No CF for me...

It's not that I've been a bad girl, but I'm still not feeling 100% so I decided to take the day off. It was a heavy lifting day and I just wasn't thinking I'd be able to handle three heavy lifts of back squats. I thought that might be a good way to hurt myself, so I didn't go in. I actually got sent home sick from school today (how funny does that sound for a 27 year old?) and came straight to bed. A four hour nap did wonders, but I'm still not quite there..... It's not that I'm hacking up a lung or puking or anything like that, but I just can't recover. I can't seem to do anything without it taking an obscene amount of energy. So, more chicken noodle soup it was, and more sleeping. I think I'll grade some papers while in bed tonight.... maybe CF in the morning? We'll see....

On taking it easy (on me)

Over the last few weeks I've been working a lot. I'm trying to adjust to going from a summer schedule where, I still worked a lot, but had MUCH less responsibility, to a schedule now jammed with responsibilities and two jobs. I wrote the blog about being smart a few weeks ago, and I wrote that sometimes you just need to know when to back away from the intensity and tone things down a bit.

The same thing applies to toning things down with the extracurricular stuff. I know that people enjoy reading my blog, and I love writing it, but I'll be honest with you. Whereas before I was able to make this blog a priority, I'm not able to do that right now. I'm jugggling a lot, and working a lot, and sometimes I just don't get to the posts right away, and sometimes I know they're not as witty or insightful as they once were. Believe me when I say I don't like it, but I've got a lot on my plate that I'm trying to juggle right now. I'm just not me.

Ever since last year, I've been very leery about how much of my personal life I include on my blog. The guy I was seeing actually had a gf and she put two and two together through my blog. Needless to say, she didn't have very many nice things to say about me, and going through that situation made me very cautious. But, to be 100% honest, I have to say I liked being able to tell people what was going on with my personal life, because sometimes other people had advice for me, or were able to share in my joy. I hate being really closed off because the whole point of this blog was just to be me and share my story. If I'm only sharing parts of it, is it really my true self and my true story?

So, I guess in trying to be as honest as possible without revealing too much I will say that the nitty gritty is this. Part 1 is that I'm working on dealing with a lot of financial stress. I'm working a lot because I need to get some debt issues I have under control. Part 2 is that on top of that, I have the stress of dealing with school and a new school year where lots of things are happening. Many a result of budget constraints etc, but some, not. Part 3 is that there have been things going on in my love life that have just been emotionally taxing. Despite not being in a relationship with someone for awhile, there was still sort of an attachment there. Emotions were still involved and we were still communicating a lot. A few weeks ago, things sort of hit a wall and I had finally had enough. I just couldn't do the back and forth anymore. The uncertainty, the lying, the emotional ups and downs. I just couldn't do it. As I now start to walk away and move on, I'm realizing just how hard it is. Despite everything, I miss him immensely. He was my best friend, the person who I talked to about everything, and the person who I really looked to for advice. To realize that I can't call him or email him and that I'm never going to see him again, is hard.

Some could accuse me of working as much as I do to avoid dealing with it. I'd say you might be right. You might accuse me of pushing as hard at CF as I do to help deal with it too. You might be right there as well. All I know is that it hurts like hell, and hopefully soon, it won't hurt quite as much. I'm just taking one day at a time. I really did love him, and I gave him as much of my heart as one person possibly can, but in the end, if they're not willing to give theirs as well, it's all for not. It sucks when you realize you're not what someone else wants, regardless of how much you want them. It sucks to realize you're never going to be wanted in a relationship. It sucks to realize that the person you're in love with is still in love with their ex and that nothing you do will ever compare to this other person. It sucks to realize that they will never love you. And it just plain sucks to realize that everything you've done was pointless and meaningless to the other person. One might ask if I'm worried about him reading this. The answer to that is no. He stopped reading a long time ago.

But, but... again, I'm not telling everyone this because I want a pity party. Honestly, I'm not very good with those. But I'm hoping that maybe if there is someone else out there reading this either who's going through any of this now or is just having recently dealt with any of what I'm going through, they can know they're not alone. When it feels like all hell is raining down, you CAN make it through. It's not easy, and God knows it sucks, but just keep plugging along. CF will help, and so will just stepping back for a hot minute. Like I said, be smart. Put off that extra stack of papers, grab a movie and a cup of coffee. Read a book. Take a bath. Do something that helps you. Hell drink beer and spend all Saturday on a couch watching football if it you want (I want!). The bottoom line is that you will be ok. But you need to cut yourself some slack, and take it easy for a bit. Regardless of whether it's relationship stress, work stress, financial stres...you need to take care of YOU. It's a life lesson that I'm finally starting to learn, albeit slowly, and one that I'm finally taking to heart, again, albeit very slowly. Give yourself some time, and things will begin to right themselves. Your ship will again start to sail. But as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day. Stress does not simply fade in one either.

I'm taking all of this the best that I can right now. It certainly seems like there is a lot of junk that just seems to be pouring down right now. So, I'm cutting myself a bit of slack right now, which doesn't happen very often. So, perhaps if I'm late on getting up my WODs or getting up my posts, maybe you could cut me a little slack too, at least for right now. I hope that soon I'll be back to being my usual smart alecky self, but for right now, I'm hanging in there and just doing the best that I can. If you happen to know where I live, I have found that although not particularly Primal, chocolate and ice cream are great for helping to cope with stressful situations.... :P

First Friday WOD: Josh and a social!

I've been under the weather this week, and combined with my schedule, I've been feeling really run down. I was debating whether or not to hit a WOD for first Friday. And then Soni emailed me. He says, "Katie, I put your name on the board and next to it, wrote FAIL!" Soni was calling me out for not coming in with the 0515 crew. Dangit! I had to go in last night and hit something, so I picked something I knew I could handle. I've done Josh before so I knew I'd be ok and I wasn't really expecting anything spectacular. I just wanted to get a WOD in.

So I did a bunch of OHS and wall squats to get loose and then threw a bit of weight on the bar. I snatched the weight a few times just to get the feel of it over my head, and from there, I hopped in and away I went. I haven't done Josh in a few months and from the get go, my squats were a little tight, but I was amazed at how much different my pull-ups were. It took me so long to get used to our bars that even in April when I did this, I still could only do sets of 6 or so, and breaking a set of 42 pull-ups into smaller sets of 6 takes a hot minute. I felt tight but good on the pull-up bar last night and cranked out 12 right away. Sets were smaller after that but that helped me get a big chunk right away. I managed to do all the OHS unbroken and so I was pretty happy with that. I got on the pull-up bar for my last 9 pullups at about 8:40 and was totally stoked thinking I could break 9 minutes. I had 3 pull-ups remaining when 9 minutes came and went. How sad. I brought this in in 9:11. Despite being sick, I PR'd. How disgusting is that. I went from a 9:37 to a 9:11. Disgusting. Makes me wonder what would have happned if I wasn't run down and sick.

The WOD itself is only half the fun of first Friday and so of course I stayed to social. I didn't drink because I was taking cold meds, but I still stayed and enjoyed all the great conversation. I loved hanging out with team 0515. Way to represent by opening, and closing, the doors of CFOT on First Friday! :) I can't wait til November! :)

Strict Shoulder Press

This was not a steller day for me. 85 X 5. Ugh... felt lethargic, tired, and very very sore. Next wod please!

Wednesday's WOD: More metcon

Tuesday's WOD was heavy deadlifts, and you know, deads are an iffy exercise for me since I'm quad dominant and not strong in my hamstrings, that really and truly, I was just feeling like this would not go well. So I took a rest day. But Wednesday I was back for some more metcon fun, Jerry style.

Jerry put together this metcon of muscle ups, pull-ups, and front squats. Since I can do muscle-ups, I had to go the ring dip route, with pull-ups and front squats. The WOD looked like this:

15 ring dips
15 pull-ups
9 front squats
600 M run
12 ring dips
12 pull-ups
12 front squats
600 M run
9 ring dips
9 pull-ups
15 front squats
600 M run

So the "elite" weight for this was supposed to be 100... but see here's the thing about me... I can't really count at 0515, and I get kind of lazy, so rather than actually putting 100 on the bar, I went 105. For all of you who thought that I was doing that just to be badass, no. No no. That was not my logic at all. It was just way easier to throw on 85 and then add 10s. I'm the epitome of lazy. :P

I don't really remember what my time was but I can tell you that I was doing decent sets of pull-ups, banging out sets of 9 or more. I can also tell you I had little speed on my front squats, and I was really having to work hard to get out of the hole because I wasn't driving off the bottom the way I was supposed to. I can also tell you that my running was attrocious. Ugh. I have gotten out of my habit of running at least 1/2 mile each day, and I can feel it. I really need to get back into that habit. That will go a long way towards helping me. But, regardless another great day to be at the box!

Monday's WOD: A quick burner and weighted chins

I was pretty stoked about this day because for the first time in a long time I felt strong. I haven't been able to lift much lately due to just being exhausted and keeping up with a busy schedule, but I felt good this day. Jerry had us zip through a short metcon circuit of sit-ups with a weight overhead, push-ups, and also double unders (subbing 3:1 singles if you couldn't hit the doubles). So we hit 5 rounds through that before hitting weighted chins. I think it really helped to do the metcon first because last time we did this we did chins then metcon. I think I was looser than last time and I think that helped me pull some weight over the bar that I haven't been able to do in awhile.

My metcon wasn't too speedy, but it felt good and that's half the battle. I was able then to do a 31lb strict weighted chin. I pulled a 36lb weighted chin one time, but haven't been able to do it since. So, getting 31lbs felt good. This wasn't a WOD to really write home about but, it was good for me to hit.

Fight Gone Bad

There really isn't a good way to write about this wod, because really if you weren't there, it's really hard to explain to you. If I had to try to describe it, the only thing I could say is that the room was ELECTRIC. You could literally feel the energy pulsing in that room. We've done Fight Gone Bad before, but those other runs through were nothing like what happened last Saturday.

From the opening "3-2-1 Go!" there was cheering, there was screaming, there was 100% effort from everyone in that room. Watching everyone give there all was amazing. Awesome, and completely emotional. I have never gotten so lightheaded from cheering. There was no lack of support in that room. Fight Gone Bad is a horrific workout and as CFers we are worried about the score, but deep down this WOD is truly about so much more. Going into FGB we knew that we had raised close to $20,000 and just doing that WOD, keeping in the back of my mind what others had gone through and what we were doing it for, made it a very emotional day. There are so many friends of mine who could be a "Wounded Warrior" that it felt good to know that if anything should every happen, we were doing something to make sure they'd be ok. Not to mention, helping to take care of the wounded warriors who have already returned.

Unfortunately I didn't hit my target 300 during this WOD. I think doing the box jumps on boxes instead of on the mats like last year really hurt my score, but you know, there is always time to improve before next year. I was upset about hitting 279, but you know, the money is what matters. And now, sitting a week later and knowing that together CFOT raised over $21,000 while CF raised over $1.... I still get emotional. I'm SO proud to be a part of this affiliate, and this community. It's amazing what a few people can do when they set their minds to it.
These people go out of their way to help raise money for others and then kill themselves in the box to prove how dedicated they are to aiding those people. I hate this WOD, but I can't wait until next year to see what we can do. $1.2 mil? $1.5? Fight Gone Bad V. Bigger and Badder.