This seems like a significant milestone to me, even more than the bodyweight overhead squat I got a couple of months ago, and so it deserves a blog post of its own.
I weigh 185 pounds today; a little more than usual, probably due in part to some Thanksgiving-related overeating. Today I managed to get that same weight, 185 pounds, from the floor of the gym to locked out above my head via a clean and jerk.
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I mentioned these last week, and Zappos did eventually come through with them, although not without one annoying blunder. And I still haven’t been able to return the wrongly-received shoes to them, due to a blunder that wasn’t their fault. However, I do have the pair of F-Lite 195 trail running shoes, and like them quite a lot so far.
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One of my goals for the year, and on Saturday I got it while doing CrossFit Total.
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I’ve ordered shoes a few times from Zappos, and I’ve been quite happy with them. Everything has worked well, and I’ve had no complaints. Today, when I picked up my Zappos package expecting to see my brand new pair of Inov-8 F-Lite 195s (yes, apparently CrossFit trends get to me too), I instead opened up a pair of women’s shoes intended for someone in Seattle.
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Sometimes it’s the little things that make life better, the small victories in ongoing daily battles.
I recently did an overhead squat at 185 pounds (or about 84 kilos, or 13 stone 3); I weigh a little under 180 (that day, 178 pounds) and so that was a bodyweight overhead squat. It actually represents two achievements, because in order to get the bar into the overhead position, I had to push jerk it from behind my neck to locked out above my head, which counts as my best push jerk ever, albeit an unorthodox one. From the overhead locked out position, it’s down into a deep squat and back up; the harder part for me was going down, as once I was at the bottom it wasn’t hard to keep my balance coming back up.
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It was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed it. I did it with the CrossFit KMSF crew, Team Ciso. We had beautiful weather for it, which definitely made it easier and more pleasant (although I did get rather sunburnt).
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Why am I doing this? Somehow my previous post on the matter isn’t particularly inspiring right now. Neither is the fact that I should be asleep… since I have to get up at a ridiculously early hour tomorrow, having not managed my travel arrangements too well.
So. Get up at 04:00, travel for four hours or so, run an insane obstacle course over seven miles at altitude… who doesn’t like to do that kind of thing on their days off?
Near the start of July I mentioned the idea of keeping a “gratitude journal”. I’ve been doing that, more or less, since then.
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The temperature in San Francisco hit 101° Fahrenheit today, the hottest it’s been since May 2001. I’m not comfortable at such high temperatures, and was pretty sluggish all day.
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Last Friday I played soccer for the first time in almost two decades. I managed not to disgrace myself, and enjoyed it a great deal. It was a variant of five-a-side, although we played first with six players per side and later with four. I was with a group of regular players at SportsCo in Ringsend, and the quality of the pitch there was pretty good. Not that I’m an expert, but it’s the best surface I’ve played on.
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I don’t tend to think of myself as a particularly disciplined or organized person, a view often at odds with how others perceive me, but I will admit to liking to organize and order things in specific ways. This may be related to my left-handedness, and/or to my attraction to precision (which attraction falls short of achieving precision, although I hope that in language I occasionally come close).
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Usually going east is tough for me in terms of jet lag. This is related to my being a night owl—going east means it’s harder to get up in the morning and easier to stay up late, and I have enough issues with both those things already. This time it’s been a little easier, I think physical activity has a lot to do with that.
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I just signed up for the Northern California “Tough Mudder” event, a seven-mile, high-altitude, obstacle-ridden, sadistically-conceived, mud-covered race/challenge at Bear Valley Mountain on 09 October 2010.
Why? A good question, particularly since I’m paying to suffer through it.
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I started CrossFit proper (i.e. non-intro classes) one year ago. Since then I’ve tried to go five times per week, and mostly succeeded. I’m in so much better shape now it’s a little ridiculous.
I had struggled for years to find some fitness program I could stick with, never managing it. Now I’m determined to keep doing CrossFit, or something very like it, as long as I am able.
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After a highly enjoyable, productive, and extended period, it’s time for me to return to the world of paid work.
I’m quite happy with the things I’ve done during my time off. Many of them are important only to me, but then, it’s been my time off.
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Yes, clearly my progress (or lack thereof) needs quarterly reports. And here’s the first one for this year.
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I had a great time at Sectionals, and I was very happy both to compete in the event and to take part in it with the rest of the CrossFit KMSF team. Great team, great coaching, great support. I plan to do it again next year.
That being said, I had a number of issues with the organization of the event.
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If I had to pick one word to describe my performance, I think that word would would be “okay”.
I hit some of my goals for this event, and missed others. I feel happy about my performance and how far I’ve come since starting to do CrossFit last June, but I’m also (unsurprisingly) critical about some of the things I didn’t manage to do right.
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Tomorrow I’m going to be in San Jose taking part in the Northern California Sectional qualifiers for the 2010 CrossFit Games. I have no chance of qualifying for the next round (Regionals), but I’m going anyway, and planning to give it all I’ve got. I don’t think I’ve ever taken part in an organized public athletic competition before[1].
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I just registered for the 2010 Northern California CrossFit Sectional competition. I’m doing it for the experience, as I know that my chances of qualifying for Regionals are zero. Despite that, it should help my motivation for training and (just as important) for eating properly. It’s 27/28 March, seven weeks out—we’ll see how fit I can get by then.
Happy New Year!
Once again, my goals for the coming year.
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