure!

Boy... My wife is SO LUCKY to be married to such a handsome man!

You can't even see Lagoon Amusement park that isn't far!

Nasty Air!

Tuesday had BJJ, but unfortunately ShoulderMuscles our camera guy (who also won the sit and reach with an impressive 27" stretch!) wasn't there with his camera. We did some sweeps from the guard some of which I'd learned before. 3 people in the class, MatTime, me, and VeganBossB (my first boss in my first job where I still work - whoa that was ten years ago!). He's significantly bigger than me, so that makes some of the stuff fun, but it is not as big a deal now that I've been going for a while and have more experience. When I first started, the size was more of an obstacle, but now that I am starting (still VERY BEGINNING) to understand technique (Barely!) it makes a difference, and that's awesome!

We did Sit-up Sweep, Sit-up Sweep to Kimura, Sit-Up Sweep to Take the Back. Then we did Scissor Sweep, Wing Sweep, Scissor Sweep to Leg Hook and Scissor Sweep to Knee Push. On the Wing Sweep Brian easily winged me up and over (wheee flying!) right onto my back on something hard...
His own thumb! Yow! He dislocated it and FreeSpirit (yoga teacher/trainer) is now mad at me (somewhat jokingly, I hope!) because he is one of the participants in their test boot camp program. Hey HE threw ME! 

Also been getting a LOT better on that left-side hitch that was happening in my muscle-ups. Still have a little work but it is almost gone! Yay!

Wednesday (Arr International Talk Like a Pirate Day!) I rebounded basketballs for free-throw shooters for the competition (I was supposed to do that but did soccer instead since somebody forgot to show up the soccer day) and an awesomely tough hour of yoga with FreeSpirit. Wednesday classes are always more difficult for me because it is AFTER lunch. I think I mentioned this before. Even though our team didn't eat out this week (Busy busy busy China Oracle Implementation!) I had a delicious bacon wrapped chicken thigh and slice of delicious roast beef and salad for lunch before yoga. SO good.

Supposedly Yoga is best if practiced on a stomach that has been empty for a few hours other than a glass of water about an hour before.

And now we are caught up!

Tomorrow I'm looking forward to Yoga and Climbing in the morning and Crossfit in the afternoon! I also need to pick up my Dirty Dash packets - because it's Fall Dirty Dash time on Saturday!
Awesome!!!

Rest Days?!

Wednesday's Yoga class at work is always harder than normal because my work team goes out to eat for lunch every Wednesday. As part of our Primal lifestyle... if I eat out, I basically get steak or ribs or something like that (YUM what a horrible diet ha!) so that heaviness really makes Yoga more difficult!
That night I decided I needed to go on a run since it has been a while since I've hit the trails and I felt like I needed it - so I went up to the Davis Creek trail. Some idiot took a dirt-bike up there and it really tore up the trail. Annoying how people can ruin things for others. That area is Private property has been closed up and cracked down because of dirt bikes going where they aren't supposed to go. I would hate to lose such a hard trail. I ran up to Little/Pretty Valley and back in 30 minutes. About 20 minutes up and 10 minutes back. That is a hard trail! Luckily I DO know the family that owns that land, so I could probably work something out with them if I needed. Still... be considerate of others people!!

Thursday was the first event in our work Olympics that I was taking part in. PLANK!

I made it almost 9 minutes before my hips and lower back started hurting - if it weren't for that pain I probably could have gone a bit longer. My hips have been an issue lately - I need to strengthen them or figure out what is wrong with them. Anyway, I ended up in 5th place with that time, the winners went 18 minutes! Crazy. 

Thursday I went to BJJ class again, 2 times in one week! I think I'll definitely retain more if I can continue to go 2 times and have the video as a refresher
Here's the video:

There were some really fun moves to learn!

Friday is normally a pretty busy day for me in my fitness schedule. Early morning Yoga that is just awesome followed by a half hour of playing around on a climbing wall? What could be better?  Oh yeah, throw in some crazy Crossfit to finish off the day and WOW I feel great and tired.
Unfortunately THIS Friday I worked at home so my amazing wife could attend an Essential Oil convention, so I missed those workouts, and considering all the craziness and large amounts of working out, I thought a rest day or two would help. My Yoga teacher especially has been trying to get me to rest a bit more...

Yikes... that didn't work. I felt HORRIBLE on Friday, and then Saturday too! I finally made myself try some pull ups and muscle ups that I could barely do. Resting can be good, but I don't think my body was ready for it this time. Weird.

Anyway I got some good sleep today after feeling crappy this morning, and I'm feeling a bit better.

Hopefully that will continue this week and into the weekend - Dirty Dash weekend again!!

Are you asking me for a Backyard HIIT CHALLENGE!?!?!

Yoga was fantastic yesterday morning - and we are starting to get a lot more people to come out to the classes! It helps to have a new teacher, new times, and more awareness for sure. It was really funny though, I was running a tiny bit late, but when I walked in there were 4 guys (not including me!!) lined up on mats to do yoga and NO WOMEN!! Then 3 ladies showed up.

Next up - Climbing! I enjoy climbing a lot. I've always known that. For some reason I've always been apprehensive about asking somebody with equipment and stuff if I could tag along... Not sure why. I still haven't done that. BUT I'm pretty good with indoor stuff and everything, so I like training people on the safety requirements of my work's new climbing wall. Especially when some of the people I train are friends that will NOT try working out in other ways. Even better when after the training they go "Hey, I could do this kind of exercise! That was fun!"

I couldn't go to Crossfit yesterday because I got really busy with a work issue. This particular project has been a lot slower than we've wanted, but it's FINALLY getting momentum and should be good.

It was all right that I missed the crossfit class though, because we had a lot of fun last night doing a Backyard HIIT with my sister!

Kakes put together this great workout for us, she's amazing. And also extremely hot.
I mean she is really really really good looking. I'm a very lucky man!

Warmed up with an 8 round tabata -
Football sprints for 20 seconds, pushups for 10 seconds - 4 minutes total.
Great warmup, I made myself do 10 pushups every time. By the end I was actually doing 10 faster than the 10 seconds.

Then we started the workout:
30 KB Swings (35 lb Kettle bell)
20 Weighted Reverse Lunges (2 25 lb plates)
1 minute Double-unders Jump rope
50 Medicine Ball tosses with a partner (17 lb ball)
1 min max pull-ups (I did 2 sets, 1 set of 10 regular pullups and 1 set of 10 semi-close-grip chinups)
20 each side tire slams (16 lb sledgehammer)
50 chair dips (I'm sore from this one!)
30 leg throws
20 Wall runs (These were VERY hard to do last!)

Loads of fun and sweaty-ness!
Blurry Picture time!!

Medicine Ball Throws!

Pullups!!

Sledgehammer!!!

Wall Runs!!!!

Even the kids got into it!!!!!

Life is good folks. Don't let it pass you by!

More Mudder Training!

Met up with my friend J for another Tough Mudder training workout yesterday morning.

We started out with a warmup of 5 pullups, 5 pushups, 5 step ups and 5 dips for 3 rounds.

Next part was the animal part of the workout - a 20 yrd "Animal Run" followed by one of the six different monkey bars at the school playground where we were working out.
Bear Crawl with the Uneven Monkeybars
Frog Jump with the climbing monkeybars (most like the ones in Tough Mudder)
Crab Walk with the circular monkeybars
Gazelle Jumps or Bounders with the Rings
Spiderman or lizard Crawl with some more regular monkeybars
Monster Walk or Sidesquat walk with some curving monkeybars

That sequence sure tore at hand callouses! Fun to do though.

Now for the main part of the workout - this picture was taken after the first round, which was really done in 3:58.3 not 2:58.

1. The first person starts (A) with the Sandbag sequence, Lift the sandbag, squat, Press the sandbag lunge left, lunge right.
2. Pass the Sandbag (60-65 lbs btw) to second person (B) who runs the sandbag about 25 yards to the sled and places the sandbag on the sled.
3. A pulls the sled the 25 yards back to himself
4. B runs the 12 lb sledgehammer back to A
5. A Hammers the tire 10 rounds each hand, so 20
6. B flips the tire the 25 yards back to where the sled started
7. A carries the Sandbag (and the sled rope) to B
8. B starts with #1 and repeat through 7 which finishes 1 full round

Awesome workout! Our first round was 3:58.3, the second was almost exactly the same. Which is how we realized that when we wrote 2:58 we were wrong, because there is no way we were a full minute slower. Our final 3rd round we completed in 3:42.9 - nice improvement!

We finished off with a farmer's carry of two 35 lb kettle bells for about 70 yards. Each person took 3 turns walking it that far. (or a bit more)

Awesome workout - a few hours later I crashed for a nap, then I woke up hardly able to move. Busy couple of days!
Today I still feel a bit sick and sore, but not too horrible.

I'm looking forward to doing some good climbing and climbing safety training over the next few days!

11th Anniversary and another Backyard HIIT

Yesterday

Today I'll just toss in my Fitocracy workout of the day and add pictures and comments throughout! Woohoo for laziness!

WarlordBlade tracked a workout for 1,176 pts:

• L-Sit: (earlier in the day)
  • 15 sec (+10 pts)
  • 31 sec (+21 pts)
  • 15 sec (+10 pts)
  • These are L-sits off the ground using Push-up handles
• Other Dancing: Trying to make my 2 year old happy dancing to Youtube vids!
  • 0:10:00 || Moderate (+20 pts)
• Jump Squat (Toyotas):
  • 15 reps (+11 pts)
• Muscle-Up:
  • 6 reps (+193 pts) 6 in a row!! They are still a bit sloppy but I'm getting better!
• The next exercises were part of a HIIT workout in our backyard. Initially we thought there were going to be more people, but it just ended up being me, my beautiful wife, and my brother-in-law Ben.
• Warmup:
• Push-Up:
  • 10 reps (+15 pts)
• Body Weight Squat:
  • 20 reps (+13 pts)
• Step/Kick-Throughs: (On fours knees off the ground, shoot one leg through to the opposite side, lifting the opposite hand)
  • 20 reps (+6 pts) - I had a hip problem pop up while doing these that is still hurting... not sure where it came from!
• Jumping Jacks:
  • 50 jumping jacks (+15 pts)
• Running:
  • 0:06:36.5 || 1 mi || 6:33.3 min/mi (+144 pts)
  • http://runkeeper.com/user/warlordblade/activity/108466285
• WORKOUT - 1 minute at each exercise - continue after one run through if desired (I did some extra for pictures!)
• Body Weight Inverted Row (Let Me Ups):
  
  • 32 reps (+51 pts)
  • 20 reps (+32 pts)
• Jump Rope:
  
  
  • 0:01:00 (+5 pts) (167 rotations)
  • 0:01:00 (+5 pts) (30 more)
• Double Under Jump Rope:
  
  • 0:01:00 (+6 pts) (10 Double Unders)
• Pull-Up:
  • 20 reps (+119 pts)
• Chin-Up:
  
  • 10 reps (+63 pts)
• Box Jumps:
  
  • 21 jumps || 28 in (+84 pts)
  • 10 jumps || 28 in (+34 pts)
•   Kettlebell Headcutters: (Not in fitocracy so I did something close)
  
  • 35 lb x 15 reps (+50 pts)
  • 35 lb x 5 reps (+37 pts)
• Tire Flip:
  
  • 100 lb x 22 reps (+52 pts)
  • 100 lb x 10 reps (+46 pts)
• KB Walking Lunges:
  • 35 lb x 32 reps (+89 pts)
• Burpee:
  • 11 reps (+24 pts)
• Finally due to my aching hip and knee (weird) I did some foam rolling and stretching - and will continue to do so!
• Foam Rolling:
  • 10:00 (+18 pts)
• Stretching:
  • 0:15:00 (+3 pts)

Great day off - I'm looking forward to another one tomorrow, we get to go swimming at my in-laws house! Then Saturday is CAHOOTS! Hopefully my hip and knee aren't bothering me by then. Strangely other than the kick-throughs, my hip didn't really bother me. My knee hurt a bit on the run but otherwise I felt great.

Kid's Pullup Bar, Bair Canyon, Tough Mudder Workout!

Tuesday I decided it was time to get the kids post in for their pullup bar. I dug about half the hole that night while Kakes was at a baby shower. The kids 'helped'.

Wednesday I finished digging and cemented the post in, and because the post was a bit warped from rainy days leaning against the house, I attached the bar to it as well, so it would dry and cure the way I wanted it to.

Thursday night we met for a Family running night - the girls did the Lagoon trail, we did Bair Canyon again. It's been a while! Just over 4 miles total - My GPS program that tracks my run has been acting up lately and NOT working correctly. Could be the program, could be the GPS. Who knows. I wish it'd work though!

Friday at Crossfit we repeated "The Executive" workout that we did two weeks ago. Unfortunately somebody complained to the HR department about people taking off their shirts during crossfit workouts... so no more of that. It was HOT. I do much better when I can take my shirt off. Seriously. ANYWAY last time I did this workout in 15:06, this time I did it in 14:51! So I beat my last time by 15 seconds and got below 15 minutes yay! I think I could have been even faster had I been able to take my shirt off and sweat more freely. I'm completely serious about that too! As a challenge after, we did Pullups and Dips. 15 body weight pullups and 20 body weight dips, then 10 pullups and 15 dips with a 10 lb plate, and finishing with 5 pullups and 10 dips with a 25 lb plate. I was able to do them all!

Today I put my three giant tires into my van, grabbed my 35 lb kettlebell, my 16 lb sledgehammer, my 17 lb home-made medicine ball, and drove up to Freedom Hills park to meet with some of the members of my Tough Mudder team for a WORKOUT. 4 guys showed up (including myself) - one of whom had decided to run from his house in Kaysville to the park in Farmington... Next time he won't do that! My friend Justin brought a 65 lb sand bag, another 35 lb kettlebell (exactly the same as mine actually, but a shiny finish compared to mine) a 10 lb hammer and an 8 lb medicine ball. We did a 15 minute interval circuit (40 seconds workout, 20 seconds rest and switch to next station) with the following exercises:
Side swing hammer slams with the 16 lb hammer
Throw and chase with the 8 lb medicine ball
Overhead hammer slams with the 10 lb hammer
Farmer Carry 2 35 lb kettle bells
Reverse overhead throw 17 lb medicine ball
Clean and Press 65 lb Sandbag

For our second part we did a relay run/carry where one person starts and carries the kettlebell across the field runs back and brings the medicine ball, back and brings the sledge hammer, back and flips the tire across the field. That tire flip was the worst part of the workout! We did that twice.
Good workout - I'm looking forward to our next one in two weeks!

Flag Rock Race

Wow what a day!

This morning I ran the Flag Rock run for our city's Festival Days. Last year it was billed as a 10k, but it's really more like 7.2 miles, so people complained and now they just call it the Flag Rock Trail race.

I ended up finishing in 1 hour and 17 minutes, according to the 'official' results - 10th place! However I know there was a person or two ahead of me that didn't show up in the results - so we'll see what my real place was if they ever update that. My brother Matt took a wrong turn RIGHT at the end so he went an extra quarter mile and I finished 10 seconds after him!

A few minutes after finishing with me bro.

Look took me THREE HOURS!

Muscle ups on my new bar have been improving and continuing! It's great! I bought some more cement so I could put the 3rd post in for the shorter kids bar - it should improve the stability of the whole thing!

More Running! More Pullups! More Pictures!

Saturday! I finally tossed the fence posts in the holes and cemented them in, and I now have an outdoor pullup bar! Hooray! I like it a lot. So much that I took a few pictures of them while cementing and attaching the bar.

Yeah we did a good job! I'm excited we got it in!

Monday Night I decided I wanted to run to  Patsy's mine because I didn't get to see it when we went up to Flag rock last week. It's about a half mile down the mountain by trail, or just two big jumps straight down. Nice little cave, but since I was up there, I decided to run up to Flag Rock. Mean! Now I need to sign up for the race that's Saturday morning and see how I do in a 'competition!'

Why did I come up here again??

Yay dirty car window reflection pics!

After getting back, eating dinner, and watching the awesome American Ninja Warrior Finals, Stage 1, I decided to really put some use to my pullup bar.

THAT's what I call 'real use'?!

That's good enough right? No way! I attached my olympic rings I got for Christmas but haven't really had a good WHERE to use them - and practiced some ring L-sits, some Australian Pull ups (which seem to work my last AWESOME when done on rings)

And I even did a few very-ugly muscle-ups. It's funny, but pretty much any time my beautiful wife is watching me I can't do muscle-ups well at ALL. If she's not around I can get up a couple of times in a decent fashion. Still need to work on smoothness and consistency of motion. I think the real problem is I always try to show her when I'm a bit tired! Need to work on that!

Muscle-up Accomplished!

All this has turned me into a zombie! BRAINS!

Tuesday night (which feels like I should say 'Tonight' but really it's already Wednesday morning so I can't say that anymore!) we had Running night scheduled with the family. Mueller Park! That really is a great trail if you can avoid all the bikers. Not too easy, but not too hard. Challenging but by the end on the way back down you feel pretty dang good. We didn't go all the way to Elephant rock, making it 4.8ish miles with the extra trails I ran to not get TOO far ahead of the others.

The best thing of these family running nights is the opportunity to sometimes run with my amazing wife. She is getting SO much stronger, SO fit and SO amazing. She's always been strong and amazing, but this FITness is fantastic! I also love taking pictures of our fun runs and hearing people comment on how happy and fit and fun we look. We do have fun. You can too!

Hwaaaaaa!

Next up? Leveling out the area below the pull up bar, adding a 3rd shorter post and bar so the kids can have a reachable area (and I can use it for various other exercises). THEN I'm going to add a 4th pole on the other side and hopefully I can figure out a good way to put an American Ninja warrior style SALMON LADDER there! So many possibilities!

Also Thursday I'm going to go running with a neighbor who wants to get into Running more. I'm going to take him on the Legacy parkway trail or Lagoon Trail (depending on the heat - probably Lagoon will be the better option). Eventually he'd like to be more familiar with all the awesome trails up in the mountains. Starting straight off up there can be a bit daunting! We're supposed to be 'running' right? Well how come I'm so weak and slow on this hill?? :)

I'm still pretty slow on most hills!!