Mt. Major Again!

Since my hike for the weekend was cancelled d/t weather, I decided that I should get out today. I was going to go to Crotched Mountain, which is only an hour and a half away, but then I decided on Mt Major because I can go to the Kittery Outlets since they are only like 15 minutes out of the way. I got some super cute pants that I'm going to wear to work at Lulu (such an addiction, but they were $45 down from $185. How could I pass that up?) And, I got some boring blue pants at a little old lady/fat people store. But, whatever, they fit and were only $30 ish. Some of my pants are in really bad shape, I have to retire them!  And I got another pair of Tom's shoes, apparently my other obsession.

Kittery closes crazy early - 6 pm! And I got started a little late, 11 am. So, I decided to go to Kittery first because I wouldn't have time after the hike. While I was there I got really hungry, and so I ate these wonderfully awful fried clam strips and french fries. Yum!  I was feeling a little gross and tired after that, and decided that I could skip the hike. Once I got in my car, though, I just got off at the exit to Mt. Major. I mean, after eating all those clams I felt like I had to!

I was a little nervous about getting such a later start, it was around 3:45 when I left the parking lot, and there were a lot of other people finishing. But I had my headlamp, and I thought I would be OK. I was really glad I went, once I got started! It was very warm out for the season, about 70 degrees, so I could hike in just a t-shirt. Once I got going I started feeling pretty good. I took the Mt. Major trail up, and it was really nice! I can see why it's so popular. I think I've only taken it down before. The uphill parts had a great view of Lake Winnipesaukee, so whenever I needed to stop and breathe, there was a good view. After all my internal "I'm too tired to hike" it only took me a little over an hour to get to the top! Once up there, there were only two other people, who were very friendly. 

I took the longer route down, and that was definitely the way to go! There are a few steeper bits, but nothing like the Mt. Major trail. Also, there's a really nice ridgeline to walk on. I love a good ridgeline with a view! Total hike time was about 3 hours, I finished well before dark. I'm really glad I did it!

Spring!

It was so nice out today I went and turned over my garden again and dug out a few more roots that I missed the first time, and then I did some planting! I don't know if it will take because the water isn't turn on yet, and I forgot to bring any, and so I didn't water them. Though, it's been pretty rainy, and it's supposed to rain, and snow (!) this weekend. Hopefully it won't kill everything. But, they do give you a lot of seeds in the package.

In other news, my bathroom light now works (yay!) and my kitchen sink isn't stopped up. Everyone came to do the work yesterday. Last night my cat Tigger peed in one of the cardboard boxes that I have out for them to play in. Cat's love it when you fix your house.

I wasn't really in the mood for crossfit today, but I went anyhow. First, we warmed up with all these running exercises, which I was last at. One I particularly hate is suicides, where you run back and forth touching lines. Everyone else was a full line ahead of me by the end :(

We did Bear Complexes next. Maybe in honor of spring and the bears waking up? I got up to 60 pounds on the last of 10. The guy in front of me was lifting like 200 pounds, and I'm not even exaggerating.

WOD:
20 Box Jumps (I did steps)
20 Power Cleans (I lifted 45 pounds)
15 Box Jumps (steps)
15 shoulder to overhead
25 squats
15 shoulder to overhead
15 Box Jumps (steps)
20 Power Cleans
20 Box Jumps (steps)
My time: 13:18

My heart rate got up to 175 at the end, which I think is pretty high. I could feel it beating.  According to Livestrong that's a little higher than my max heart rate should be. But I seem to have survived.

I was going to go on a backpack trip this weekend, but it's supposed to be freezing raining out and it looks like it will be canceled. Tomorrow is supposed to be the other nice day of the week, gonna look for a mountain to climb!

Lafayette

Today I hiked Lafayette, which is a pretty big mountain, 5249 feet tall, the 12th tallest of the mountains in NH! It's a popular one because it's not too far from Boston, it took me 2 hours to get there. Kind of a long drive, but still do-able in a day, with a long hike in the middle. To make the drive less boring I got the CD for Hamilton (yeah, I know, listening to Broadway musicals. But whatever. It was good!) and of course Lafayette was a friend of Hamilton so it worked out well as a theme kind of deal.

It was really nice out today, and I almost didn't pack an extra jacket and my gaiters, but then I just threw them in for the heck of it. As soon as I got into Franconia Notch, though, there was a low hanging cloud over everything. I was a little nervous, cause that's where I was hiking. I was glad I had my gaiters! You can see the clouds below us in the picture.

The hike was long and a lot of up hill, not surprisingly. There were an unfortunate number of ice falls on the trail, which I really disliked on the way down.  I was going so slow and I tried to get everyone to pass me, but they just refused. One woman on the hike is an ER nurse, and she actually walked me across the first really scary part. Then I decided I had to stop being such a wimp. But, I was really tired by that point, and so it make me pretty anxious.

Other than that, it was an awesome hike! Really pretty in the woods, there was snow on the ground and trees, and some crystals in the air that were catching the light. There's an AMC hut on the way up, and we stopped there for lunch. I totally want to stay there in the summer! The top was really nice, good view and great to sit and eat more :)

Total hike distance, according to the signs, was 2.7 miles to the hut and another 1.1 miles to the top. Total 7.6 miles, 3500 feet elevation gain - which doesn't seem like that much when you just write it there, but when you are hiking up hill for 3+ hours with snow and ice on the trail, really seems like a lot!  I'm beat!!

(on the trail)

My Place is Falling Apart!

In addition to needing to fix the bathroom light, I now have a plugged up kitchen sink. I didn't notice it getting slower draining, but today I ran the disposal, and when I finished it spit up water. It was a particular bummer because I had just started the dishwasher, and the dishwasher drains through the sink. I tried all the super unclogging tricks - ice cubes in the disposal and baking soda and vinegar, but no luck. Fortunately (I hope), one of my neighbors is buddies with a plumber who will hopefully not charge me an arm an a leg to unclog it. Maybe I can get the plumber and the electrician on the same day?

I was a little sore still from Tuesday's WOD, and climbing yesterday, but tomorrow they are having another of their opens, and Saturday I'm planning on a hike, so I went to crossfit today.

WOD:
1 round of:
100 double unders (I did singles)
50 squats
25 push presses (I lifted 35 pounds)
2 rounds of:
60 double unders (singles)
30 squats
15 push presses
3 rounds of:
40 double unders (singles)
20 squats
10 push presses
My time: 17 min 50 sec

Although I can only manage to do one double under at a time, and then sometimes I can't keep jumping after, I was able to do 100 single jumpropes (is that a verb?) without stopping. I got to 55 on one round of 60, but all the other rounds I did unbroken!

Before we did the WOD we did presses and push presses, which are lifts that I kind of like, especially push presses. I lifted 50 pounds on presses and 70 on push presses.

As I was typing this, I heard my sink bubble. When I went into the kitchen to see what's up, there was crap coming out of it, and I could hear my neighbor's disposal. Which I think means it's a building problem, not a unit one. And then the management company has to take care of it! (Fingers crossed) The sink drained and is working fine now, but I don't know if this is one of those things that you can ignore and it will go away....

Roxanne!

We started class with a "warm-up" where we jogged in a big circle while the coach played the song Roxanne, and every time that Sting said "Roxanne" we had to drop and do a burpee. I hate Roxanne, whoever she is.

We also practiced handstands on the wall. One of the coaches showed us how to gently kick up to a handstand. And I scared myself by getting my legs way up and almost actually doing one.

WOD:
40 Bar Facing Burpees (YUCK!)
40 calories rowing
30 wallballs
30 calories rowing
20 toes to bar (I got my toes up about 3 times)
20 calories rowing
10 clean and jerk (I lifted 45 pounds)
10 calories rowing
my time 20 min and 5 sec

It was a big enough group that they divided us in half - everyone got a partner and then partners started on opposite things (my partner started with rowing. I wanted to get the burpees over with.) I finished and I saw my partner standing around, and so I went over and said "nice job" and gave him a fist bump. And he was like "I'm not done yet."  OOOOPS!

55

55 reps is A LOT! I mean, way more than you would expect in Crossfit I think. Today we did one of these Crossfit Open workouts, and it was tough!

WOD: 13 minutes
55 deadlifts - I lifted 85 pounds
55 wallballs
55 calories on the rower
55 handstand pushups - I did 7 band assisted pushups.

I was ready to puke and saw a few spots on this one. Brutal!

Sunday is like the first day of spring, and we are supposedly going to have a Nor'easter! Usually I would be all for it, but I have a panel thing I'm putting on Monday evening, and if it gets canceled it will be such a pain to reschedule.

OMG!

The most awesome thing happened at Crossfit today!!! At the end of the class we all write our scores on the board, and I noticed that the coach had called one guy "Dr. D." So I asked him if he was a doctor and he said "yes, a bad one :)"  So of course I said, "I work with premed students, if I was one of my students I would be asking to shadow you." He got this kind of funny look on his face and then was like "I'm the Dean of Admissions at the Medical School" like he kind of didn't want to go there, but then did.  BOOM! One of the few people I am kind of buddies with at Crossfit is the Dean of Medical Admissions!!  I did a little happy dance inside, that's for sure.

Otherwise, class was only so-so. We started with clean and jerks, 2 every 2 minutes. I got up to 70 pounds on my last lift, which I was pretty happy with. I should look at my previous numbers and see if I'm improving, I mean, that's part of the reason for the blog.

Then we did this rotating tortures WOD:
3 rounds, work 1 minute, rest 20 seconds:

• Dumb bell cluster with push-up (which is an evil hybrid of burpee and dumbbell lift with a squat) - I did six each round, with a pushup on my knees)
• Double unders - I did singles, 110, 119, 120 ish, not in that order. I did 100 jumps without stopping in the first round!
• Toes to bar - I did knees to chest, with three attempts at the bar - 20 each round
• Assault bike - I did 20 calories each round
• Pistols - just like shoot the duck in ice skating. I did between 24 and 29 each round, but used a ring to assist.

I always feel like I'm sliding off the assault bike. I wonder if they make it that way intentionally.

Endurance

They weren't kidding when they said Saturday would be an endurance workout. I was ready to keel over during the thing. We started with a 800 meter (half mile) partner sandbag run - each of us carried the sandbag for half. I started with it, then at 200 meters gave it to my partner, then we switched back again at 400 meters and 600 meters. So, that was a quarter mile with sandbag. I partnered with this super small asian women, and for the last 200 meters she took off and finished first! That girl can run!! I was second of our group of about 10, and it weirded me out.

WOD: 4 rounds
400 meter run
10 Burpee Box Jumps (I did steps)
10 Hang Squat Cleans (I lifted 35 pounds)
100 meter run with sandbag
rest 2 minutes

My time: 29:50, average heart rate: 148, and that includes the almost 6 minutes of rest!

During the first round I was thinking about just doing 3 rounds, but then I got to the end of the 3rd round and decided I could do one more. I mean, you can do one of pretty much anything, right?

On Friday I had the day off, and was going to stop by my garden for 5 minutes to see how it had done over the winter. I wound up being there for about 2 hours, turning over the soil and ripping out roots! Some of the roots growing through it were almost the size of my wrist! Maybe this contributed to my poor growing season?  A little too much competition.  I'm thinking about getting some metal sheet roofing to bury at the edge of my plot to keep the roots out a little more in the future.  It was intense!

Last night I ordered seeds, much more fun! I'm planting white beets (that hopefully won't stain everything), scallions, radishes, carrots, lettuce, and I got a grape vine to try to grow on the back "fence" area. It would be awesome to grow grapes!

Where's the electrician?

My electrician blew me off today, which kind of sucked. I spent from 1-6 waiting for him, I called and got his answering service around 4 and nothing. I turn the light on in the bathroom and it's still dark. Boo. At least it was raining, and I did get 4 loads of laundry done, and started my last paper (wrote one page of 4-5 pages!) I was going to just spend the rest of the day on the couch, but then I decided that since I hadn't been to Crossfit yet this week I should go (tomorrow is the new Open workout and then Saturday it says "endurance". I didn't want to do both of those.)

I got there like 10 min late, due to procrastination about going and traffic. But, the coach didn't say anything like "get out!" Awesome!  We did jerks and push jerks for the strength portion. My partner and I started at 55, which I thought was probably going to get us to a place that I couldn't do, and I was right. I got up to 75 on jerks and 80 on push jerks!  For push jerks we were doing sets of 2 for 4 rounds, I started at 75, went up to 80, went back down to 75, and then back up to 80. So, I did 4 at 80!

WOD: 10 rounds
3 Clean and Jerk - I lifted 45 pounds
6 Pull ups - I used a big fat green band
time: 9:25

Then, cashout - 2000 meters on the rower, which took me a little over 10 minutes.

One of the coaches was distracting us with trivia during rowing, and I got two right - what's the most populated city in the world (I guessed Mexico City first, but then realized it had to be Tokyo) and what city links two continents, Istanbul. Everyone thought I was super smart and good at trivia. They've never seen me at Pub Quiz Night!

Monadnock

It was like 70 degrees out today! Yesterday my (totally awesome) boss called me at work - it's spring break week and so she's working from home. She something to the effect of "I know we have a meeting tomorrow, but it's supposed to be beautiful outside. Maybe you should take the day off." I only need to hear that once!  I was already planning to take tomorrow and Friday off, a 5 day weekend sounds perfect :)

It really was a perfect day out. I got a kind of late start, but decided to do the Marlborough trail anyhow. I did it once last year and really liked it. There's a pretty sketchy road to the parking lot, it's dirt with a lot of rocks, puddles, and frost heaves. But, I decided to drive down it anyhow instead of just parking and walking an extra third of a mile. There were some scraping noises on the way in. Yuck!

I started out on the hike at about 1 ish. It was just as nice as I remembered. The hike up marlborough is 2.1 miles, but I decided to add on this extra little trail that's about .4 miles and goes up to a side peak. I saw almost no one in the hike, which was kind of surprising, given the weather! With the detour and a little stop at the side peak it took about 3 hours to get up. I guess the total up was about 2.5-3 miles? I was trying to figure it out, but I couldn't.

The one challenge was that there was still a ton of ice up there, the thick kind that's super slick. I did have my micro spikes, but I would have had to put them on and take them off too much. On the way down it was particularly difficult. It took almost as long to get down due to the ice. And, the trail wasn't marked as well in that direction, so I kept getting lost. In the end, it took about 2.5 hours to get down. It was getting dark out, I was a little worried about getting my car out of the crazy road, and then there was all the ice - I was a little nervous on the way down!  As I got close to the end, I saw a couple people ahead of me, one of whom was wearing the hunting orange. I thought "I wonder if they are murderers? If so, I hope they kill me right here so I don't have to finish walking back." My feet were killing me! And no, they weren't murders, just a couple of other bozos who started their hike a little too late. When we finished it was dusk.

I didn't change my shoes in the parking lot like I usually do because I figured that if I left before them and my car broke on the road they would have to help me :)

No pics because my regular camera battery is dead and my phone memory is full.

Epic Butt Sledding Weekend

I went up to North Conway this weekend and stayed at my friends Greta and Eric's cabin. On Saturday Eric did some crazy intense ice climbing madness, and Greta and I took her dog and hiked Mt. Pierce. It's one of the 4000ers, a lower one at 4311 feet. The trail up was pretty gradual and through a really nice pine forest pretty much the entire way. The gradual but uphill part meant that I could keep up with Greta :)  It's about 3 miles each way. We started at 10 am and it took about 3 hours to get up.

The top had a totally amazing view of Mt. Washington. And a whole bunch of people :)  After I ate we headed down. We'd carried our butt sleds up. It turns out they are totally light, and I didn't even think about it being there. The way down took about 45 minutes.  It was so fun!  I made Greta go first, and Conway (her dog) ran down after her. There were a few sketchy spots, and a few times we got air bound. It had been way too many years since I last went sledding, it was just as great as I remember it as a kid!

I had so much fun that I decided to do another one today. Greta and Eric were going ice climbing, so I soloed it. I decided to do Doublehead because there is an old ski trail down it. It's shorter than Pierce, and the ski trail is wider than the path was. Doublehead, not surprisingly, has two peaks, connected by a ridgeline. I walked up the ski trail to the "Old Path" which was a little shorter than the ski trail to hike up. It was one of those paths that goes pretty much straight up the mountain with the occasional flat spot. The trail had been a sheet of ice, but then there was about 4 inches of snow last week. Parts of the trail were still super slick, and at one point I was pulling myself up with trees. I kinda questioned my decision making. Especially because, even though there were a bunch of cars in the lot at the bottom, I hadn't seen anyone on the way up. I finally got to the top of the ridge, and first went to the right .3 miles to the smaller peak. Nice view. Then down and back to the ridge, to the higher peak with the ski trail going down. That was the hardest part! I was a little sketched out by that time because it was so icy in some spots, and I was dragging myself up by the trees. There was no one around at all, and if I fell and hurt myself it would have been bad. Anyhow, I made it to the top, to this cabin up there. I had brought pop tarts to eat, they were SO good.

Then, sliding down! I didn't see anyone at the top, so I figured they were long gone. So, I better not run into a tree. The ski slope was about 10-15 feet wide. Anyone who skied it, in my opinion, is super brave. Some of it was really steep, there were some hairpin turns, a bunch of streams crossed it, and there were a couple fallen trees. It took me over two hours to get up, and about a half hour to go back down :) I did meet one guy hiking up, but that was all.

So, some tense moments, some really cool moments, not quite as fun as Pierce, but an outstanding way to spend the weekend!

Tonight's the last Downton Abbey. Sad, that was my only show, I need a new one.

Rope climbing

It's just too much like gym class. I couldn't climb the damn rope then, and I can't now. I get the theory and I can hop up a couple climbs to start, but making it to the top is going to be a long journey. Figuratively, not literally. It's only 10 feet.

We did back squats today, and I got up to 85 pounds! Of course, the beany little woman who I was partners with started at 85 pounds, but whatever. I think that's a new record for me, though I have to check.

There were two WODs today, both killer.

WOD: 7 minutes
10 wall balls
1 rope climb (I did the thing where you sit on the ground and pull yourself up)

rest 5 minutes

7 minutes
15 Kettle bell swings (I used the smallest)
50 rope jumps

I did 7 of the first and 5 + kettle bells on the second.

The rope jumps were supposed to be double unders, but I just did singles. My singles are getting better! I can jump 50 without stopping.

I hope none of my republican readers are offended, but WTF is wrong with us? How can we elect Donald Trump?? He's a bully and an attention seeker, and I think he just wants to win, not to be president.  And do people realize he gets the nuclear button access?