Good Bye Crossfit

Friday was my last day at Crossfit with my livingsocial deal. It was an awesome 7 weeks, and one of the best Groupon/ Livingsocial like deals I have ever bought. I really hope to be able to join a Crossfit type of gym again soon, but right now it is unfortunately not in the cards. 

I hope to keep up with my work outs, though I will not have the coaching or equipment, and most importantly, I will not have the motivation of other fitness focused people around me.

Since I knew this day was coming, I decided on Thursday to try to make Jordan work out with me in a WOD fashion. I set up this workout:  

3 rounds of: 

60 second plank

40 squats

30 butterfly sit ups 

1000 meter run. 

For time. 

Jordan was agreeable to joining me, but it was not the same as being at crossfit. He gave up after the first round and complained the whole time. I had to be the motivator. It was still better than doing it alone, but not ideal. Hoping we can both get better at making the most of our at home workouts. 

Friday's WOD at Ironspider was

Strength: Pull Up 5x2^  -- I still cannot do pull ups on my own, so I got up to 2 pull ups with a thin red band (2nd to least amount of assistance). 

Skill: Hip Flexor Mobility and Flexibility

WOD: 12 Minute AMRAP
7 Burpees
21 Double Unders (or double under attempts).
7 Handstand Push Ups (I modified, I did ~ half handstand pushups and used 3-10# plates as a marker of how far to go down)
21 Double Unders (I suck at double unders, so I pretty much did 63 single jump ropes)

Mobility: Stretch and Roll lower legs

I just made it through 5 rounds in 12 minutes! Great workout. 

Starting the week out right!

Sunday started off slow and rainy, and so my walking buddy would not budge from bed.


I swear I take the same picture every morning. When I get up Leo moves from our bed to the couch and shivers until I wrap him up. I think I will need to start using different blankets to differentiate the pictures!

 Jordan had a late night shot, and didn’t get home until 4 am, so he was of no entertainment to me either.
Since I had just recapped my week and I was not too impressed with my accomplishments I was set on being productive!
I did a thorough cleaning of the house and 2 loads of laundry. How do we produce so much filth in so little time??
I decided to do an at home Crossfit workout, and was inspired by Tina’s Pug WOD. I completed it in about 12 minutes. - as she said "short and sweet like a pug!"

  I first broke it up into sets of 20 of each exercise, but the push ups became too much so I did sets of 10 between the other 2 exercises.   I really want to do a Boston Terrier WOD for Leo now! But I was trying to incorporate in things Leo loves which include:

• Tug of war
• Running
• jumping
• dog yoga

so I am thinking some running, maybe tuck jumps, and if I had a rope a rope pull...
 any suggestions on an equivelant to do at home??
Well stay tuned for an upcoming Terrier WOD!

After the WOD the sleepy boys finally decided to get out of bed.

Jordan was agreeable to doing a little yoga with me, so I used one of my handy dandy Yogadownload.com sessions.  We did the 60 minute "Anusara Inspired Flow" - though as usual Jordan only lasted 20 minutes- but some yoga is better than no yoga!

I was happy he joined me, I do so much better when I have some one doing it with me.

How was the start to your week?

Sleepy Squats

 I have been sleeping terribly lately and have not quite figured out what the issue is. Some possible problems I have hypothesized have been:

•  New Bed?: We did get a new bed – it is an Olympic Queen versus a regular Queen, but the mattress is much harder than what I have been used to so I thought that might be part of the issue, but it has been a month with the new bed. I did change the comforter to our old comforter which was down and fluffy versus the thin hard one we had originally on the new bed.

• Wet Head? I have reverted back to showering at night. I normally shower at night, but over the summer I tried showering in the morning which was working out well, until the mornings became frigid again and trying to deal with being that wet and cold is just not tolerable. Plus, with evening workouts it is just gross to go to bed without showering. I have thick hair so it takes forever to dry. I have been blow drying it but once I lay down I inevitably find a wet spot and lay on it all night and get cold. So I have been working on drying my hair even better. Thus far, it has mildly improved me sleep.

• Timing of eating?: Since working out after work, I usually do not get home until at least 8 pm. I then usually shower immediately (in order to get the hair drying process going) and by then I usually eat a bit of dinner. Since I am not eating until 8:30 pm, and I like to try to go to bed by 9 pm… its not a great scenario. So I decided to try eating before going to the gym yesterday. BAD idea. I had half a sandwich one hour before Crossfit, and felt like I was going to throw up the whole time. So, maybe just tiny meals before and after OR skipping dinner (which I do not think I will be able to do.)

• Peeing: Tuesday nights issue obviously was having to get up and pee a million times. Not really sure the solution there other than not drinking as much water at yoga, but alas, that may lead to passing out.




• I already try to use my bed only for sleeping, not over sleeping, and trying to relax before bed etc. which leads me to the final issue: 
  Loud Husband: Jordan always complains that I am “only home for half an hour a day” since I usually get home at 8 and try to go to bed by 9 pm. (Which, hey honey, that’s an hour!) So the time I am home, he likes to tell me about everything. Which is all well and good, but he has trouble with volume control. There is no difference between when he is talking at a loud party to a group of people than just talking to me in bed while I am trying to go to sleep. We (read: I) have been trying to work on “bed time” voices, but it has not been working very well thus far.
  

the loud husband (Jordan) on a recent hike

 In conclusion, I will continue to play around with factors involved in my sleep and see how it goes. Any suggestions on ways to improve sleep?

On the plus side, Leo does not seem to be losing any sleep over the matter!

On another note:

Wednesdays WOD this week was just mean. MEAN!

100 front squats. With 3 burpees between every time you drop the bar.
That was it.

100 squats… that would be tough.
100 back squats – that would be tougher.
100 front squats- UGH!

It is the most awkward hand grip ever. I feel like I did not been get a leg/ butt workout – it was just wrist torture. I was doing like sets of 2 squats because I couldn’t keep my wrist in that position. In conclusion, I did A LOT of burpees!


awkward front squat hand position


I honestly stopped counting at some point (I am a really bad counter—I tend to get up to 10 and start over). I stopped after 20 minutes of squatting and burpee-ing which was about 2 minutes after everyone else finished.

I felt a bit like a failure since I didn’t know if I actually completed the workout. My wrists are killing me today, whereas my legs feel fine… which indicates my form was not very good. . Gives me something to improve upon anyway- Front squat position!

Wedding Cupcake Trial: Part 6: Funfetti Cupcake

Wedding Cupcake Trial: Part 6: Funfetti Cupcake 

This is the only cupcake to date that was note first inspired by Pinterest. 

When I first asked Jordan what kind of cupcakes he wanted for the wedding, his first response, in all seriousness, was Funfetti. In general, funfetti is not the first kind of cake I think of when I think of wedding cakes, but it is his wedding too after all - so if he wants a funfetti cupcake- he will get a funfetti cupcake gosh darn it! 

It seemed a little too much like cheating to straight up use a box of Funfetti cake mix and funfetti frosting though, so I decided to try to be a bit more creative.  I used the base of the Wedding White Cupcakes and add in nonpareils (I wanted to use regular sprinkles, but they were no where to be found in the grocery store.) 

For the frosting I also tried another version of the "Best Buttercream" 

1 cup unsalted butter, softened  

1 cup white granulated sugar

4 tablespoons all purpose flour

1 cup milk (I used Silk Light Soymilk)

1 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 

1/2 tablespoon sprinkles or nonpareils 

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, mix flour and milk stirring constantly until batter becomes thick. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.
2. In a large bowl place butter and sugar and beat with an electric mixer until fluffy. This can take a long time (10-15 minutes) to get the granulated sugar fluffy but it is worth it. If you have a stand mixer- this would be an ideal time to use it. 
3. Add cooled flour/ milk mixture to butter and sugar, and beat. 
4. Add in extracts and some sprinkles or nonpareils and beat until combined. 
5. Refrigerate for about 1/2 an hour until slightly thickened. 
6. Pipe or spread onto completely cooled cupcakes. Add any other decorations (I added some more nonpareils on top). 

Conclusion: 

• As you can see in the interior picture above - there were some holes and tunnels in the cake. This can be a result of over mixing. Also adding the dry ingredients to wet ingredients slowly can help prevent this as well.
• I also made these at the same time as the wedding white cupcakes where I admitted to undercooking them, so these also came out a bit undercooked. 
• Overall I did really like the taste, and the texture likely would have been good if they were not undercooked. 
• Nonetheless-- I think the box of funfetti cake would still win in this situation unfortunately. 
• Boxed cake 1 - Jamie 0