Happy Halloween!

Tonight will be a true test of my willpower as I hand out candy to the little Trick-or-Treaters that come to my door.  Most years, I do a lot of “one for you, one for me” with the candy we give out and eat way too much junk as I sit around and wait for the doorbell to ring.

This year, since I’m doing the Whole Life Challenge, and not having any sugar or artificial ingredients, candy is big on the NO list.  Today is actually the last full day of the challenge.  Tomorrow we record our scores for today and then the finale workout Saturday morning and it’s over.  So, my goal for tonight is NO CANDY AT ALL.  Hopefully I’m successful!

To help me stay away from the junk, I have signed up for the 8:30 WOD tonight. There is no hockey tonight since it’s Halloween, but CrossFit classes are still on.  I’m hoping that knowing I need to go lift heavy shit and jump around at the Box will help keep me away from the treats.  Besides, with this as the workout ahead of me……and all those burpees, I really don’t need any extra crap in my system!  I really don’t want to be a victim of this:

Happy Halloween!”
How do you stay away from all the treats?

Have you ever done 100 burpees for time?
I hope I survive!

What’s Up Wednesday

Hey!  What’s up?

How is everyone’s hump day going?  I’m looking forward to getting this work week finished.

Bon Jovi is playing 2 shows in Toronto this weekend…and I’m going to both of them!  Friday with my hubby and kids, and then Saturday with my girlfriends.  I think it will be 2 very different concert experiences, but I’m looking forward to both of them.

But, before it’s time for Bon Jovi, I’ve got 2 more days of work to get through and 2 CrossFit workouts.  Hopefully the next couple of workdays go smoothly and without too much stress.

I’m not sure I can say that about my upcoming CrossFit workouts.  Here’s what’s on tap for me the next couple of days:

100 Ring Dips!  Seriously!?!  I may not get that finished within the hour to even get to the Met Con part of the WOD!  I have been using a thin black band for my ring dips lately.  The other day for Elizabeth, we only had to do 21-15-9 and I had to break those up.  I have no idea how long or now many breaks I will need to take to do 100 of them.  Should be interesting!  I hope I survive to get to the rest of the fun.

Now as bad as 100 ring dips sound, tomorrow’s workout sounds even worse!  Check this out:

Yeah…that’s 100 friggin’ BURPEES!!!  I’m looking forward to the strength part of the WOD, but those burpees are going to suck…HUGE!  The love of Burpees is all over the web:

All I know for sure is that I will be rocking these bad boys Thursday night!

In other news, tonight is Jacko’s second drum lesson.  He has been practicing daily and has mastered the 3 “beats” his teacher taught him last week.  Hopefully he gets a few more things added to the practice list because all of us in the family are ready for some new “beats” to echo throughout the house!  I’ve even mastered the AC DC beat!

Well, my lunch break is over, and I should get back to work.  I will leave you with one last Burpee thing from the web:

What’s up with you?
Do you have a healthy hate for burpees too?

The Friday Five

I know I say this every time we get to Friday…but thank God!  I am so ready for the weekend!

And since it’s Friday, that means it’s time for …

1.  I saw this on a blog I read (Jerome’s Kitchen) and thought it was funny. 

2.  I’m entering into the last week of the Whole Life Challenge.  I am looking forward to the challenge being over.  Not so much so I can eat things again – which will be nice – but mostly because I want to see how much progress I’ve made over the 8 week challenge period.  The scale shows some progress and I’m into jeans I haven’t worn in quite a while, so I’m pretty sure I’ve lost some weight and inches.  I’m curious about what the gym scale reads and what my measurements are next Saturday.  I’m also very interested to see if my WOD score improves from the preliminary score I got on Day 1.  I sure hope so!

For this last week of the challenge, our lifestyle challenge is “Intentional acts of kindness”.  Kind of a “pay it forward” sort of thing.  I’m looking forward to this one.  I’ll have to hit Starbucks drive thru one day on my way to work and buy coffee for the car behind me. 

3.  Yesterday was my youngest son’s birthday.  For the last 2 months, I think just about every day, he has told either my husband or me that he wants drums for his birthday.  He would send random texts to us and remind us every day at bedtime that that’s what he wanted.  Hubs and I were not thrilled with this idea.  Drums are loud…and expensive.  And what if we get them and he doesn’t play them?  So, we did some investigation and found that a local music store had a special for October.  If you book 6 lessons, they will give you a rental for FREE for those 6 weeks.  This seemed like a fantastic option…so we bit the bullet.  We kept it a total secret from Jackson.

Wednesday night, after dinner, hubs said casually that we needed to go out and asked Jack if he wanted to come.  Jack asked where and we just said it didn’t matter, did he want to come or not.  He decided he would come.  Thank god, because I don’t know what we would have done if he said he didn’t want to come!

So, Jack drove with hubs and I took a separate car.  Two reasons for that…we needed to bring a set of drums home and I was going to CrossFit for the 8:30 class and wasn’t sure how long it would take to get the drum paperwork done and loaded into the truck.  During the whole drive, Jack kept asking hubs where we were going.  Asking about different people’s places and if we were going there.  Rory just kept saying nope.  Finally they turned onto the street that the music store is on and Jack took this big gasp and his eyes got so wide!  As soon as Rory put the car into park Jack took off towards the door…then stopped dead in his track and asked “is it even open?”  We told him to check.  Of course the store was open, and we went in.  Then he stops dead again and says, “Wait, what are we doing here?” We laughed and finally spilled the beans that he was having his first drum lesson in 10 minutes.  He couldn’t stop grinning!  Then we told him that he got a set of drums to take home and use for the 6 weeks and the smile got even bigger!  Here is is anxiously waiting for his teacher to come get him.

While Jack went into the drum room, we headed upstairs to take care of the rental paperwork and get the drums loaded into the truck.  That took very little time, so we headed back downstairs to wait for the lesson to finish.  There is a window in the drum room door, so I was able to snap a few shots of him during the lesson and grabbed a bit of video too.

First drum lesson.

After the lesson we all headed home and the drum kit assembly process began.  We decided to put the kit up in his room since we were worried about them getting damaged if they were in the basement.  There are a lot of hockey pucks flying around down there most days!  I headed off to CrossFit and when I got home, Jacko showed me a little of what he could do.  Not too bad for only 1 lesson! 

Practicing his “AC DC Beat”!

Needless to say, he’s thrilled with his present.  The deal is, if he practices every day, and wants to continue, we will get him more lessons, and either rent the drums again, or maybe think about buying him a set of his own.  We’ll see how it goes.  So far…he’s all in!

4.  Did you know that before Jesse Pinkman sold crystal meth, he was pushing Pops! 

5.  I’m gonna Row, Row, Row my WOD later!  There is just a BIT of rowing in today’s WOD. 

I’m not a huge fan of rowing…I’ve got short legs, so rowing is tough for me.  I’m sure by the end of it my legs will be like jello, and I will hardly be able to walk when I get off the rower.  Should be fun! 

If you CrossFit, got any tips on how to be an efficient rower? 
Got any big plans for the weekend?

It’s Been A While

Once again, I have been a bad blogger.  Life has been busy, and between work, kids, CrossFit and weekends away, I just haven’t had the time, or, quite honestly, really felt like blogging.  I’ve been reading tons of blogs, just haven’t written one in a while.

So, what’s been going on with me?

I am still doing the Whole Life Challenge.  We are 46 days in, with 10 days left.  My diet has been very good. I’ve been eating clean and WLC compliant with only the odd treat here and there.  Most of the points that I have lost have been due to missing on the exercise requirement on non-CrossFit days.  Thankfully, I’ve remembered to record my scores every day and write a little comment about how things are going, so I’ve earned some bonus points.  A few more days and I will be back to a perfect score.  I’m hoping to stay on track with food and really push myself at the Box to get the most out of these last 10 days.  I’m down between 8-10 pounds depending on the day, which is nice, but more importantly than that, things are tighter and I’m feeling good. 

There are a lot of things that I can’t eat during this challenge – wheat, white rice, sugar, most dairy, artificial ingredients, diet soda, corn, and alcohol to name a few.  I’m surprised I really haven’t missed the sugar as much as I expected.  It really is in everything, so I’ve had to be careful and read the ingredient list on everything I buy.  I may not have been missing sugar since I have made sure that I still get some treats.  I’ve made a few different kinds of cookies and some no bake brownies that have been really good and kept me out of the usual treat cupboard.  Click on each picture to be taken to the original recipes for each treat. 

I also made an absolutely amazing pumpkin chia pudding.  This stuff was the bomb.  It is prime pumpkin season, so do yourself a favour and make this as soon as you can.  I even made my own almond milk and I used a tiny pinch of stevia instead of the honey so I could stay WLC compliant. 

CrossFit has been going well.  I still absolutely love it.  It still terrifies me almost daily, but i love it.  I’m still the slowest in just about every class I’m in, but I’m getting stronger with each class, and that’s what it’s all about. 

I’m back at the Box tomorrow night where I’ve got some deadlift strength work, and then a 6 minute AMRAP of 4 squat cleans and 10 alternating pistol squats.  Then it’s a 2 minute rest followed by a Tabata push-up set.  Should be fun! 

I will try not to disappear again. 

How have things been going for you?
Made any great recipes lately?
Have you got a favourite pumpkin recipe?  Feel free to share it!

What is Beauty?

One of the coaches from my CrossFit posted this video on the Box Facebook page.

Strong IS beautiful.

I LOVE it!

Have a BEAUTIFUL day!

The Friday Five

Another week over…Hello Weekend!  Time for this week’s edition of …

1.  Yesterday’s WOD was killer!  It looks simple enough on paper, but holy crap…this was a rough one:

The bench press was good.  I hit a new PR of 90 lbs.  I only managed 3 unassisted reps, but that’s 3 more at that weight than I’ve done before, so I consider that a PR! 

For the Met Con, I decided to go with level 2.  That might have been a mistake, but I wanted to challenge myself. The first few rounds were good.  Managed the 6 burpees and had some decent time left in the minute to get my double unders in.  By the last 3 minutes, I only managed to get the burpees done and had no time to skip before it was time more f’ing burpees.  I was a sweaty mess by the end of 10 minutes.  My score, which was number of double unders completed, was 64.  Not great, but not too bad considering I did level 2, and only managed to skip for 7 of the 10 rounds.. 

This WOD left me exhausted and I wasn’t sure I would have any juice left for my hockey game, but once I hit the ice I felt good.  My legs are definitely stronger and my cardio is good.  CrossFit is working it’s magic on me…and I love it!

2.  I’m heading back to the Box tonight after work.  Initially I wasn’t going to go tonight, but then I saw tomorrow’s WOD and decide today would be a better day to go.  I must be out of my mind, because this is today’s WOD:

That’s right…DOUBLE FRAN! That is going to be nuts!  It’s CrossFit Newmarket Central’s 3rd birthday today, and they decided there would be no better way to celebrate than with Double Fran! 

You might be wondering what would make me pick Double Fran as the better WOD option…well, it’s a WOD with just too much running:

This is a WOD created by a CFNC member.  Our September Challenge was to create a WOD that required no equipment.  The winning entry would be the WOD that we do tomorrow.  When I saw all the running in this bad boy I had a bit of a panic attack.  I am not a fan of running anymore.  I seriously can’t believe that before CrossFit I ran 6 or 7 half marathons and even a full marathon.  Now I can’t stand it.  I would much rather lift heavy shit!  So, the decision to do Double Fran was actually an easy one.  I’m sure it will be torture, but they have snacks and prizes at the Box today, so maybe I will get lucky and win something…or at least eat something tasty!

3.  I get to sleep in tomorrow!  Now that I am going to CrossFit tonight, I don`t need to get up to go to the Box tomorrow morning.  I can`t tell you how happy that makes me.  Despite getting more sleep than usual these last few weeks – with the Whole Life Challenge lifestyle challenge being 7 hours of sleep a night – I am still pretty bagged in the morning when the alarm goes off.  So being able to just sleep until I wake up on my own will be a treat.  I will likely still wake up early, but even just lying in bed relaxing will be awesome. 

4.  I`m half way through the Whole Life Challenge.  Today when I logged on to do my points, it said we are on day 28, with 28 days left.  So far, I am enjoying the challenge.  For the most part, I am eating well and feeling good.  It does take a bit more planning and prep work to be prepared food-wise.  I need to make sure I’ve got leftovers for lunch and healthy snacks that I can grab quickly, but this has been going along well so far.  Hopefully I can keep it up for these next 28 days…which I think will be fairly easy to do, since I`m liking the results I`m seeing.  I`m down about 8 pounds, my clothes are fitting better (my jeans are almost too loose!), and I`m feeling good. 

5.  I found another funny video on the web.  Watch this guy scare the crap out of people working in the drive-thru. 

Some fun in the drive-thru.

Happy Friday and Happy Weekend!

Got any big plans?

Things from the Web

Things from the Web has become my way to get a post out on days that I don’t have much to say, or I’m just too lazy.  Today is a lazy day!

1.  Since starting the Whole Life Challenge, I have been eating avocados a lot more regularly.  I will buy a few on the weekend and then take them to work, to add to breakfast and lunch through the week.  Here is a handy dandy guide for how to tell if your avocado is ready to eat. 

This comes from Boxgrl81.  Be sure to check out the full post that gives some info on why avocados are a great addition to your diet.

2.  Here’s another one from Boxgrl81.  The top 10 reasons why women should CrossFit.  Love this!

3.   I have been craving sweets in the afternoon, and so far have resisted the temptation to hit the jar of M&Ms in the office pantry.  I am gong to make these little pumpkin snacks tomorrow in the hopes that they hit the spot. 
They come from Lindsay @ The Lean Green Bean, so they are healthy (she’s a Registered Dietician) and I’m sure they will be delicious.  Be sure to check out her blog.  She posts awesome recipes all the time. 

Tonight is a double workout night – CrossFit at 7 and hockey at 9:30.  Here’s what I’ve got waiting for me at the Box tonight. 

I’m looking forward to the bench press.  It’s one of my better lifts.  Burpees and double unders.  Awesome!  I may have to do one of the scaled options since 10 burpees could take me almost the whole minute…especially as we get further into the WOD!  I should be good and tired for my hockey game after all that! 

Have you found anything interesting or informative on the web lately?

Do you have any healthy and tasty pumpkin recipes?  ‘Tis the season! 

And remember….there’s nothing cooler than a strong woman!

Sh*t CrossFit Girls Say

A couple of minutes ago, YouTube sent me some videos they thought I might like.

This was one of them.  I think it’s funny. Hope you do too.

Is that Paleo?

Happy Tuesday!