First Swim!

I haven't been in the water since tri season ended last summer, so when my mom called me up qnd said, "hey, let's go swimming" I squeezed an hour out of my prep schedule and gt to the pool! The local pool is an outdoor seasonal pool and right now, early in the season, the water is super clean and feels great.

Swam a generous 1/2 mile...I wasn't counting laps but my mom went a 1/2 mile and I did several more lengths than her...so maybe around 900 meters?

I timed two 50-meter laps and was at 44 seconds including my touch-and-turn (not flip turn) at the mid-way point. I don't know how that is...I thought I was going pretty fast but a gal in the next lane was going a lot faster than me with what appeared to be little or no effort, so maybe it's not that fast. I'll have to look up how fast real swimmers are one of these days. ;)

Spin

Wednesday, standard spin class...I showed up late so it was a 45 minute class for me. :( I have a catering event this weekend, so I'm not going to be doing twice-a-day workouts for the next few days. Bummer! But it's probably good to take this week as a bit of an active recovery week.

PM: "Kelly"

As Rx:

Five rounds for time of:
Run 400 meters
30 Box jump, 24 inch box
30 Wall ball shots, 20 pound ball

Messed up the order, so this is As Completed:

Five rounds for time of:
30 Box jump, 18 inch box
Run 400 meters
30 Wall ball shots, 10 pound ball

25:54, I think??

I timed this on my watch, but I see now that somehow my watch got bumped and the timer function restarted, so I do not have my exact time. Curses! I know I was just under the 26 minute mark cause I threw myself into the final 15 wall balls like a crazy person to be sub-26.

I will say, this felt really hard. Like, after round three I looked around and said, "I could just stop now" and seriously thought about it for a good 10 seconds. Then I ponied up and started jumping. But I don't usually pause to think about quitting, so I know this was a hard one.

The wall balls weren't too bad, (but then I was using half the Rx weight, at 20# I'd probably be dead by now) but the box jumps just smoked me, even at 18". I think the box jumps immediately after the wall ball was pretty evil...not sure if the Rx order would be any easier, though.

It's also totally possible I am feeling the night 'o' indulgence and the afternoon of sampling baked goods. I can certainly tell I'm not fueled up the way I have been, which is an interesting observation and good modivation to get back to a comfortably dialed-in diet asap. A few days of indulgence are fine, but not at the cost of crappy WOD times, yo! :)

Ok, I just went and checked mainsite and actually around 26 minutes isn't that horrible for this WOD, so I feel better. Seems like I'm not the only person who thinks this workout was super hard.

Bella is a Badass

I am super proud of my daughter. Yet again, she has amazed me:

Age: 5
Weight: 49 pounds
First ever deadlift: 53 pounds


Check out this determination! She had already lifted the 24 kilo kettlebell 8 or 10 times when we thought to take a movie of it:

AM: Overhead Squat 5 x 5

Yup, pretty simple.

Overhead Squat 5 x 5. I love 5 x 5 strength workouts...feels like the perfect middle ground between max effort and "hey this is getting kinda boring."

Warmed up with the bar, then ran right up the weight stack, incrementing by 5 pounds:
75 - 80 - 85 - 90 - 95 - 100 - 105 (failed, twice)

So actually I did 6 rounds, and attempted a 7th, but couldn't hold on to 105 pounds overhead.

Wherein I spend 6 hours acting like a fitness model

So my 30th birthday present from my amazing and supportive husband was a photo session with the lovely and talented Amanda Waltman of Art of Subtlety Photography. Nick's idea was that I've worked so hard on my fitness that documenting it for the big 3-0 seemed appropriate. I have to admit that, though I am not a girly girl and have never in adult life had photos professionally taken, I approached this opportunity with my trademark obsessiveness and just went for it.

I have known Amanda for a while, so I was already excited about the shoot, but she far surpassed my wildest expectations in terms of creating a fun, supportive, creative and dynamic environment. This whole "posing for the camera" thing is pretty new to me, but Amanda gave awesome direction to help me look my best, and had great ideas for setting up a huge range of shots. We took catalog shots, we took high-art shots, we took muscle definition shots, we took "this one's for Nick" come hither shots...it was great.

So the whole experience started off at my house. My friend Shemai came over, did my hair and helped me with styling. She was invaluable...I am pretty hopeless with hair but Shemai managed to give me a soft, fun, tousled look that was really well-styled without looking overdone or making me feel like I was wearing someone else's hair.

Amanda arrived with a mobile studio. She had all kinds of lighting, backdrops and meters to get the full studio experience in my living room. It took her about 15 minutes to get everything set up and adjusted and then we started shooting.

After several hours and wardrobe changes, we took a break and packed everything up for a venue change. We headed down to a section of the Edmonds beach where there was sand, water, rocks and seawall to work with, and did another session that lasted 90 minutes or so. I was in the water, out of the water, doing yoga, swinging kettlebells, overhead squating driftwood, climbing up on rocks, hunching back against concrete...all while having a blast.

I think the single downside was that I got a bit of a burn over my fake-o tan. Not sure why I'm surprised...I was at the beach in the middle of the day in 80 degree weather wearing no sunscreen and covered in sweet almond oil to give my muscles a nice sheer...the only worse thing I might have done was lay down for a three or four hour nap on a reflective blanket.

I am super excited to see the proofs. Amanda took tons of shots, and she said it would take her a few days to get through all of them and get them posted to the client section of her website. I'm hoping in the next few days I'll get a preview of how everything turned out and can start finalizing my order.

I figure if a few of these pictures are as good as I hope, I'm going to send them in to Oxygen Magazines "fitness/body transformation" section. I think I would make a pretty darn good "fitness transformation" subject, if I do say so myself. I also figure it can't hurt to send the kettlebell stuff over to Crossfit.com, since they post pics up on the mainsite and I would consider it a tremendous honor to be Crossfit eyecandy for a day. If nothing comes of either I won't be too bummed, though...this photo thing was really for me.