Intervals, front squats, Punkin' Ale, and the return of PUMPKIN SPICED LATTES!

Check out the info on the Punkin' Ale here...

I hope that my beer and coffee porn were enough to significantly tide you over until I could get around to writing up this blog. I had to work a double yesterday so I was just short of time to get my post written.  Anyway, it's been a hectic few days in Katie land with lots of work, some workin' out, and in general that whole trying to have a life thing.  It's workin' out ok, I mean, nothin' to write home about but things are moving along.  The next great life plan is sort of in the works... at least I'm trying to get it in the works and it may involve going back to the classroom and doing some other things on the side to help me with a 2nd career switch further down the road, but that still remains to be seen.  I've got a couple months to figure things out for sure sure... so we'll see.  But in the meantime, I'm serving A LOT... but enjoying learning a lot about BEER! :) Or at least the beers that my particular company makes... so it's been fun. 

But you know what else is fun?!?!! The fact that PUMPKIN SPICED LATTES ARE BACK! Seriously, I love this time of year... for cereal. The weather will start to cool down soon, Penn State football comes back on Saturday (SQUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!) and of course, Starbucks gives me something pumpkin to drink.  I heart pumpkin.  No, really.  It's like my favorite flavor of all time...well sort of.  Chocolate is sort of my favorite.... but I'm digressing! I love me some pumpkin lattes and they're back... and my company is releasing their pumpkin beer this week so all things considered, this is a very exciting week for me! Good coffee, good beer, football... lord I may pass out from all the wondiferousness of this all! :) Yup, I did it, I created a new word today... you should be jealous. 

Anyway, when I haven't been working, working on job apps, or drooling over all things pumpkin flavored, I've gotten some work in at the box this week.  During my return week two weeks ago, I was able to get 4 wods in.  Last week I managed to jack up my back doing deadlifts, and had a crazy work schedule so I only got 2 in.  I'm aiming to do better than that this week and really get back with the swing of things. 

Monday's wod was an interval style that is VAGUELY reminiscant of FGB... (there was a little sarcasm on the VAGUELY part there... just a wee smidge....) and it looked a little something like this. 

5 rds of
1 min max reps push press (65)
1 min max reps push-ups
1 min max cals row
Rest 1 min

Total score 229

Given my suckiness at push-ups I was pretty pleased with this score.  This weight is heavier than the weight used for FGB and I was able to maintain right around 20 reps per round.  My push-ups have gotten better in recent months, but for whatever reason (perhaps the hiatus from CF) they were pretty terrible during this wod.  I tried to game it a bit to work more reps on the push press since I am horrible at push-ups, but it didn't work as well as I would have liked.  Regardless, I managed to pound out about 14 cals on the rower each time too, so hopefully that will be good news come FGB time.  I would really like to hit that ever elusive 300 this year, and I think I may be able to.  My box jumps have def improved and I think that if I game it right I can do it.  We'll have to build up some seriously big numbers on the PP as a back up just in case, but we'll cross our fingers and hope for the best! We are still a month out so that will hopefully be a good opportunity for me to build my cardio endurance back up too.  I felt like I pushed pretty well during this wod, but due to my push-up problems I didn't have one of the top scores of the day.  Soooooo we'll have to see how things go here.

After that FUN interval day (there was more sarcasm there... just sos you know) we hit a round of front squats X 5.  I felt pretty good with the front squats all things considered.  I tried to remember the last time I actually front squatted and I couldn't.  It's been that long for me.  So, this was a great day to test out where I am.  Jerry encouraged us to use no more than 6 sets to find our max X 5 so that we wouldn't burn out.  I used 7 sets because after hitting 140X5 I felt pretty solid and decided to jump to 150.  I hit the 150 X 5 pretty solidly but figured while I could probably hit 155 X 5, I would be very sore and have issues walking later.  I decided that since I had to work a double yesterday that that probably wasn't a wise idea.  Turns out that last night we went from empty to full in roughly 20 minutes, so I'm awfully glad that I was able to walk during that time.  It was really the right choice. 

Soooo no work today... woot! My first day off since last Tuesday.  Woot! So I'm going to hit the box early this morning and then see where the day takes me... I might get all wild and crazy and drink some pumpkin' ale... :) woot!!!!!!