Friday, February 17, 2012

Friday's Workout

Waking up at 4:20 in the morning isn't a picnic, but today was particularly bad. As soon as I stuck a contact lens into my bleary left eye, it tore into two pieces and lodged in the back of my eyeball. Even after a good ten minutes of fishing around with my fingers, I came up empty. My eyes were blood red. I needed help.


M had stayed up past midnight (blogging, of course), and I should've let her sleep in. But she was my only hope of getting the shards of plastic out of my eye. I gently shook her awake. Startled, she unleashed an ear-splitting scream directly into my face.

It was that kind of morning.

But after M realized that I wasn't a home invader, she gamely trudged into the brightly-lit bathroom to help dig the torn lens out of the deep recesses of my eye socket. Ah, love.

With a fresh contact lens in place and my wife back in bed, I joined the rest of the 5 a.m. crew at CrossFit Palo Alto.

Strength Skill:
  • Front Squats (5-3-3-1-1)
No PR today. My previous best was 205 pounds, and I managed to get to just 200 today. Squatting one-and-a-half times my bodyweight felt like a great accomplishment months ago, but I've been stuck at this weight for eons now, so I'm looking forward to pushing past this plateau soon. Maybe the secret to lifting heavier is to start eating like Steve Pan:



Or maybe I just need to keep practicing.

Metcon:
  • 25 plate burpees / ground-to-overheads (45lbs / 35lbs)
  • Run 400 meters with plate (45lbs / 35lbs)
  • Run 800 meters without plate
The first part of this workout involved doing a burpee on a 45-pound bumper plate, and then lifting the plate off the floor and hoisting it overhead -- and repeating this two dozen times. It sounded horrible, but it wasn't bad. Aside from some slight trouble getting my dainty little fingers under the plate to pull it off the floor, the heavy burpees, this movement was pretty much problem-free.

The running, on the other hand, was a hell of a challenge. I was the second person out the door to start the run, but by the time the first 400 meters were done, two others had passed me.

Gaah.

Result: 9:52 as RXed.