The Great Experiment Update

I'm about halfway to my Oly triathlon on solely Crossfit and Crossfit Endurance training. The hard part is I have no idea how to gauge my progress at this point since everything feels completely different and I'm not doing the same workouts that I've used in the past as baselines. I could be doing a bike ride and have done a CF workout that morning where I was squatting heavy weights and in the bike ride I'm supposed to be doing 2 minute sprints. So I really can't tell within all of that where my overall endurance fitness is at.

I haven't done anything over about an hour until a tempo ride I did earlier this week. I really felt like I fizzled out once I passed the hour marker, but I can't tell whether this was because I had been doing some heavy duty Crossfit leg work earlier or because my endurance past an hour is no longer what it used to be. It's hard to say what I'll feel like once I start the pre-race taper and let my muscles fully recover from everything I've been throwing at them.

On the plus side, I feel like I've really adjusted to the Crossfit side of things well and have been feeling strong there in most of my workouts. I'm "making the board" pretty regularly (scoring in the top 5 women at our gym, which is who goes up on the board for each workout), and in workouts as diverse as the 2,000 meter row (1st on the board at 8:12 - our coach took that cute photo above of one of the little ones watching me go at it) or the "Crossfit Total" which is all heavy lifting (total of your Deadlift, Back Squat, and Shoulder Press, mine was 3rd on the board at 410). So I can see myself improving at a broad variety of exercises, many of which I had never done before a few months ago. Today I even got two full body weight pullups in a row! I couldn't even do half of one when I started, couldn't even budge myself toward the bar. For that alone I am super excited!!!

On the "dunno" side, I have no idea yet how effective the Crossfit Endurance thing is going to be for me. I will be very nervous and very much interested to see how this Oly race will go for me. Nervous because normally I know exactly where I'm at training-wise when I toe the starting line, and this time it's a total crapshoot. I could feel totally strong and just bust the course wide open, or I could just totally choke from lack of long-distance endurance training. Once again, stay tuned....