I'm just an average crossfitter and I'll take it

This photo has been posted a lot on facebook lately.  Since I just did Fran today, that number happened to be fresh in my head.  I got 6:49 today and was plenty happy to be just above average.  My hands are still torn up from Bradshaw, so I went into it just hoping to get through without tearing more.  In the end, my hands were fine.

My other stats in comparison:

Fran-6:49
Grace- 3:55
Snatch- 95 lb
Deadlift- 250 lb
Back Squat- 185 lb

I haven't done 1 rep max's on any lifts in a really long time, but again I'm happy to be just about average.  Considering I'm 42 years old, and I'd venture to guess the average aged crossfit woman is much younger, I'll take it.  Some days I feel like I'm such a fraud.  I see these younger girls cranking out these awesome times or lifts and wonder who I think I'm kidding.  Then I see posts like this one and realize I'm still doing pretty darn good.  I know there's a curve and at some point my times and lifts will all have to decrease.  But for now I'm going to keep riding this ride and see where it takes me.

Grace and dinner

I know weird title for a post.  But that's kinda what my day consisted of.  My daughter had an orthodontist appointment this morning and then drove herself to Starbucks and school (which took way longer than if I'd have driven).  So I had to go to crossfit at 11:00.

Our WOD today was Grace.  I'd done it a few months ago, so I knew I had to get it done in about 5 minutes.  Not great, but a goal nonetheless.  Oh first the description:

Grace:  30 clean and jerks at 95#

Today I got 4:38, victory!  It was a 1 min, 19 sec PR!!  I'll take it.

After finishing Grace we had a max effort pull ups.  I got 15 on that.  I probably should've tried for more, but my hands were pinching and I didn't want to  mess them up for the rest of the week.

Then I had to run a few errands and get to Costco.  I started plotting dinner while I was driving and decided to go with bacon wrapped filets.  I saw the recipe on Food Network and have to say they were the best steaks I'd ever made so I went with them again.  I had great intentions of taking a photo, but everyone was starving and I forgot.  But they were just as delicious this time around  If you'd like to give them a try the recipe is here.  I will warn you if you're following a traditional low fat diet, they aren't for you.  If however you are paleo, then go for it!  

We had those with some roasted brussel sprouts and sweet potato chips.  And with the leftover bacon, I made bacon wrapped dates for dessert.  Yep it was a good day!

Banana Blueberry Muffins

Here's a recipe that was passed on to me from Nick Robles at Crossfit Kinnick.  They are about 1 block and delicious!  I omitted the vanilla to be WLC compliant.  I threw all of the ingredients into our Vitamix and just poured the mix into the cupcake liners.  

Banana Blueberry Muffins

2 normal sized ripe bananas (about 1 cup)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

5 eggs

1/4 cup of unsweetened applesauce

1/2 cup coconut flour

1 scoop vanilla protein powder 

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

2 Tablespoons coconut oil, melted

1/2 cup blueberries (frozen)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners or grease with coconut oil.

Add to a medium bowl the bananas, vanilla extract, applesauce, and eggs and using a hand mixer mix the ingredients together—I use a hand held blender to really chop up the bananas. 

In a small bowl whisk together dry ingredients (coconut flour, cinnamon, baking soda, protein powder, and salt). 

Add dry ingredients to the banana mixture and using hand mixer combine until well incorporated—had to switch to mixer because blender didn’t work as it was a little too thick.  Then add melted coconut oil and mix again until combined—if you don’t melt the coconut oil, it forms little chunks in your batter.  

Stir in frozen blueberries making sure not to break them up (mush) too much in the batter—frozen ones don’t mush.

Scoop the batter evenly into muffin pan (I usually get about 10 muffins).  These muffins don’t rise.  As such, how you place them in the pan is how they turn out.

Place muffin pan in preheated oven and bake for about 25 minutes or until tops are golden brown—sometimes the middles of the tops don’t look cooked, but they are.  You can also use a toothpick to make sure the center is cooked.

WLC Round Two

Today marks the end of the second week of the second round of the WLC (Whole Life Challenge).  It basically is a challenge among crossfit boxes.  You have to log points daily for things like diet, exercise, mobility, supplements, etc.  The diet is the hardest for most people.  You have 5 points daily and basically you need to eat clean, i.e. no grains, sugar, processed foods, alcohol, etc.

The first go round I ate Paleo and did great.  I lost 20 pounds and really enjoyed the transition.  This time I hadn't changed my eating much before starting the challenge.  So I'm not sure why I was disappointed when we started the challenge and I didn't see any weight loss.  I somehow thought it would just start falling off again just because I paid money to sign up for a challenge.

After the first week without any drop in the scale I decided to strictly zone my foods for the next week. I wrote everything down and got feedback from the experts at my box.  I realized I was only eating 8-9 blocks a day.  Most of the other girls were eating 11, so I decided to up my blocks to see how it went.  Turns out that was what I needed!  I'm down 4 pounds and have never eaten better!  My husband comments on how we have had the best dinners in the last two weeks.  Even the kids are mostly enjoying all of our meals!  Surprisingly they have really liked a lot of the dinners.

My biggest surprise when I started zoning my meals was that I was eating way too much protein at meals. I was thinking I was about 3 oz, but after weighing I realized it was close to 6 oz!  So that along with adding more snacks has been helpful.

I will post up some of the best recipes I've come across soon.

Today's WOD

I'm starting to get nervous.  I went to workout this morning and just before the WOD, we go over upcoming events.  The next Whole Life Challenge starts this Saturday.  I know it'll be good for me to cut out the dairy and Mexican food again, so I'm looking forward to this.  But I know it's tough to get through all eight weeks, so I'm a bit nervous.

Then there's the Battle of the Boxes that I agreed to compete in.  It's teams of four, two men, two women.  I never planned to compete, that's not why I crossfit.  But it seems they're always short women at our box and I know it'd be fun.  So I got talked into joining an intermediate team.  But it seems everyone else on my team would be fine in the advanced division.  That I'm just not ready for.  But I don't want to hold them back either.  So we'll see how this plays out.  Either way, I'm nervous about doing my first competition.  1 rep max lifts are not my thing, but at least now I've tried every lift so I know what I'm in for.

Lastly there's the open.  Again I have no desire to compete.  But last year our box did every open workout on Thursday and again on Saturday.  I happened to go every Thursday back then so other than the first week when they only did it on Saturday, I ended up doing every workout anyway.  At that point I thought I should've just signed up to see where I fell against others.  Now here we are again and I'm not sure if I want to sign up or not.  I'm old enough to now qualify for the masters division.  But even at that, I see women every day in that category that kick my butt.  So while it'd be fun to see where I fell (and yes I mean that literally!), I'm wondering if it would just be more money out the window.  I guess I have a little bit of time to think on this one.

I'd love to hear from fellow crossfitters why you will or will not participate in the Open this year.

Oh just to finish it off, our WOD today was: Diane with a finisher of max reps toes to bar.

I did Diane in 7:45 but subbed handstand push ups for 30# push presses.  And got 23 toes to bar.

Nope not me in the photo, just a great shot of toes to bar & it had credits.

Whole Life Challenge Recap

I made it through the eight weeks!  That in itself was a huge accomplishment!  I really wasn't going to do it.  I don't like paying money for things that I might think sound good, but know I won't be able to successfully complete.  After learning about the bonus points in the WLC, I realized it was something I could do.  Not only did I finish, but I was successful!  I used many of my bonus points, but not all of them.  I used them on my birthday, and on Bill's birthday.  We enjoyed every minute of those "cheats", and then jumped right back on track.

I lost 20 pounds!!  The last two weeks, my weight loss had dramatically slowed but still continued.  I decided to not worry about it, but to just focus on my goal of hitting 20 pounds.  I hit it with a few days to spare.  Now 20 pounds wasn't my initial goal.  Initially I'd thought I'd be happy with 10 pounds, 15 would've made me very happy.  But I blew through both of those and decided to try to hit 20.  And at the final weigh in, I'd also lost 9.25 total inches!  What?!  Crazy huh?!

It was great to see that I could do it and the kids would survive.  They didn't love all of the "meat" dinners I was making all of the time, but after awhile they didn't really notice as much either.  They still got the occasional pasta dinner or pizza.  We just ate something else that night.

In the weeks since, I've kept off all but 2-3 pounds.  It is the holidays, so I will work to keep my weekdays as pure as possible while leaving the cheats to parties.  I've really enjoyed seeing the results that eating this way as afforded me.  There are many facets that won't change.  I now don't need milk in my coffee.  While in Connecticut last week I ordered a cappuccino and felt like I was really cheating, but in reality it was fine.  I have to have a balance while remembering to keep the good outweighing the bad.  I'm definitely signing up for the next challenge that starts soon!  I'll keep you posted.