Thursday 10-1-09

I would like to take a minute to write about the upcoming season for our nations team, The Washington Capitals. What can I say? We are going to be amazing. One of, if not the most feared teams in the league. Our offensive firepower is unparalleled. We have the most explosive, pure goal scoring, hardest working, most entertaining, biggest hitting and mindest boggling force in Alexander Ovechkin aka The Great 8, The 8 Train, Alexander the Great and of course Ovy. This man is leaps and bounds ahead of every player in the NHL when it comes to the complete package, like you didn't know. To compliment him we have quite possibly the most offensively talented player in all the league in Alexander Semin. He is not as big, as fast, as strong or as defensive as Ovy, but his hands, oh my, they are as good as they get. With these poetic phalanges, Semin is able to do things with the puck that don't seem physically possible and when he shoots, here is some advice, GET OUT OF THE WAY! I feel bad for the back of the net...laser rocket cannon shot he has. To finish this line off (yes, they are on the same line, this is where the question of fairness comes into play), is again one of the best in the league at what he does, Niklas Backstrom. What does he do? Well, lets first focus on what he doesn't do. He doesn't lose the puck. He doesn't make a bad play. He doesn't make a bad pass. He doesn't fall down. He does rank among the top five every year he has played in assists. He does make passes that I cant even see on replay. He does know exactly where Ovy and Semin are at all times. He does know exactly where to put the puck. I do have a man crush on him.

Before I get too carried away and go over every player on our team, I will sum it up with a few more notes. We acquired Mike Knuble from Philadelphia and Brendan Morrison from Vancouver, both are solid players who know how to make plays and finish them, solid additions to our lineup. We have the best minor league team in all of the land in case we get hit with the injury bug again. We do have the most offensively talented defensemen in the NHL in Mike Green (I am not lying, we have some of the best proven players alive, no joke). Finally our goaltenders. This season was a fight for starting position between three excellent netminders. The verdict, two starters, Jose Theodore and Semyon Varlomov. I believe that these two goalers will split time until one outshines the other or one begins to play poorly, which may never happen. God forbid anything happens to either, we have Michal Neuvirth down in Hershey. He is currently good enough to be a starter in the NHL and nearly made the team if not for injury. He is only 21 (like Varlomov), expect to hear about this kid in the future. Three is better then two.

WOD:

10 squat cleans (from floor), 135lbs
50 GHD sit ups
8 squat cleans
40 GHD sit ups
6 squat cleans
30 GHD sit ups
4 squat cleans
20 GHD sit ups
2 squat cleans
10 GHD sit ups

12:30

This was my last WOD before the competition on Sunday, which is a good thing since I am already sore from "Angie" and plan on getting more sore as time passes. This went well, I was able to do all of the cleans unbroken (not super fast, but nor real rest, hands never came off the bar). The GHD went surpirsingly well even after 100 sit ups the day before, my split was as follows: 50 (25, 5, 10, 10), 40 (10, 10, 10, 10), 30 (15, 8, 7), 20 (20), 10 (10). Now I plan on resting Friday and Saturday and performing my best on Sunday.

Wednesday 9-30-09

I had planned on doing "Angie" yesterday but my C&J&Staring at Maiko's butt session ran long and I didn't have time, so I bumped it to today. My brother got 19min and change, Big Lou got 21:15, I found out just before I attempted that Dan, the dude that I did the WOD "Daniel" with the other day (and beat him by 4 seconds, mind you), got 14:30 something. I was shooting for certainly under 20min, more likely around 15min. I figured if I could maintain a 4 minute pace per exercise, I would be fine considering squats would not take me 4 minutes. It sounded good, that was until my kryptonite slowed me down.....

WOD:

"Angie"
100 pull ups
100 push ups
100 sit ups
100 squats

My mindset going into this WOD was "alright, I can bang out pull ups, sit ups and squats no problem, push ups on the other hand, for some reason, are my kryptonite." I don't know why it is, but I am a below average push up...per... Yes, I go chest-to-floor and many non Crossfitters claim to be strong at push ups when they only go to a 90D angle with their arms. But, my ranking with people who go chest-to-floor, sucks. I can't figure it out, I used to be a pretty strong bench presser guy, and I can ring dip forever, but something with push ups kills me, see for yourself.

100 pull ups: 4:40
100 push ups: 9:40
100 sit ups: 3:40
100 squats: 2:04

Total: 20:04 (PR)

Ridiculous right? If only I could have shaved off some time. My brother made a good point, Maybe my problem is that I am trying to push the earth away from me instead of pushing myself up from the earth. I think, 170lbs of my 190lb body is in my over sized head, making every push up more difficult than humans who have their weight evenly distributed. Whatever the reason, it blows, I blow, that time blows and if you will excuse me, I am going to go blow my nose.

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday 9-27 through 9-29

Dang yo, work definitely comes in waves. I have been up to my patchy facial haired lip in stuff to do at my place of employment. I have made some headway and have some time to write an entry.

Sunday:
As we all know today is football day. Quite possibly my favorite day of the week. What could be better then lifting in the a.m. followed by nothing but football and sitting, with eating throughout, until I lay down in my bed for slumber? I know! Lifting with Big Lou and CMo in the a.m followed by sitting for the 1:00pm football games followed by sleeping until the 8:00pm game, with eating throughout. Great day

WOD:
Snatch
1x1 40kg
1x2 60kg
1x1 70kg
1x1 75kg (PR)

Met Con:
"Maiko's Murder"

500m row
60 double unders
10 muscle ups

5:34 (PR by 3:26)

I was very pleased with my snatch. I think I will be attempting 75kg at the competition this weekend. It felt reletively smooth and I think, nay, I know I can do it. The Met-con was good but I effed up on the double unders, got broke like 5 times. Given, it was much better then last time but I should be able to do 60 unbroken. We also got new rings at Balance that have this stupid rubber grip that I really don't like. Its the anti-chalk!

Monday:
Rest Day

I am resting Monday, Friday and Saturday before the competition on Sunday.

Tuesday:
WOD:

Clean and Jerk
1x1 70kg
1x1 80kg
1x1 90kg
1x1 100kg
1x1 102.5kg (fail, bad pull)
1x1 102.5kg

I think I am comfortable enough that I could get 102.5kg at the competition. Maiko critiqued my pull and my jerk and it really helped. It felt better then ever on the rep that I completed. So, in my perfect world My snatch at the competition would be as follows:

attempt 1: 65kg
attempt 2: 70kg
attempt 3: 75kg

C&J

attempt 1: 90kg
attempt 2: 100kg
attempt 3: 102.5kg

I spent the rest of my time at Balance on Tuesday watching Maikos snatch and talking about her butt.

Friday 9-25-09 and Saturday 9-26-09

I would not be surprised if my weekend entries lack some substance for I tend to spend most of my time training, buying, preparing and eating food followed by repeating the previous.

Friday:
Today I took my final day of rest before the Fight Gone Bad 4 fundraiser on Saturday. Big Lou came to town and we got some food and chilled at Starbucks for entirely too long, so long that they closed about an hour before we finally left their patio.

Saturday:
Wow, what a great day! Lou and I showed up early to the gym to get in a good warm up before the miserable Fight Gone Bad arse kicking. A total of 14 males and 3 females completed the workout in 4 different heats. Nothing compared to the love throughout the gym today. People at every station cheering on and helping each other. Every single person went hard, many set PR's and others experienced the brutality for the first time.

Overall, the Crossfit Community raised $934,000 for The Wounded Warior Project and Athletes for the Cure! Top performances were:

1) Rugby Mark- 387 (this man is as strong as the Hulk without the annoying green skin tone and hearing problem; he kept a solid pace for every minute and did not take breaks. I would say that everything felt about 20lbs lighter to him, yes, that essentially makes the wall ball throws air squats)

2) Salty Hat Chris- 337 (killed it he did)

3) Maiko #2- 314 (it was her first time and she obviously was not intimidated)

4) Yours Truely- 301 (PR) (hmmm, I was shooting for 350, the plan went down the crapper after round 1. My second round was the worst, not sure if I could have gone much harder, I legitimately held puke back twice during the WOD)

5) Steve O- 297 (poor performance...for him, surely I thought he would set the top score, his previous PR was around 320 or something)

Like I said, today was such a success. Everyone worked their ass off! Plenty of pictures were taken and will be posted on Facebook on Monday!