Outside My Comfort Zone!

Ok, so I meant to write this post a week ago, but it has been crazy here. I feel like I say that all the time and it's the truth but you would think I would learn or something. I can't decide if it's a good thing for life to be crazy because that means I'm getting to experience a lot of great things or if it's a bad thing...I mean I feel like I've either been sick or on the verge of sick for the last two weeks. Hmmmm. I guess it's probably a little of both. My goal though for the future is to start saying NO more so I can have a little more balance of crazy and not crazy.

Anyway, what was this post about again? Oh yeah, my comfort zone. I hate running. Yep, pretty much my least favorite thing to do. I hate WOD's with running, I hate running in general but this past spring I got the bright idea to sign up for another Half Marathon. I know, I'm crazy. Stay with me though...this half marathon wasn't just any half marathon. This one was the Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon in Disneyworld! Details....November run (nice weather), Night run (no getting up at the butt crack of dawn), Costumes are encouraged, and it's at the Happiest Place on Earth! Ok no brainer, if there was ever a half to do, this was it! So my friend Courtney and I (you can find her over at The Sassy Apron) signed up and convinced two of her good college friends to do it with us. Neal's parents helped us out with some Disney Vacation Club Points to secure a room at Saratoga Springs and we were set! Since my birthday is November 3rd, I justified the trip by calling it a birthday present even though it was the weekend after. Makes sense to me, plus I got to wear an awesome "Happy Birthday" button all over Disney for three days. Score!

Some of ya'll I'm sure are thinking "Ok genius, now you signed up, now you have to start running to train" right? Wrong! Haha! Ok I don't really recommend this approach for everybody but I have been touting the greatness of CrossFit for what 4 years now? And it's true. I didn't do any extra running to train for this Half other than what I was doing at CrossFit. So would some extra training have helped. Probably, but I don't think it would have been necessary to do more than one extra run per week really just to get your legs used to the distance.

So back to the trip. We arrived at Disney on Thursday morning. Our hotel room wasn't ready (obviously) but the great thing about Disney is that the service is amazing. So we got to drop off all our stuff and then headed to Downtown Disney for lunch. We bought two-day park hopper passes and wanted to save them for Friday and Saturday so it was just free stuff on the agenda Thursday. Downtown Disney was followed by a trip to the Outlet mall to check out the lululemon outlet (one of only two in the country I believe...lucky us!) and then back to the hotel to settle into our rooms. Dinner was at an Irish Pub in Downtown, beer flights and Irish dancing included! 

Friday we spent all day running around Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. We had reservations that night at one of my favorite Disney Restaraunts, the Hollywood Brown Derby and we got to see the Osbourne Family Festival of Dancing Lights. Saturday we got up early and went to the Expo. I love Expo's! My wallet, however, does not. I managed to get away with just a few fun purchases (including a $5 light up, flashing jelly ring! Best money every spent) We rounded up that morning at Animal Kingdom then headed back to the hotel to take a nap...and watch the Aggie football game. I am not an Aggie but I was staying with 3 of them so this was a mandatory part of the weekend.

After the game, we all got into our respective Princess Costumes...oh yeah did I mention we were all dressing up as Disney Princesses?? Tutu's obviously were required and I have to say, we had some of the best costumes in the whole race. I definitely found myself wondering who would sign up for a race at Disney and NOT dress up?? Boring people, that's who! Glad that wasn't us...anyway, huge success with the costumes.

The race started with fireworks! And we were off in Corral B for 13.1 miles of fun! We started at the ESPN Wide World of Sports and ran first to Animal Kingdom. Got an amazing shot with Goofy at mile 2. Now don't be fooled. We were not running this race for a PR and had all intentions of stopping at every Disney character we could for photos. We met Rafiki at Animal Kingdom with Dana getting the best photo of the night! And raced our way from there to Hollywood Studios.
We got to run through the Osbourne lights at Hollywood studios. This is definitely the part where my legs started to cry! haha! And after Hollywood Studios, we raced to the finish at Epcot. After the race, we got to spend the next few hours walking around Epcot at the Food and Wine Festival. Best after-party ever! Although I was pretty tired. We got potstickers in China, Beer in Germany, and Ravioli in Italy. By then it was 3:30am and we were done. We managed to crawl our way back to the bus and hit the bed right around 5am!

Not gonna lie, my legs were screamin' especially my knees. Took me seriously a week to recover...ok maybe just 3 days but still! I think that's the main difference between not running at all pre-race and running, the recovery time. It was definitely an experience though and one that I might just do again sometime. I think I've come to realize that I like Half's when they are in cool places with cool things to do. The next one on my list will probably be the lululemon Seawheeze in Vancouver....maybe not till 2014 though. Let's not get too crazy with this whole running thing! :)

Competition Time- What to Bring!

It's competition time folks! I've already posted extensively regarding competitions but one thing I haven't touched on in a while is how to prepare for the actual day of competition i.e. what the heck do I bring to this thing? How do I eat? What am I going to need?

Now I'm a pretty seasoned competitor so I've definitely got my go-tos and getting ready for a competition for me really isn't that big of a deal anymore. But as the popularity of CrossFit and CrossFit Competitions continues to grow, more and more people get the desire to compete. Every year in College Station, BoomFit hosts a great competition called the BCS Games. It is one that we always encourage our new gym members to do if they want to compete. It's a great competition and great first competition and it's happening this Saturday (which happens to be my birthday...double awesome!) Since we are bringing a fair amount of Newbies from CrossFit Katy with us to try test themselves in their first competition this weekend, I thought I'd do a little post of things that I bring with me anytime that I compete.

List of Must-Haves:

Multiple pairs of shoes depending on the WOD (lifters, runners, nano's)
Atlas Power Wraps
Jump Rope (good for warm up even if it's not in a WOD)
Change of Socks
Change of shorts (believe me, if you plan on going out to eat after, you will want extra shorts!)
Sunglasses
Sunscreen
Bug Spray
Tylenol (I don't use Advil or any NSAID's but I do use Tylenol if I get headaches)
Chairs
Blanket

List of Must Haves in my cooler:

Protein Powder
Shaker Bottles
Water
Coconut Water
Baked Sweet Potato
Deli Turkey Meat
Fruit- Usually Banana and Grapes or Strawberries
Nuts or Trail Mix
LaraBars
Applesauce in the easy squeeze packs

Ok so that's about it. Good luck to all our newbies this weekend! It's going to be tons of fun!

Stop and Listen to the Music

I came across this video from a post that a friend put on Facebook. Usually I don't really pay attention to those "chain" posts. You know the ones that have been posted and reposted and shared and what not and then you wonder if they're even real. Where do some of those come from anyway? But for some reason I actually read this one, and then I looked it up. Turns out that this story was true.

Back in 2007, the Washington Post did a story...it was really more like a social experiment. They wanted to know if we would still recognize beauty if it was inconvenient. At 7:51am on a Friday, a young man set up post at the L'Enfant Plaza Station of the Washington Metro. This was of course, rush hour, and most people were busy heading to their respective jobs. The young man pulled out a violin and began playing, with an open case, like many street musicians have probably done before him. But this young man wasn't your ordinary street musician. His name is Joshua Bell and he is one of the greatest concert violinist in the world. Just three days before this little experiment, Bell had played to a sold out audience at Boston's Symphony Hall where seats were going for a minimum of $100 a piece! Of the 1,097 people that passed him by that morning only seven people stopped for over a minute to listen!

I don't know why this story stuck with me today but it really did. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I think I have watched the video about ten times and every time I do I can't help but wonder, would I have stopped to listen to the music? Would you?

I think we could all stand to take more time to stop and listen to the music.

Competition Season

Oktoberfest Obliteration is over but the only thing that really means is that competition season has finally begun for the 2012-2013 year. I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew this season but it will be a good test to see how well I can manage a high volume of competition without letting my actual training suffer. It's easy to get caught up in competitions, but if you allow yourself to do that, you may end up sacrificing your training. What I mean is, you end up putting too much into the actual competition so the week before and the week of, you may end up slacking a bit on your actual training to be "fresh" for the competition that weekend. This is all well and good but when you're signed up for as many comps as I am, you have to really prioritize. So far, my competition season looks like this:

October 20th- Oktoberfest Obliteration IV
November 3rd- BCS Games in College Station
November 10th- Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon
December 8th- ACO in Dallas
December 15th- Get Fit or Die Mayan Team Comp.
January 5th- H-Town Throwdown Partner Comp.
January 19th & 20th- Fittest Games in Austin (as long as I get in)

Then the 2013 CrossFit Open should start sometime in February! Whew that is crazy! It looks much crazier when you put them all down on paper like that. So like I was saying, if I don't prioritize then I may end up slacking off in my actual training when most of these competitions are just for fun! I mean all competitions are for fun but there are some that I know I want to be totally fresh for and there's some that I am going to treat like just another day of training.

For anybody that intends to tackle this many competitions along with preparing for the Open, Regionals and beyond, there are definitely a few things that are going to be essential to stay ready and to not become over-trained.

The first one is obviously nutrition. Right now I am about 85% Paleo. I am not perfect nor do I really intend to be for the long run. I am feeling like I am running with about 5-8 extra lbs on me right now and will need to really buckle down if I'm going to get them off but I still believe the majority of my diet is right on. I get plenty of protein (probably too much) mostly from grass-fed or pastured meats that I buy from Yonder Way Farms. I eat veggies regularly and get enough fat. My non-Paleo treats include starbucks drinks, lara bars (paleo but mostly sugar still), and even an occasional cupcake or pancake (I know, there's my extra 5lbs right there). The core of my nutrition is where it needs to be and I am doing well with nutrient timing so I have been recovering from my workouts and competitions well so far.

The second important factor to prevent over-training is sleep. You have to get enough sleep if you intend to stay lean, build muscle, recover from your workouts and most importantly manage stress. Exercise is a physical stress. Your job, family duties, finances, relationships....those are all mental stressors. Here's the catch though, your body can't tell the difference between the two. So if you have a shit ton of mental stress right now, and you are trying to work out 5 days a week and you are running on no sleep, you are going to get overtrained and your performance will suffer. You also probably will be no fun to be around. Make it a priority to get enough sleep. There are definitely nights when that is not going to happen. The trick is taking advantage of the nights when you can get enough sleep. Part of sleep is actually training and routine. Meaning you have to train yourself to go to bed earlier. When you first start to do this, you will end up just laying in bed at first wondering why you are there. But eventually, after many, many nights of laying there,  your body will begin to adjust and you will fall asleep. So start tonight. Go to bed 30 minutes earlier.

The third is taking care of your body physically. Whether that means mobility, getting massages, acupuncture or visiting your favorite Airrosti provider, you need to give your body some love (hey nobody said being competitive was cheap).

Lastly I think the key to keeping it all together is proper supplementation. If we want to be high performance athletes, then there's no way around this. You absolutely can't get everything you need from food alone.

So hopefully, with this combination, I'll make it through this competition season ready to take on the Open! Happy WODing!

Oktoberfest Obliteration IV

Well, I have definitely not been successful with this little experiment of blogging everyday and doing a month-long nutrition challenge. And I guess it's time to stop apologizing for it and just accept it and strive to do the best I can right now. But that's not what this post is about. This post is about Oktoberfest Obliteration IV!
Yesterday was OOIV. This competition, run by the Munson's over at CrossFit Champions, has quickly become one of the biggest competitions in the area, and of course a lot of big names and awesome athletes come out to compete. It's always a ton of fun and this year was no different. For whatever reason, Matt Munson decided it was a good idea to put me in the last heat of Elite Women which was of course STACKED with amazing ladies. Games competitors Candice Ruiz, Jessica Estrada, Regionals athletes Chelsea Lewis and Chely Galvan and many, many more! Not to mention all the amazing athletes in the heats before me like CrossFit Katy's own Brittani Briner...man has she become a serious competitor over this last year! Anway, I was excited to be in such a great heat but I was also pretty apprehensive about it. At least this year some of the WOD's totally played to my strengths.
The first WOD was a short, intense 8 min WOD with 125# push jerks and burpees in it. I had a pretty steep goal for that one and fell short a little but was overall pretty happy with my performance. I pretty much think on the second WOD, Munson thought "what WOD would Leah Goldstein really like to see?" Haha! I mean obviously not but I don't think I could have asked for something better. The WOD was 90 seconds of max Front Squats at 115# That's right, 90 seconds. I know, I know that's really short for a CrossFit WOD but it was awesome and tough. A real gut check to see if you could talk yourself out of wanting to put the bar down. The 3rd WOD had a bit of the unknown and unknowable with a 400m run with a slosh ball. A slosh ball is basically a Bosu ball half filled with water. Man that thing was awkward! After those first 3 WOD's I was sitting in 7th place which was AMAZING! I don't think I've ranked that high in such a tough competition ever. I was really feeling good!...But then WOD 4 happened! Ugg! WOD 4 consisted of three different AMRAP's. Each AMRAP counted as its own workout and you were, therefore, ranked for how you did in each of the different WOD's. I think that actually worked towards my favor because I really don't do well in long AMRAP's. I'm a power athlete. I need short, heavy reps and WOD's. So the first AMRAP which was 3 minutes of 215# deadlifts and burpees was pretty good for me. The other two AMRAP's which were 6 and 9 minutes respectively tore me apart! I ended up falling from 7th to 13th place after it was all said and done. I have to admit, I was pretty bummed about it. But, like all competitions, the point is to make you a better athlete. I know there are some movements that I still need to work on and it's really easy to push those movements aside...until they come up in competitions and bite you in the ass! (I'm talking to you Chest to Bar Pull Ups!) Anway, the next stop for me is All-Cities Open. I've got 7 weeks to prep for it! Watch out girls....it's time for a rematch!

Sleep

I read an interesting article today from the NPR blog about sleep and its affects on body composition, particularly adipose tissue's response to insulin. You can read the full article, you can go here.
The point of the article is that if you don't sleep enough, you're going to gain weight or at the best you're not going to lose weight. I think when people make decisions to lose weight or get in shape, they spend a lot of time worrying about their diet and fitness. They painstakingly count calories, cut out favorite foods, carve out time to work out (sometimes even getting up super early to do that) but they never think about going to bed earlier. At the clinic where I work, we see a lot of patients who want to lose weight. They've tried every diet and they work out religiously, but when you ask them about their daily lives, you find that they sometimes are getting a measly 5-6 hours of sleep a night! Yikes. Considering the study that was done in the aforementioned article says a mere 8 days of consistently getting too little sleep can have massive impacts on your fat cells, think about how much damage we are doing to ourselves by routinely getting this little sleep! I hear a lot of people say, "but I can't go to bed early, I have too much to do!" I know that we all have busy lives, but when you ask the average person how many hours of television they watch a night, or how much time they spend on the computer, you realize that there are extra hours in the day and many of us should spend that time in bed!

Test Results!

I may or may not have posted this earlier but I have been experimenting a lot with my nutrition and supplementation routine lately and after attending the American Academy of Anti-Aging Sports Medicine Conference in Chicago, I ran some additional bloodwork on myself. Well, those results have finally come back and it is surprising to say the least! For anybody that believes that you can be a competitive CrossFitter and get all of your nutrients just from food, you are wrong! I know for myself at least that there were many nutrients that I readily consume via food like B-Vitamins that were not at optimal levels when tested. That's because we ask so much of our bodies when we CrossFit or really compete at any high level sport. Obviously every individual is unique and it really takes some in-depth clinical testing to find out what your body needs but there are some universal generalizations that can apply to most athletes. Now, that I have my specific micronutrient levels, I am really excited to adjust my supplementation and see if I can continue to improve on my performance, body composition, inflammation and overall health.