Hedgehog

To be clear, this is not the Hedgehog off the Kanc that I climbed in October, this is one further South, nearer to Concord.

I went with the Random Group of Hikers, and I have to say that the hike was pretty intense! I thought it was going to be a seven mile hike on a ridge with a small elevation gain. No. We bushwhacked for about 6 miles, and followed a trail for about one. When we bushwhacked, we followed where a trail WILL BE, at some point in the future. Not the same as a current trail!

Before the hike, we did yoga at this farm in NH. It was a beautiful studio, with a wood stove in the yoga room making it warm. The class was pretty good, an hour and 45 minutes (though the first 15 min were a little bit chanty.)

I am exhausted!

Rope climbs

I got to crossfit today and realized that I had brought the wrong pants - I had capris and #1 I haven't shaved my legs in a while and #2 we were doing rope climbs which leads to rope burn on uncovered legs. Now I have some Crossfit sox!

I remember not being able to climb the damn rope in third grade gym class, and I am no better at it now. I learned a new start method that's way better than the other one I had been doing, so now I can start and get a good 2 feet off the ground. So, during the WOD I did that 9 times. In front of a whole bunch of people. Awesome.

We did snatches for the strength. I find these to be hard. We did 3 reps, and I got up to 55 pounds. Which is where a lot of the other people started. But I did feel like I was sort of getting them right at the end.

WOD:
30-20-10
Power snatch (I lifted 35 pounds)
Burpees
Three rope climbs at the end of each set
My time: 17 min, average hb 145

That is a seriously large quantity of burpees. The first round of 30 nearly killed me. I did some of them the right way, jumping back, but more of them stepping back. I was exhausted and my toes were hurting a little. And, of course my rope climbs were just the first step of the rope climb. But I was pretty happy that I learned how to start. Even if there was a high humiliation factor.

Saturday I'm going on a yoga/hiking meet-up in NH. There was one in December when I was sick, and I was so bummed to miss it. Hopefully it will be fun!

I've walked at least 7000 steps every day so far this year! I'm hoping that I will get through the entire month of January with getting 7000+ steps a day.

"At least you're not going to hurt yourself"

All my lifts sort of look the same apparently. One of the instructors told me that we had switched the type of lift we were doing, and I was still doing the last kind. I was like, "Oh, I get a little confused sometimes." To which he replied that my mechanics were fine, and I wasn't doing anything that would hurt me. Well, there's a new standard met!

We started with strict press today, and then moved to push press. I really want to bend my knees and push during the strict presses, it's hard to just lift. I wound up getting up to 55 pounds on the strict press, and 75 on the push. 2 in a row at 55, but just one at 75. I was happy :)

WOD: 8 minutes
5 Clean and Jerk (I did 35 pounds)
10 box jumps (I used the girl sized box, but stepped)
5 rounds plus 4 lifts

WOD 2: 5 minutes
3 hang squat cleans (I did 45 pounds)
6 toes 2 bar (I did knees to chest)
6 rounds

I'm getting the swing action in the toes to bar/pullups and it's kind of fun! I can't combine that with bringing my toes to the bar, or pulling all the way up, but I can swing around like a fish 36 times without too great a problem.

I'm taking a class on Leadership for my doctorate. Because I didn't get enough on that in my MBA. Everyone else in my group wanted to meet Sunday mornings at 9:30, every week. Don't they have lives? It's only 9 weeks, so I can't complain too bitterly, and they all seemed cool and not crazy. But still!

Mt. Roberts

This was my first Real Winter Hike. I did do a couple other hikes in "winter," but this had all the true elements of winter - snow on the ground, temp of 15 degrees, and winds at about 40 mph at the top of the mountain (there's a huge storm on the east coast, blizzard in DC, flakes in Boston, and winds in NH I guess.)  It was totally awesome!

Mt. Roberts is a pretty small mountain, 2583 feet, about a 5 mile hike in total. Given the cold and the wind, we didn't take a ton of breaks, just enough time for the hikers who were slower to catch up (that's right, I was in with the fast crowd!) When we got towards the summit, it was sooo windy, it was really blowing us around. We hit the top, took a half dozen pics, and then turned around and hiked back. That's the one flaw with winter hiking, you can't sit and enjoy the view.

The hike itself was really nice, only a couple of really steep parts, a really pretty pine forest to walk through, some fun exposed ridges that were super windy. I really liked being out in the winter hiking - it's easier with the snow because you don't have to pick your way around all the rocks. Also, it's easier on the knees :)

I wore a ton of layers - my Athleta running tights with the extra wind protection on front, then another pair of Athleta pants. Gore Tex gaiters that I just bought, LL Bean winter hiking boots, thick wool socks, my ninja hoodie, a thin North Face Fleece, a down vest and then my down puff. As I got up higher I added my new wind jacket from Columbia and a turtle fleece for around my neck. Plus my wool hat. And, thick gloves that I got at the LL Bean outlet along with the boots. I was feeling like the new boots, gloves and gaiters were a bit of an extravagance (which they were), but they sure made the hike better. I wasn't cold at all!  I did look like the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Woman, so no pic of me, but some of the rest of the hike:

The view from one of the lookouts

The top :)

Horse farm near the bottom!

Very Confusing WOD

I finished the WOD, and I still don't totally know what it was. First we did clean and jerks every minute on the minute for 10 minutes. I got up to 65 pounds. It was an Oly thing (which I have no idea what that means), but you weren't supposed to lift your max weight. Because we came back to the clean and jerk at the end after the WOD.

WOD (I guess): 12 minutes
15 toes to bar (I did knees to chest)
10 deadlifts
5 snatches
I did 4 rounds plus 3 t2b (or k2c)

I only lifted 45 pounds in the deadlift, but that was because that was all I could reasonably do in snatches.

Once we finished the 12 minute WOD we had 6 minutes to lift our max in clean and jerks. I did 80 pounds, which I felt OK about, until this one guy was saying he did 3x that much and thought he should have gotten a little more.

There's a mammoth blizzard coming east today-tomorrow. But it's going to be south of me. Which is a little disappointing on one hand, because a little snow on a Sat would be nice. But I'm scheduled for a hike tomorrow, so that will be nice too hopefully :)

Real Burpees!

I was watching some of the people in the class before me doing burpees and I was like, "they aren't actually jumping that hard on their toes. Maybe I could do real burpees instead of just stepping back." They were in the WOD today - and so I did a few practice ones, and in fact I could do them! I think when I did them - or tried to do them - before I didn't have my hands in the right place. I was putting them right next to my shoulders where they weren't helping at all. But if they are more at boob level, they soften the impact. ROAR!

Today was "bring a friend day." Which of course I didn't bring a friend, I barely brought me. I woke up late and wasn't going to go, but then decided to drag my lazy butt off the couch and go. All the "friends" looked in pretty good shape, I think they just wanted a free class. But, they made the WOD a partner thing so friends could work together.  I wound up with this chick who ditched me so fast for weight lifting, but then turned out to be cool anyhow.

We started with back squats and I did 100 pounds 3 times!! I was excited! Yes, all the guys did like twice that.

WOD:  15 minutes AMRAP
5 Burpees (I did real burpees and they felt good!)
6 Thrusters (I did 35 pounds)
7 Box Jumps (I stepped on the lower box)
One partner does the entire thing, then the other.
We each did 7 rounds! Well, I was 3 box steps short, but after it was done I did the last three steps.

Average hr: 135 max hr: 164

That's 35 real burpees for the WOD, plus I did a few before to see if I could do them. Go me! :)

Yesterday I went on a Meetup hike in the Fells. It was about 2 hours on the Rock Circuit Trail. We kept a pretty good pace for most of it, but there were like 20 of us. So, any time there was a rocky part to go up or down it was really slow d/t the bottle neck effect. The leader got kind of frustrated with the slower people in the back and at the end took us back on a fire road instead of completing the trail. So I decided it didn't count as a blogable hike. Short and we didn't even finish the trail! But it was about 9000 steps and my hr averaged around 120, so I guess it still merits mention.

We had our first snow today, like 3 inches. Sat we are supposed to get like 8-12 inches!

Totally Not Last!

There were three people in my class today who were brand new to crossfit, so for once I was not last!!  It rocked my world!  Fourth from last! Go me :)

We started with push press and push jerk, which of course I had no idea of which they were. I didn't have time to google at work today, but they turned out to be ones that I like OK. I lifter 60 pounds on my heaviest push press and 70 pounds on my heaviest push jerk. We did sets of 2 on presses and 3 on jerks, and I was pretty impressed with myself. Until I saw that I was behind the next lowest person by like 20 pounds. Wah.

WOD: 27-21-15-9
Calories on the rower
Thrusters (I did 35 pounds)
time: 14:02  Average HB 132
But my heart rate was at 163-171 for the second half.

I don't know if my heart sped up for the second half, or if the hr sensor was making better contact with my wrist.

I had to cancel my weekend backpack trip. We're supposed to have a Nor'easter on Saturday, and I just can't think of any reason that I should be going backpacking during it. Even if it's supposed to move fast (that would be the Nor'easter moving fast, not me!). Sounds windy and cold.

I signed up for AMC's spring backpack course. There are 5 lectures and then a bunch of trips that you can go on. I want to try a little more backpacking. I think I'm ready for it, and it would allow me to go further north - less driving in one day because you aren't going there and back. Hopefully it will be good! It starts in April, so it's still a little while...