Paleo Challenge – Days 4-6

Nothing extremely interesting or blogworthy has happened in the past couple of days, so I’ll just lump them together.

Day 4 (Tuesday):

 
Oh wait … I lie .. that dinner was pretty blogworthy.

I completely made it up on the fly, so there is no real recipe but the sauce involved garlic, ghee, lemon juice and coconut milk. The zucchini noodles I made with this device:

I ran 4 miles in my neighborhood that morning, and was happy to be running at all … but my shoes were too tight and the humidity felt like running through soup. Luke warm soup.

Day 5 (Wednesday):

 
I repeated my same 4-mile run from the day before, but with different shoes and less soup.  Otherwise the day was pretty much a wash of anything productive. … I thought maybe I saw a little tiny quadricep developing so I took some baby pics:

Maybe?

I was HANGRY waiting on hubby to return from his evening run, so I wasted some time by making a gremolata (lemon zest, parsley, shallots) for our green beans to keep myself busy.

Zesting lemons is a workout in its own right.

Day 6 (Today, Thursday):

When your breakfast is canned tuna on lettuce with salsa, thats a tell-tale sign its time to grocery shop.

My major accomplishment for today was convincing my husband that the “special group warm-up” at CrossFit tonight was a rousing game of Red Rover.

In actuality it was burpees to the song Roxanne. He was disappointed.

June Paleo Challenge – Days 1-3

Every month CrossFit Intrigue has some sort of optional challenge that members can participate in. Last month the challenge was a physical one: 2 minute max effort – burpees, box jumps and air squats, one movement each week. I came in 2nd place.

Thiiiiiiiis month the challenge is a nutritional one: eat Paleo all month. Points are awarded for compliance and deducted for cheats. Since I’ve done a Paleo “challenge” (Whole30) before and eat that way most of the time anyway, there is really no reason I shouldn’t win this thing. And there are prizes at stake. <— I almost wrote “steak”. See I even think Paleo. 😛

I’m probably more excited about this challenge than I really should be, but because I’ve struggled with injuries so much lately I really need something that I can focus on. I feel like when I don’t have a plan, a calendar, to-do lists, etc … that I’m just floundering around aimlessly.

So I do things like this:

I can’t decide if I’m just super prepared, or a complete freak. It is what it is, I guess.

The challenge. Back to that.

It officially started Saturday, so naturally I blew it out on Friday night with chocolate and copious amounts of wine. Tim got cold busted by one of our coaches purchasing said chocolate. COLD BUSTED.

Saturday morning it was ON though. I got up and headed to CrossFit for a super fun Team WOD. We started with a Musical Med Ball, Bear Crawl warm-up …

It was a unique warm-up for sure. But it definitely worked.

Our WOD was a fun one as well! In teams of 3, we took turns cleaning (Clean Video) as much weight as possible in 15 minutes. My team of myself, Clint and Matt moved over 5,000 pounds in 15 minutes!

 

New Clean PR in the midst of that for me too. 105 pounds!

Saturday’s eats:

Oh yeah … either 6oz of wine or 2 oz of tequila is required allowed on this challenge per day.

Sunday I ran my longest distance in nearly a month, 5 miles! Our friend Lauren and I, met Tim at the mid-point of his 10 miler and finished it out with him. Hopefully my legs will continue to cooperate.

Sunday’s eats:

I was hungry ALL.DAMN.DAY.

Apparently I can run 5 miles, but eat like I ran 10. Or maybe its because I had to watch Lincoln eat popcorn when we went to the movies and I was hangry about it.

All in all, still a successful day.

Today I’ve had another spin on sausage and sweet potatoes for breakfast. This time cubed the potatoes and roasted them with Chinese 5-spice. Lunch was a weird mixture I concocted of lettuce, canned tuna, cherry tomatoes, avocado, Paleo Bang Bang Sauce and salsa. And dinner will be Mustard Glazed Chicken Thighs.

Hopefully if I can show some self-control and sabotage my husband, over the next 27 days, I’ll complete and maybe even win this challenge.

Country Music Half Marathon & Hero for Heroes CrossFit Competition

I haven’t written anything in over 2 months because that time has just big one big cluster of suck. You know how your momma taught you “if you can’t say anything nice …”? Yeah.

On April 27th, I completed my 21st Half Marathon in Nashville at the Country Music Marathon and Half. You might remember that last year I did the full marathon and had an amazing experience. I felt great, I did great … I was looking forward to having a blast again this year minus the extra 13.1 miles.

In reality this happened:

Cold, blindingly hard rain from the very beginning through the very end that never let up. I couldn’t even lift my face up without being absolutely pelted.

From the start of the race I could tell that due to my previous injury and recovery time, that I hadn’t quite built back up my cardiovascular and respiratory endurance. It was taking more effort than is typical for me to run a very modest race pace. At about mile 6.5 I started having similar pain that I experience in my calf at the Georgia Half, but it was in the opposite leg. THIS DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE!

At that point I was frustrated, but refused to be defeated. I walked and ran back and forth between the two and was able to ultimately cross the finish line, with a time of: 1:54:35! My worst half marathon time to date.

The good: I got to spend the weekend hanging out with one of my best friends, his girlfriend and my family. Lots of fun was had!

I left Tennessee with a sense of not knowing where I stood with running though. And I didn’t like it.

Over the next several weeks, I cut way back on my running which was causing pain and stuck to only doing low impact cardio such as the elliptical and biking. I also continued to do CrossFit up to 3 times a week.

On May 18th, I took part in my very first CrossFit Competition called Hero 4 Heroes.  The first workout of the day was called “Danny”: As Many Rounds as Possible in 20 minutes of – 30 box jumps, 20 Push Press, 30 Pull-Ups (or Ring Rows).

 

It was INTENSE!

The 2nd WOD (only a few minutes later) was out on the field. “Brenton” is 100ft bear crawl, 100ft broad jumps back – for every 5 broad jump do 3 burpees. All of this x 5 rounds.

Even more intense. Maybe. I still can’t decide.

I had a great time at the competition even though it was very intense, I enjoyed pushing myself and being around super competitive but supportive people.

I tied for fourth place in my division.

The next morning after the competition, I woke up and could barely walk. Not only because I was so sore, but because my left calf was swollen to almost twice its original size. The muscle and even the skin on my leg hurt to touch. I spent most of last week resting, going back and forth to doctor’s appointments and popping Ibuprofen.

Things have settled down now, my leg pain is gone (hopefully for good, but we’ll see) and I’ve started working my running mileage back up. I started with only 1 mile at a time, did that twice … then went up to 2 miles, etc. Now I’m back up to 3 miles and hoping to increase a little faster from here. Chicago is still 5 months away, but its time to start getting serious about training!

I’m looking forward with positivity and excitement!