Chesapeake Invite, Day 2

I awoke Sunday morning and nearly fell down the stairs as my right knee apparently forgot how to bend overnight.  Not good!  I spent most of the morning wondering if I was going to be able to play at all and doing my best to disguise my concern from everyone since we were already short people, I feel like I still gotta earn my roster spot, and Goddammit I ain't going out like that!

After some vitamin I and a lot of warming up, it loosened up and by the 2nd half of our first game, I hardly noticed it.  No idea what the hell that was all about!  Anyway, we rolled our first opponents and won our quarters match-up against District 5 without too much ado.  That game was pretty close, at least until Jeff Graham decided he was going to take over.  Then it wasn't.  That put us in the semis for a rematch with Slow White.

Similar to our first match-up, we had difficulties generating pressure on D, though we were somewhat more efficient scoring on O.  In the end, we fell by a 13-10 margin.

The team itself looks very promising, especially since we were missing 10 people for the tournament and 3 of us had never played for the Ghosts before.  As for myself, I was somewhat disappointed in my play.  I played decent shutdown defense, scored and threw a few goals, and kept my turnovers pretty low, but only managed an occasional block.  I wasn't able to overpower anyone with speed or agility on the weekend, which was pretty much my hallmark so that will be my motivation for training in the coming weeks.  My footwork was sloppy, my changes of direction were slow, and my extra gear was not there.  Probably more than anything, the supreme comfort on the field was missing.  The ability to just take everything in and move and react naturally wasn't there and that really means the difference between excelling and just getting by.  Come regionals, I need to excel again.

On a positive note, my legs and lungs held out the entire time, and while I was puffing after a few of the longer points, I was able to recover and get back out there.  And though I'm a little sore in spots the day after, for the most part, I feel good and strong and ready for the speed and agility workouts to come.

Chesapeake Invite, Day 1

My initial thought after having completed my first club point in 2.5 years was, "WTF was I thinking?  No way I'm getting through two days of competition."  Thankfully, after the initial shock to the system, my body started to remember what this was all about.  The training I did in the last month definitely paid off, and while I'm not physically where I normally would be at late August, my base is solid.

The Ghosts were a missing a third of our roster for the Invite, which meant a lot of PT and a lot of much needed reps.  Apparently the team hadn't played together in two months, and so I wasn't the only one shaking the rust off, something that became apparent when we lost our very first game to a decent, but not spectacular, Bucket from Atlanta.  We started gelling a little better after that first game and beat Ant Madness relatively easily.  Next up was AMP, and after falling behind a bit early, we clawed back from 10-11 to win 13-11.  That set us up for a crossover with regional rivals Slow White.

We battled in this game, but the D had a lot of difficulty bringing pressure until the very end of the game and we fell 10-13.  Drat... no first round bye for us Sunday morning.

Somewhat mollifying was the spectacular crab dinner provided by Marika's parents at the family farm!  My crab eatin' skills needed some work, but by the end of the night, I was getting pretty good.

Redfish Run

Warm-up:

6:45 Run
Active Stretching

Redfish Run:

10 x Tabata Sprints (sprint :20, rest :10)
10 x 40-40s (jog 40 yards, sprint 40 yards)

5:40 Run

Moving, Day 2

We were back at it first thing in the morning.  After packing a few more pieces of furniture, I took the truck up to the new house and my father-in-law and I set about unloading it.  We finished up around lunch time, so we went home, grabbed a quick bite to eat, and loaded her up again.  The second truck load probably had half the volume, mostly kids' toys and the rest of the stuff from the garage.

Once loaded, we went back to the new house and my father-in-law hopped on the tractor to get started on the yard work (back-filling the retaining wall, fixing the grade on the lawn with the york rake, etc) while I unloaded the truck.  About half-way through, Mary Ellen came along to help me finish up.  At around 4:30, we unloaded the last of it, returned the truck, and headed back to the house.

Now for some _real_ work!  While Mary Ellen began tiling the backsplash in the kitchen, I headed out back to finish up the retaining wall.  Now that pops-in-law had backfilled a bit, I put three more courses on the wall, then dug a 3' x 3' hole at the end so I could bury the drainage pipe in gravel and create a mini leach field of sorts.  After that, I picked up rocks turned up by the tractor, shoveled dirt and gravel, and raked dirt around the foundation to finish off the grade.  At this point, Mary Ellen had to pick up the kiddos, so I took over tiling the backsplash.  At around 10pm, I finished up and headed home to bed (which now consists of a mattress on the floor of a mostly empty bedroom).

Suicides

The last thing I wanted to do after a day of moving was run, but I got a teammates to train for so...

Warm-up:

7:20 Run
Active Stretching

10 x 125 yd Suicides (0-10-0-15-0-25-0-25), 1:30 rest

:26, :25, :25, :25, :25, :24, :25, :25, :25, :24

After the suicides, Mary Ellen and I threw around for 30 minutes or so until it got too dark to see.

Moving, Day 1

The good news is we'll be in our new house by the end of August.  The bad news is we have to move out of the old house to do it!  YUCK!

The morning was spent repeatedly loading stuff from the garage into a 5x8 trailer, driving it to the house, and unloading it.  At about 3:30pm, we picked up a 16' Penske truck and started on the real moving.  The rest of the day was spent hauling stuff out of the house and loading it into the truck.  Sad thing is, I'm really not sure where we got half of it nor why we own it, but it sure ain't light!

Rocking Out

I took yesterday and today off to get some work done at the house and try to get ready to move in.  (The first wave of moving will take place this weekend!)  I arrived early to clean out the TV room and get it ready for the carpet installation, then spent the rest of the morning tiling the backsplash in the kitchen.  Things are really starting to come together.  By lunchtime, we had new carpet in the TV room, and Lowes delivered all of our appliances, minus my stove which was special-ordered elsewhere.  Fantastic and all, but not workout worthy...

That's where there retaining wall comes in.  7.5 tons of concrete block were delivered yesterday afternoon and today is the day I installed them.  With help from a friend we hauled, leveled and stacked a 35'x3' wall.  It was pretty sweet, right up until a 20' section of it fell over as we were 6 blocks from the end.  From sweet to suckage!  Turns out, 2' is about the max you can stack those blocks before you back fill them.  3' is definitely no good.  So... we picked up the fallen pieces and stacked it back up 2' high and will wait patiently until we can back fill it properly before building up the rest.  At any rate, hauling 7 tons of concrete 25lbs at a time is definitely a good workout.  Owwie.

Crucible Deck

Warm-up:

Running, 2 laps around FCC.  (Lap 1: 2:24, Lap 2: 2:04)
Active Stretching

Crucible Deck:

Hearts: 10 x Sprint
Diamonds: 10 x Push-ups
Spades: 10 x TOs
Clubs: 10 x Squats
Joker #1: 10 x Mahlers
Joker #2: 10 x Burpees
Total Time: 14:36

5:00 Exercise Bike

Tossin' the B

I managed to con a co-worker into a disc around during lunch today.  Unfortunately, it was relatively short-lived as he finally managed to put it beyond my reach and the fence, and into the briars.  We thought briefly about scaling the fence in our work attire, but in the end decided to just let it go.

Hill Sprints at 509

After an afternoon of tiling, I hit the trail for another shot at the hill.

10 x Hill Sprints, 1:00 rest (rest includes the walk back down to the start)

:11, :12, :12, :12, :12, :12, :12, :12, :12, :12

5 x Hill Sprints, 1:00 rest (rest includes the walk back down to the start)

:12, :12, :12, :12, :11

Hill Sprints at 509

An historic day, today marked my first ever workout at the new house, not counting yard work and remodeling of course.  In the future, I hope to have awesome trails throughout the 72 acre property, but right now, I've got one trail that heads from the field, down a steep hill, to the pond, and thanks to my pops-in-law and a fairly large tractor, it's cleared enough to run on provided you're OK with jumping over holes, dodging roots, and side-stepping thorn apples.  At any rate, after a day spent hauling stuff to the dump and tiling in the kitchen, I decided to see what that hill had to offer.

10 x Hill Sprints, 1:00 rest (rest includes the walk back down to the start)

:15, :12, :12, :12, :12, :12, :12, :12, :12, :12

5:00 Rest

5 x Hill Sprints, 1:00 rest (rest includes the walk back down to the start)

:12, :12, :13, :13, :12

I really tried to break :12 on the last sprint, but alas, didn't have it in me.  I blame slipping on a rock.

Redfish [Baby] Run

Not to be confused with a [Baby] Redfish Run... Perhaps unsurprisingly, this workout was not easier with the addition of a toddler in a baby stroller.  Jamie fell asleep some time during the 40-40s.  Poor thing, I'm pretty sure it was the extra Gs she was pulling that caused her to black out.

Warm-up:

7:21 Run w/ Jogging StrollerActive Stretching

Redfish Run w/ Jogging Stroller:
Tabata Sprints:

10 x :20 sprint, :10 rest

40-40s:

10 x jog 40 yards, sprint 40 yards

5:30 run


After cooling off for a bit, I then headed up to the house to help my father-in-law re-grade the lawn.  This basically involved loading a lot of construction debris into a trailer, and then a bunch of raking, shoveling, and moving rocks.

Tabata Something Else

Warm-up:

Running, 3 laps around FCC (which I est. to be 4/10 of a mile based on my odometer): 2:28, 2:05, 2:19
Active Stretching

Tabata Something Else:

Pull-ups: 14, 8, 7, 5, 4, 3, 3, 3
Push-ups: 23, 15, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 6
Sit-ups: 9, 9, 11, 10, 9, 10, 9, 10
Squats: 18, 17, 18, 20, 19, 20, 19, 20

5:00 Exercise Bike

Pavers and Tiling

Today was basically a rest day in that there were no planned workouts... unless you count helping out at the local elementary school hauling cement pavers and laying out a path for their new school garden or tiling the counter up at the house.  Admittedly, tiling isn't much of a workout, but carrying those pavers around worked up a bit of a sweat.

Cooperstown Pick-up & Accelerators

It was a beautiful night for pick-up so I packed up the family, dragged my mom-in-law along for babysitting support, and headed north.  The quality was the best I've seen so far with a few decent college players in town so I got some decent running in, a lot of practice breaking straight-up marks, and got plenty of reps skying for floaty, ill-advised deep shots.  As I said, quality was up, but it's still pick-up where nobody wears cleats and only a few even wear shoes.  Even so, it's a great crew and it's always fun.

After a round robin of 4 teams of 5 (my team won. w00t!) I begged out of the final game in (they broke up the teams and put together 2 teams for one last free-for-all) to head over to the track.  At this point, it was way past Jamie's bed time so I had to make it quick and since my calves were cramping a little, I opted out of my planned 400s and ran 4 x 100m accelerators - accelerating smoothly for 50m then sprinting the final 50m.  It felt good to open it up a bit and to work out some of the soreness from yesterday's F50 (my abs are not happy with me!).

Filthy Fifty

Warm-up:

Running, 2 laps around FCC (5:50)
Active Stretching

Filthy Fifty:

50 x Box Jumps
50 x Jump Pull-ups
50 x KB Swings, 20 lbs
50 x Walking Lunge
50 x Knees-to-Elbows
50 x Push Press, 45 lbs
50 x Back Extensions
50 x Squat to Med-ball toss
50 x Burpees
50 x Double-unders
Total Time: 31:24

5:00 Exercise Bike

I didn't have a whole lot of time so my original plan was to just head to the gym, do some running, do 100 Burpees, ride the bike for a bit, then get the hell out of there.  Then I saw Crossfit's WoD and took it as a sign.  This was definitely not my fastest time, but I did everything as Rx'd but for the Wall Balls.  The K2E's slowed me down a lot as I maintained a 90 degree elbow bend for each one and did not let my feet hit the floor (something I used to do in the past).  By the time I hit the burpees, I was pretty spent so they took up another large chunk of time, but I did fairly well (for me) on the double-unders, esp. considering I used to sub these out for Tuck Jumps since I couldn't do them not too long ago.  I'm not sure if the fact that everything was spread out around the gym helped me or hurt me.  It certainly took extra time to move from one thing to the next, but that gave me some extra rest time as well.

Toddler Joggin', Agility, and stuff

As I mentioned in my previous post, it looks like I may need to get back in tournament shape, and fast.  Physically, I am more muscular than I was when I moved upstate and away from ultimate, but the endurance is going to take effort to get back on track.  With that in mind, I threw Jamie in the jogging stroller and ran her over to one of the local parks.  While she splashed around in the stream, I did a bunch of informal agility and plyo drills, and then we ran back home.

11:00 run
Plyo/Agility Drills (box jumps, one-legged box jumps, plyo box march, sprinting small staircase, step-ups, etc)
12:00 run

Later that same evening:
50 x Push-ups
1:00 Wall Sit
61 x TOs

Updates

I haven't exactly been idle the last few weeks, but neither have I been in the gym banging out sets.  The whole house renovation project has been taking nearly all of my spare time.  On the plus side from a workout perspective, it has involved quite a lot of physical labor, so I've been keeping active, but on a less formal level.  One thing of note, today I'm on day 61 of the 100 day TO (full body sit-up) challenge.

Anyway, it looks like I may have to fire this thing up again as there's a good chance I'll be busting out the old cleats and playing some coed in 2012 championship series.