Crossfit Update #3

About a month and a half into this Crossfit experience now, and I'm just starting to feel like I'm getting the hang of things. I really like seeing myself progress, this week I switched up to a lighter band for doing pull-ups, which is one step closer to being able to do them without a band.

As you might guess from a software engineer and triathlon nerd (you know all us triathletes just love our stats and spreadsheets) one thing I like is the trackability of Crossfit. Many of the workouts are named and come around every so often, so you can see what you did last time (weights, reps, time) on a particular workout and evaluate your improvement. Most Crossfit gyms use a whiteboard to keep track of everyone's time for the day, and ours utilizes a website called beyond the whiteboard where you can track your workouts on cute little graphs, and compare with your gymmates and with Crossfit members from other gyms.

I'm continuing to struggle with integrating Crossfit into my triathlon training however. Because my schedule as a homeschooling mom, and a new puppy owner, and an urban gardener, and swim coach, etc. is so sporadic, I've always just slotted in my triathlon workouts whenever I can. However, that doesn't work so well when a Crossfit workout is scheduled at a particular time. For instance on Thursday I was planning to go for a 1.5 hour bike ride in the morning, and then do the 5:00 pm Crossfit class. However, life intervened and I didn't get to ride my bike until almost 3:00. That means I finished my (hilly) bike ride and rushed off to Crossfit. After the Crossfit warmup (pullups, situps, squats, ring dips, back extensions, etc.) this was our workout:

Walking lunge 100 ft.
21 Pull-ups
21 Sit-ups
Walking lunge 100 ft.
18 Pull-ups
18 Sit-ups
Walking lunge 100 ft.
15 Pull-ups
15 Sit-ups
Walking lunge 100 ft.
12 Pull-ups
12 Sit-ups
Walking lunge 100 ft.
9 Pull-ups
9 Sit-ups
Walking Lunge 100 ft.
6 Pull-ups
6 Sit-ups

and that all was topped off with a 2 minute Max Squats (how many squats you can do in 2 minutes). Needless to say, with the hilly bike ride, starting into all of those lunges my legs were already toast! About halfway through the Max Squats I could feel that they were just going to seize up on me and I had to stop. I think our Crossfit coach maybe thought I was nuts or something (these Crossfit folks usually don't just stop in the middle of a workout). But at some point, something has to give and that day it was getting the full benefit of a Crossfit workout because I had already really taxed my legs too much.

Same thing happened the next day when I ended up doing a 7-mile run way too close to the evening Crossfit. I don't honestly know how all this will work out in the long run. I can easily see integrating Crossfit into winter base training, but it remains to be seen whether or not I can continue working it into my training as I approach the more intense months of summer race schedule. First race is in three weeks, so I guess we'll see how that goes. I definitely think I should not Crossfit in the taper week!