What a couple of crappy weeks it has been. Before I left for Houston, TX we had received word that Minneapolis comedian, Gus Lynch had passed. His wake was last week Thursday night.
Early Friday I got a call from a fellow comic with news that ANOTHER Minneapolis comedian, the beloved Bill Young, had also passed away – unexpectedly and suddenly some time during the night. Two comics gone in less than two weeks – so completely unbearable and hard to fathom. Our comedy community has been stunned. One of my gym buddies and real life pals is an owner of a local comedy club, and, walking into the gym Saturday morning, she was the first person I made eye contact with. We just looked at each other, our shoulders dropped to our sides, our eyes welled up with tears, and we silently hugged without saying a word about what’s been going on. It’s just all too much. But we both showed up Saturday morning because this has become the way that we deal with the stress and the grief and all thing things going on in life. And you know what? we both kicked the shit out of the Saturday workout because oh my god, how else are you even supposed to cope with this kind of mortality and ridiculousness? We all deal with trauma and stress in different ways and I want to encourage anyone who is reading this to consider your ways. Evaluate them. Are you taking care of yourself? There are so many people who love and value you. It’s hard to remember that sometimes. And in a world filled with such crap it is so easy to let healthy ways to process terrible things fall to the wayside. I know I’ve said it here before, but, man, I am here for this. Call me up. Let’s walk or run or lift or kick TOGETHER and get all of that out grossness of our bodies. Let’s treat ourselves well, value what we can do, and take care of the vessels that allow our spirits to be part of this crazy thing called life. I don’t want to keep using “Dont die!” as a goodbye greeting with my friends, OKAY? OKAY. It really feels petty to continue on with this blog post considering everything above, but I’m going to do it anyway. I need to. It’s all part of this process, so stay with me. Saturday morning, we re-tested the baseline test. You might remember that I mentioned this particular test in my six month update where I shared that this particular test was the very first thing I had ever done at Solcana CrossFit. It is a way for Coach Hannah to test our progress over time (usually completed every three months) and it consists of :
- 500m row
- 40 squats
- 30 situps
- 20 pushups
- 10 pullups
When I started, this entire thing took me 10 minutes to complete. I had guessed in my previous blog post that it would maybe take me half of that time to complete. Well, I wasn’t too far off! I actually completed all of this in SIX MINUTES. I shaved FOUR MINUTES off of my original baseline in six months, not to mention some of the scaling on the elements had been changed, too. For example: when I started in May, Hannah had to hold my feet to keep them on the ground doing situps. No longer. My abs can handle that! The pushups were done from a 30″ box and I’ve since dropped to the 20″ box for this test (though I can do them from the floor, just not quickly, geeze you guys). And the pullups? Still ring rows, though my positioning has dropped from upright to plank position, and I’m working on mastering one strict pullup by February 14 (dear god help me). Unrelated, yet related, I got a text this morning from a dear friend who told me that she and her husband tell their one year old “You’re a strong woman, Baby.” This really resonated with me because I think so often as women our strength isn’t something that is valued or celebrated – there’s always more of a focus on our outward appearances and sweet disposition. But, this little gal? This special little gal is going to grow up knowing she can do whatever she wants. And she will. Just like I’m starting to learn as evidenced last night when we completed Week 10 of the 12 week Magnusson inspired deadlift progression we’ve been working on. I did Week 9 since I’m a week behind due to failing a week – just one failure week so far. I successfully (!!!) completed the following to continue on my quest:
- 4×4 at 220
- 1×2 at 245
- 1×2 at 275
- 1×8 at 220
I set out on this deadlift mission with a goal of a one rep max of 270#. I did more than that twice, two weeks in a row. In fact, if everything goes as planned, I’ll hit a 1×2 at 295 in Week 12 which only means it makes sense to aim for a 300# 1RM (one rep max) by 2015. I’m here for this. I’m excited. I’m a strong woman, baby.