Cucas

Picking up everyone's favorite burritos to take to the cabin.  Kylie said Reese needs 4! Thatsa my girl! Skiing is hard work.

No 5 am Crossfit

5 am Crossfit is cancelled tomorrow, since I have to work in the morning I get to sleep in!  Not saying I'm just a little excited.  Another weekend spent househunting, we have the most brutally honest realtor, this could take awhile.

Front Squats

54

Score!

166

Strict Press

39

This weekend

we went to buy a house.  Bought a five pound bag of chocolate covered cinnamon bears instead, looking for light and knowledge at the bottom of the bag.  We found a house that checked all the boxes, and then---the perfect house that checked no boxes just appeared. I think I'm not ready to do this.

80% Max 8 Rounds

Deadlifts--72
And on another note I am conquering my fear of box jumps.

Muscle Soreness

Push Jerk

41

Yesterday's back squats:  62

Trying to fix the tank

Craig playing with a photo editing program; me-putting my crossfit skills to good use. This is behind the General Patton Museum at Chiriaco Summit.  There are several old tanks decaying in the desert, and behind the tanks is a free camping area.  I don't know that I would highly recommend it but it was a good place to stay if you're going into Joshua Tree from the South.

Where the Points Don't Matter

609

Four sets for max reps of:
2 minutes of Rowing (for calories)
Rest 30 seconds
90 seconds of Double-Unders
Rest 30 seconds
60 seconds of Push-Ups
Rest 30 seconds
30 seconds of Toes to Bar
Rest 90 seconds

Strict Press

34

Thanksgiving in the PNW

The plan was to ski Thanksgiving with the boys, and enjoy delish chicken fingers in the lodge for Thanksgiving dinner.  Sadly, Stevens didn't open and it was full on cooking!  Well, if you can't ski you can shop skis, check out my new skis, I'm pretty excited, went a lot shorter. It was a great visit with the boys, visiting mom now and headed home tomorrow.

Body said

Nope, not today.

Deadlifts or Dinner

"More plates is always the goal."  94 today. Killer cardio WOD.

2 Good Things

The warm up was my highlight today, it was a red ball run (to the Target like red ball at the entrance) and 10 push ups.  I did 10 push ups, regular! Benchpress PR 56.  Oh yeah, I got priority registration entrance email for IMAZ 2020, heaven help me.  Didn't I just write about how I was glad I didn't do it this year.

DNS

Today I am a DNS for IMAZ.  I'm sitting here trying to decide whether to beat myself up or congratulate myself.  I will be positive, I didn't spend a year doing 5-6 hour bike rides and 3-4 hour runs every weekend.  I didn't spend countless, mindless hours in the pool or at spin class or the treadmill.  Instead I got those hours to go on hikes, go to the cabin, ski with grandkids and snowmobile with the crew.  We explored Italy and took the grandsons to Hawaii. Weekends were fun going to places like the Center of the World to see the history in granite (ok some weekend adventures were weird).  Mammoth was fantastic, mountain biking in Southern Utah, paddleboarding especially in Newport, beach rides and even cleaning the house on a Saturday morning.  I loved triathlon (notice I put that in the past tense) but it's time to move on. Crossfit is filling the void for now and adventures, this week it'll be time spent with Kyle and Brad in Washington. Today it's a visit to Lululemon  (thankfully Crossfit means I still need to support Lululemon).  Go IMAZ athletes.  Go Lululemon--it's all about the steps, lots of steps navigating Victoria Gardens.  PS: I think I'm going to live in these joggers.

Positive Affirmation

Every morning at 6:00 am I get in the car and say the same thing, "that was hard, but it's done!"  I think it would be nice if when I pushed the button to start the car it just said that to me!
I didn't have my bench press recorded in my notes so here it is 51 I guess we'll just call that a PR.  Note: I did record it a few days ago on here, pr for sure.

Front Squat

55

2 WODS

We did two WOD's today.  Part of the first one was an AMRAP with a set of 10 push presses.  I got three rounds plus one more round of the push presses.  The Rx was 95, yeah 95!  I did 22.  Goals!!  Big goals?

Lunch in Big Bear

Big Bear today to take Kyle and Kael to lunch.  Fire Rock was very good, as is grandparenting.

Hang Squat Cleans

Just one of those moves that doesn't click.  Kept it light (20lbs) and kept at it.

Push ups

I can do pushups, pullups not so much. Bench press 42.

Gap Season

I love the changing seasons, my favorite season of all though, hmmm not what you might guess.  My favorite is "gap season", that season between mountain bike and ski when the die hard decides to go home to visit mom and dad.

20.5 minus 5!

Final Open workout:
40 Pull ups
80 Calorie row
120 Wall ball shots

20 minute time cap--damn 5 calories short on the row!
Ker just texted me her score, she did it in 16:44, fantastic!

One rep max

20 minutes to hit a one rep max.

                                  PR                Previous
Back Squat                77                       65
Shoulder Press          38                       37
Deadlift                      92                       75

I left my phone in the car so I wasn't sure what my previous pr's were.  Maybe that's a good thing!

Hiking Joshua Tree

Ahhh...the beauty of the desert.  I'm not sure what I think is the most beautiful, or my favorite; a few weeks ago it was the clear warm waters of the North Shore, today it's enjoying the rugged survival of plant and animal in this amazing environment. 

October 32

Open 20.4 finished 16:34, I'm happy with my time, but next open I'm hoping that I can do the scaled without scaling.  Austin showed up in costume today and declared it's October 32, prolonging Squatober. I can say my form on squats is definitely better.

Since it's Halloween do-over day enjoy this cute pic.

Look close Reese's scrubs are even monogrammed!

Anyone who can guess how many trick or treaters we had last night gets all of the leftover candy!

And just like that ....

Squatober is finished!

20.3

"Yay, it's dead lifts" she said.

Scaled the Scaled

16 rounds of 20.2, Womens Masters 60+ slightly scaled from the already scaled but.....done!

A Simple Moment

Back to Crossfit this morning.  When I walked out at 6:00 am it was still dark, my workout was done, the air was cool and felt so good.  It was just a moment of feeling all was right with the world. Endorphins I suppose.

When the grandsons say...

Grandma and Grandpa let's go to Hawaii, you say, "sure!"  Why say no when you can say yes.  We got back at midnight last night.  We had so much fun with the boys.  We snorkelled, swam, hiked, kayaked, touristed, ate even when we weren't hungry and packed each day with as much as we could possibly take in.  The best part?  Seeing it all through the eyes of a 13 & 15 year old.  It was hard to come home, when we touched down at LAX KyleJ and I decided we could turn around right then and go  back.
It's been great having Craig retired:

I'm not sure what these three were laughing about but those smiles!  Just a reminder boys you have a "blackmail pic" of your grandfather taken right after this!  A week of great memories.

Marathon Weekend #22

 Once again, one of our favorite, also most dreaded weekends of the year.   Every year we say we're not going to do it again, and there we are.  Next year they're adding a half on the same course--I think Papa will always do the full with the hardcore, but I'm going half! Who's with me?

 Look!  Little Kyle's first, three generations this year!

Pumpkin rice krispy treats for the runners!  The pumpkin Reese/Oreos dipped in chocolate didn't happen but I think Kael and I have a dessert project for our vacation next week.

CrossFit Games?

A few years ago I did one CrossFit class which I posted about here.  I liked the workout but wasn't too crazy about the whole gym so never went back.  About a month ago we decided to give CrossFit Yucaipa a try since our running isn't going so great and we need some strength training for these old bones and muscles.  We liked the gym, it's been a good fit for us, so we've been going for about a month. I got a message from Kerri yesterday:

Yep, she did it, I'm registered.  I'm not sure exactly how this even works, or how I'll do.  I think we're going to be on vacation during part of it.  Not to worry, she says, we can drop-in wherever.  Well I'll keep this updated, pretty sure there's got to be some recognition for being last in the world!

Last Minute Plans

I unexpectedly had last Friday afternoon through Tuesday off.  Thank you major software updates at work (no thank you this morning when nothing worked). We got as far as our favorite boondocking spot Friday, rode Secret Sauce again Saturday.  Oh yeah and Secret Sauce is really intermediate not beginner!  I didn't realize that until studying the trail map after the ride while plotting our next ride.  It went well, I hear words of advice from the boys all the time when I ride, from Kyle, "there's no shame in walking uphill when mountain biking", from Brad, "keep your butt back".  Wise words which have saved my butt to be sure. I was hesitant to ride Pushing Tin because I knew it was intermediate but now I think I'm ready, next time we're that way.
We picked up a trail map at Eagle Point with good intentions.

 But we did a little exploring around Puffer.

 

 We forded the lake, okay just kidding, but we did ford a mud puddle.

                   



Sat on the deck, planning the new cabin! Killer view can you see the stream?

          Moo'd at cows that dropped by for breakfast.

Planned my retirement date!

Deep breaths of clean air and relaxation!

Weekend Fun!

Papa's in Maine hanging out with the grandkids!  Look at what Jack learned this morning.  Way to go Jack, another generation of cyclists on their way.  

My weekend wasn't nearly as fun, but I did get to go to Target, In N Out and Costco with Ker and the boys.  Three places that rank high on my list, but the company was even better.  Retirement is looking good on Craig, now just to get me retired!

Arcadia Fastback

So look who I got to go watch run today!

Secret Sauce

Maybe I'll try to resurrect my training blog just to keep track of some of the fun things we've been doing, all of which involve avoiding triathlon!  Last weekend we had a quick, very quick, getaway to St. George.  I tried to find the easiest bike trail I could, and found the perfect single track for me. It was challenging as far as the uphill goes and I had to push outside my comfort zone to ride up some steps, take a deep breath and have no choice but to go for it on the second set.   Lower Secret Sauce is the harder part of the trail, that's where the climbing is, when you hit Upper Secret Sauce a very fun downhill starts, easy, beginner turns, and baby whoop de whoops.
The plan was to relax on our paddleboards for the afternoon, we went to Quail Creek State Park and got an awesome camping spot but the wind and afternoon chop was wicked.

We hadn't been to Ivins Reservoir but thought it would be a good idea to go check it out.  It was; it's very teeny, and perfect to relax, but think little pond, not like what you imagine a reservoir.

This picture actually makes it look quite impressive, it's not really, I don't have a picture of what it really looks like.  It's a kiddie pool for paddleboarding, just what I like. After the reservoir we went back to Quail Creek, this place is a gem.  The plan was to get an early morning paddle on the lake before the wind and hit Secret Sauce again--nope, didn't happen.  Last weeks CrossFit was catching up to us, we managed to wash the van and head home before the traffic got too bad.
I would definitely like to go mountain biking there again, there's a connector trail called Pushing Tin which is supposed to be pretty fun.