WOD 10-31-09: DIPPED CONE

WOD 10-31-09: DIPPED CONE

3 hrs. 15 min. total

2 hrs 45 min. riding/FST

30 min. urban hiking

 

DONUTS: THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL/THE REWARD FOR SALVATION

Drill It HQ loves ice cream. Unfortunately, donuts as well. Blame it on the Catholic upbringing and donuts being dangled as a reward for going to mass every Sunday for 20 years (plus an awesome altar boy career during which altar boy duties sometimes required seven masses in one week—that would be serving mass at 7 a.m. M-F + the noon mass at school on Friday + mass on Saturday or Sunday, because as my parents will tell you, week day mass doesn’t erase your Sunday mass obligation).

 

But we digress. Ice cream. Tasty. An ice cream cone dipped in hard chocolate? Even better.

 

THE DIPPED CONE

While the ghouls and goblins gallivanted about the Bay area in preparation for/celebration of Halloween, the Commander saddled up and headed out for a late afternoon trip into the woodshed for some intervals + FST. Good WOD, and felt good to get out and push it on the bike after a week of feeling overtrained/like I may have caught some type of flu bug that was lurking just beneath the surface. The Thursday WOD was probably a bit too much. Like you and everyone else, there are times when I get impatient, particularly with recovery, and just want to get out there and rip someone’s fucking head off (metaphorically) with some intense training. When you can’t do that and that’s all you really want to do every day, it tries your patience and your sense of productivity.

 

 

AN INSIGHT: FAITH, PATIENCE, ABSTINENCE

As I learned last week, you’ve gotta have patience, you’ve gotta have faith, and you really, really have to listen to your body. You also have to make sure you’re eating right (not donuts. No matter how tasty those fresh fried motherfuckers smell with their odor wafting out of Bob’s donuts down on Polk street, keep marching. Head for some protein blocks back at HQ. Donuts are the enemy, not stopping at Bob’s is the cure).

 

Do you keep a training journal? You should. And when you do, don’t limit it to ‘4 rounds x 5 minutes of turning into Incredible Hulk, flipping tires, 9 blocks protein, etc.’ Think about what the fuck you’re doing and write it down. Not only will it give you greater insight into your affect and mental processes with regards to training, it will help you trace where you were at when you did a workout, what may have impacted or limited your mental and physical focus, and highlight mitigating lifestyle or other factors—like donut addiction—that may be holding you back. But for fuck’s sake, eat donuts and ice cream in moderation. Unless you’re a professional athlete and you’re getting paid to be a perfect physical specimen, spend some of the Life Force Capital you’ve built up by, you know, enjoying life and some of the tasty treats it has to offer. You’re working hard, give yourself something fun to eat from time to time. You’re going to die at some point any way, not at a time or place of your choosing, and no matter what some crystal-wielding, cleansing-addicted hippy might tell you, you’re not going to live forever.

 

BACK TO THE HEAVYWEIGHT JAMS

The WOD, then. Finally.

 

Didn’t get ass in gear until late in day. Something about Saturdays. You either get out the door and bust it at the crack of dawn (unpleasant, but my preference) or you end up darting out the door with time pressure weighing on your shoulders at the end of the day. My Saturday was the latter. Noted: I don’t like doing it that way and would like to avoid doing it that way in the future. So here’s a public commitment to getting my ass out of bed on Saturday and revving the engine.

 

Rolled out, easy high RPM spin down to a set of parallettes about ten minutes from HQ. Sufficiently warmed up, I jumped off the bike in full kit, including helmet and Camelbak (wow, I must’ve looked badass) and did the following, all while wearing my 15-pound pack:

 

5 rounds, 10 reps per round (50 reps total) of:

-weighted dips

-weighted rows (hanging onto underside of parallettes and rowing—much harder than you think if you haven’t hit them in a while)

-weighted pull-ups

 

I have some issues with dips due to doing too many skull crushers with too much weight back when I had 30 more pounds of muscle than I do now and I didn’t know jack about how bad the training I was doing was for my body (like who thought it was a good idea to do heavy JUMP squats? Me, for a little while. Dumb! Gotta learn somehow, thankfully the kneesmade it through that phase undamaged). But I’ve been doing the work to get the elbows back to a place where they can handle loaded exercises. These felt okay, would have preferred a wider set of bars to do the dips on, but you work with what you have.

 

From there, jumped back on bike, pedaled about 5 more minutes and stopped at a set of pull-up bars at Crissy Field. Again, in full kit (functional training, boots and utes y’all, and the helmet just in case I fell off the pull-up bar. . .), hit the following circuit, all consecutive, no rest:

 

5 rounds, 10 reps per round (50 reps total) of:

-weighted pull-ups

-BW squats (w/loaded pack)

 

Then, back on bike and time for the interval training component of the WOD. Hill repeats are great, but lately I’ve been integrating my intervals into the course of my ride because the terrain provides the perfect pyramid progression for various intervals. With all of the following intervals, the rest between sets was roughly half of the time I spent ‘working’/doing the interval. The overall effect, a tabata-based HIIT session.

 

The intervals:

2 x 2.5 minutes very high RPM pedaling drills

Rest (tempo riding, high RPM)

2 minute power climb/VO2 max

Rest

5 minutes high RPM LT on mellow grade

Rest.

9 minutes high RPM mix standing/seated LT climbing up to Golden Gate National Park

Rest (off road downhill, about 4.5 minutes)

19 minutes LT climbing on very steep grade, all in middle ring

Rest (off road downhill, high speed, about 6 minutes)

20 minutes LT climbing on very steep grade, mix of trail and road

Rest, longer downhill (10 minutes)

2 x 2.5 minute very high RPM pedaling drills.

 

CUMULATIVE TIME AT LT/DOING INTERVALS: 65 minutes

 

Then booked it back to HQ just in time to. . .pass out and take a 3 hour disco nap before heading out for some Halloween festivities.

 

The WOD was the highlight of the day, though. Good times, great taste, long-lasting freshness that you just can’t beat.

 

Drill it. And think about what you’re doing. Zombies may be a popular cultural trope currently, but don’t be one when you’re training y’all.