The Crossfit Games

We decided to take a trip out to California last weekend before our bundle arrives (hopefully in less than a month!) There were a few reasons for our trip, one was that we really wanted to have our daughter have one last vacation as an only child and make it a special one, so our first stop was Disneyland. The good news is she had a great time. She loved the Winnie the Pooh tunnel ride and the Toy Story one too.  Luckily with her being so young and me being really pregnant the rides that we were able to enjoy had fairly short (about 20 min wait) lines. The thing that is ridiculous to me about Disneyland is that you pay nearly $100 per person to get in and most of the good rides had at least a 90 min to 120 min wait. Maybe if we went a different time of year it wouldn't have been like this but I can say I feel sorry for our little one on the way because it is going to take a lot of coaxing to get me to go back there and fight the large crowds. At least we accomplished our mission and our daughter had a really great time!

Another reason for our trip was the largest Crossfit event of the year, the Crossfit Games were going on. We knew having our daughter with us would make it harder to get the full experience, but we really wanted to go to see the fittest athletes in the world compete. They did not disappoint! It was truly amazing watching the strength, endurance, and athleticism of all of the athletes that competed. We left the Games feeling humbled, motivated, and excited to improve on our weaknesses.

With this great feeling of motivation brought a couple of rough days when I returned back to reality. While on vacation I didn't workout a single day. We did a ton of walking which actually took more of a toll on my body than the more intense but shorter workouts I have been doing. It was nearly 100 degrees at Disneyland and after walking around for about 8 hours there were a few times that night I thought I might have a California baby, ha! Anyway I didn't realize how difficult it would be to get back into the swing of things after taking 4 days off. I thought it would do my shoulders good since I have had trouble with overhead movements due to the pain when the weight gets a little on the heavy side. While I knew Monday's workout would be tough b/c it consisted of pull ups and shuttle runs, my expectations were low and it really just felt good to get a sweat on.

Tuesday is when my hormonal  emotions all kicked in. I went in to do jerks, squats and push presses. I felt really good warming up my split jerks and then once I hit 105 and 115 (which are not very heavy weights) all of the pain came rushing right back. I felt so frustrated. I stayed at that weight and although I was very discouraged I decided I would at least do the squats. Now that the baby is dropping and I am less than 4 weeks from my due date squatting heavy is proving to be a bad idea too. I am feeling a lot of pelvic pressure and my belly hits my thighs before I break parallel unless I keep my stance wider than usual (pregnancy problems:) At this point I only went up to 175 lbs for 3 reps which I completed very easily but I knew I shouldn't be going heavier than that, at least not today mainly because of the state of mind I was in, but also because I really just wasn't feeling great. For once I "listened" to my body. I should have gone and done some rowing and body weight movements but I was feeling so down and on the verge of tears, I just decided to leave. It was the first time I have ever not completed a workout in my time doing crossfit. I got into my car and cried.

Why was I crying? I think it was more than just because I didn't do well or finish my workout. It was for a lot of reasons. First was coming to terms with the fact that I feel so motivated after being at the games to work harder at my weaknesses but now is not the time. My body is preparing to have a baby so I need to just save all of that motivation for later! Then I was feeling really guilty because the last thing I should be thinking about is how fast I can come back or be worried about losing my fitness. I am about to give birth to our baby girl and she should be filling my mind instead of just staying in shape. I was also crying about things I won't bore you with that happened at work the past 2 days. And to top it off, my husband was out of town on business so I felt like a single mom, cooking, cleaning, and caring for my busy toddler (good thing I have been doing crossfit!) I am not really a cryer but I tell you, being pregnant just amplifies every emotion you feel.

Moral of the story, it is ok to be emotional and have bad days. I have plenty of them, the main thing is to look back and reflect on the true reason you feel these emotions and adjust. For me yesterday was just a reminder that now is a time to be patient, focus on the positive that I have the ability to exercise and live a healthy lifestyle through the last 8 months, and thank God for giving me a complication free pregnancy thus far.

Hmmm, which photo does it look like she was having more fun? 

Natural Living

Today's post isn't meant to tell anyone what is right or wrong (just like all of my posts:). Instead I thought some people might find it useful to know some of the things my family and I have chosen to do as far as nutrition, supplements, and everyday living go. For those who know me you will know that I really like to eat paleo, choose products that I understand and can pronounce what is in them, and incorporate as natural ways of living as possible into my families lifestyle.

Nutrition
I have to give my husband the most credit for getting me started eating paleo. It all started in month 8 of my first pregnancy. I wasn't making the healthiest choices and which made him not feel as good because he eats mostly what I eat. One day he said, "cheese is gross if you really think about it." What?? I love cheese and with one month left of my pregnancy I am certainly not about to give it up! It sparked our discussion and he mentioned he had read a few things on the paleo diet and he wanted to try it. I wasn't completely on board (after all I was 8 months pregnant, who wants to get strict about their diet at that time?) but I did my best to cook meals that were mostly paleo so he would feel better. I noticed that I really started to feel better myself and after I had my first child it was the answer to me getting my body back too.

Fast forward a year and a half and what we keep in our house is almost exclusively paleo. We have tailored it to fit our needs. What I mean by that is we ate strict paleo with absolutely no grains, legumes, dairy, and processed sugars for 2 months and have since tried to add certain things back in and have found some things our bodies digest well, while other people may not feel well after consuming them. We drink organic whole milk, not a lot but we will add it to our protein shakes and give it to our daughter. We also use grassfed Kerrygold butter and occasionally goat cheese. Other than that we pretty much stay away from other dairy products especially highly processed cheeses. The other thing that I will buy on occasion is black beans for chili. It is an easy meal and I only use about half of what we used to and have not noticed any negative effects from them so we choose to eat them occasionally.

Here is what a typical day of eating looks like for us including during my pregnancy:

Morning: Fruit and Veggie shake- we put banana, organic frozen berries, an apple, carrots, kale, broccoli, homemade almond butter (if you have a vitamix this is super easy to make), organic milk, and water in it. This is really good for our daughter as we struggle to get her to eat veggies. She loves it b/c the fruit masks the strong taste of broccoli and kale that we would never be able to get her to eat plain.

We also eat eggs with our shake and on the weekends usually have a bigger breakfast with eggs, meat, sweet potatoes, etc.

Lunch: My staple is chipotle salads. Chipotle is by no means perfect but I really like how they use hormone free meat most of the time (except when their suppliers run out and then they post it to let us know), and you can stay paleo with the salad. I get lettuce, peppers & onion, chicken, pico, med salsa, and of course guacamole.

Dinner: Usually I make some sort of meat, vegetable, and sweet potato for dinner. I love paleomg.com and civilizedcavemancooking.com amongst others for recipe ideas. I buy free range, organic meat from the store and we also partner up with friends a few times a year to buy beef and pork from local farmers. Most of what I buy for fruits and vegetables is organic as well. Just because something is organic doesn't mean it is perfect (ideally we would grow it ourselves, which we do some of) but it is better than the alternative of buying things with a lot of chemicals sprayed on them that we prefer not to consume. When we have a sweet tooth after my husband is the king of paleo chocolate chip cookies so he makes them.

Snacks: We usually have on hand plantain chips, fruit, nuts, and protein for daily snacks.

Our Pantry

Water!!!: I usually drink about 100 oz of water per day. We own the best water bottles I have ever tried, hydroflasks, which will keep your water cold all day, even when it is 110 degrees out in Phoenix. The bottles are stainless steel on the inside so you don't have to worry about all of the BPA seeping into your water like you do with regular water bottles, and it is less expensive than buying bottles of water.

One thing you need to know is even though these are the things we buy at home and do on a regular basis, that does not mean you will not see us out eating pizza as a family or at a coffee shop getting a latte. We enjoy indulgences, which usually come on the weekends but feel much better when our regular diet consists of the things above.

Supplements
During pregnancy you are usually advised to take prenatal vitamins which I did during my first pregnancy. Fast forward a year and a half and I actually started reading the ingredients on the prenatal vitamins and realized in addition to the vitamins of course they have soy in them and the folate is in a synthetic form of folic acid. Another important thing to take during pregnancy is a vitamin with DHA in it. DHA is found in the fish oil I take so for me my prenatal vitamins this time were Solgar Folate and PurePharma O3 Fish Oil. I of course discussed with my doctor first and as long as I keep a balanced diet taking these 2 supplements were all I needed.

Supplements I take during pregnancy

For Information on the difference between folate and folic acid visit:
http://chriskresser.com/folate-vs-folic-acid

Household/Everyday Products
As I have changed my diet I have also started to change some of the other products I use. So many things these days contain unnecessary chemicals and additives. It is overwhelming to change everything at once so I have slowly introduced more and more natural products into our family. Here are a few examples:

- Sunscreen: I make my own sunscreen with Zinc Oxide as the active ingredient along with my doTerra essential oils. We need to protect ourselves from the sun, especially here in Arizona but it really bothers me to be lathering in all of the things found in sunscreen or even worse spraying it on so instead I made my own which is about SPF 20.
- Soap: I make my own baby soap with pure castile soap, olive oil, and essential oils
- All Purpose Cleaner: I make my own with vinegar, water, borax, and essential oils.
- Laundry Stain Remover: I make my own with castile soap, vegetable glycerin, water, and lemon oil
- Diaper cream: Maleluca essential oil and coconut oil

There are so many other things you can make yourself and eliminate or reduce your exposure to harmful chemicals. I have started with these few things and hope to make most of my own everyday household products.

Some of my homemade household products

Workout Update:

I am 35 weeks in and hopefully only 5 more to go (fingers crossed)! In the last week I have seen the largest decrease in energy in quite a while. I had one day where I was even contemplating finishing just because I was so tired. I had just a couple sets of body weight movements left and I opted to finish after a short conversation with myself and feeling that I would be disappointed for leaving with only a few things left to do. After all I only have my 25+ lb training vest for about another month!

This weeks overhead squats were sets of 5. This was much harder than the sets of 3 from last week because overhead squats require so much midline stability, not something I have too much of these days. I was proud to finish my last set of 5 at 125 lbs without failure although it took me some time steadying myself between reps.

Saturday I also broke my no snatching rule. I do all my olympic lifting from the hang position (just above the knee) because it is so hard to maneuver all the way to the floor. I didn't go too heavy but did 95 lbs, which felt fairly easy. I am looking forward to getting back and practicing the snatch. My last 1- rep max of 100 lbs was in September of last year so I am really excited to work on improving that.

Our box was hoppin' on Saturday with a fun team training session. I got excited about working out just watching them do the WOD together. That is by far the hardest thing about crossfitting through pregnancy, watching, knowing you have the capability to perform when you aren't pregnant but also knowing that right now there are just things you can't do or do very well.

When will your last workout be?

As my due date approaches I get asked more and more often, "how much longer are you going to workout?" When I first heard this, my initial reaction was "when I have the baby I will take a break." I have always imagined working out to up until the day I give birth. Even with my first before I ever started Crossfit, I hiked the mountains by our house the day I gave birth. I have learned not to set your mind in stone on anything when it comes to giving birth but what I can say is my answer now is, I will take a break if one of 3 things happen.

1. I give birth
2. My body tells me to stop
3. My doctor tells me to stop

I have been thinking about the days and weeks after this baby comes. I am not sure how long of a break I will take but I am hoping to start some light activity a couple of weeks after if I have a natural birth like I hope to. I am just trying to figure out how to not go crazy taking 2 to 3 weeks (or more if I am not feeling up to it) off from physical activity?

As my due date nears, my patience is wearing. I don't always sleep well, I have a hard time getting comfortable, and my energy levels vary a lot from day to day. This week I had some really good workouts and also some crummy ones. On a high note I overhead squatted 130 lbs for 3 reps and did 21-15-9 of 75# hang power cleans and burpees in 4:30, however my burpees are not RX, I have to put my hands on rogue blocks to avoid my belly getting to the ground. On a low note, my shoulders are still feeling bad, and felt worse on my push jerks so I decided I am going to take at least a week off on the shoulders to see if that will help. I have been trying to fight through it because I know I will have some weeks off starting next month, but I know that it is smart to take a break now.

My belly has dropped quite a bit this week. I really struggle to get the barbell all the way to the ground on deadlifts. I have been doing them but I'm not as fast and not doing as much weight with them.

Speaking of belly dropping, that brings a whole new problem, a lot of my shirts are getting too short. Haha #pregnancyproblems.

Less than 6 weeks to go!

Ups and Downs

Today I had an ultrasound at my doctor visit. I was a little worried going into it because at my last appointment the doctor said she wanted to take a look because by belly was measuring small.  It really made me take a step back and pray that I am doing everything right for my little girl to be healthy. During the last couple of weeks I started to wonder, maybe I am exercising too much or not getting enough calories for her to grow fast enough? Well turns out that is not the case at all. Despite by belly being a little smaller (she said that is common for taller women or women with longer torsos, which I guess I fall into that category) the baby is measuring a little over a week ahead of the average growth at this point in my pregnancy and my fluid levels are perfect. My doctor told me that everything looks really good and to continue doing the things I have been doing. Yay!

I think I have started reaching the nesting phase as well, which in a lot of ways is kind of nice because I feel more energy to get things done. I have a few last things to do to personalize baby's room so she doesn't have the exact same room her sister had, but other than that we are ready for her! The bad thing about nesting is that my patience seems to run a little thinner. At work I am really trying to get all loose ends tied up since I will have 12 weeks off, but when your customers don't have the same urgency it can get frustrating at times!

The past week has brought some really high points as well as low points (or more positively put, "challenges") on the workout front. Last time I wrote was the day before we were doing Fran at our box. I really wanted to go through it once while I was pregnant just to finish it and also see what time I would get. I actually exceeded my expectations and RX'd Fran in 6:12 at 33 weeks pregnant. The pull ups definitely took up the majority of the extra time. I started out with 5 reps at a time and quickly went down to 3's and 2's but made it through, even no repping myself on one because I don't think my chin got over the bar. The thrusters felt pretty good, I went through 21 unbroken, broke once on 15, and then the last 9 unbroken. I was definitely out of breath a lot faster! I love doing Fran with all of the other members because there is just a different atmosphere than a regular WOD. It is really fun to cheer everyone on and see people push themselves as hard as they possibly can!

A couple of other high points this week are I PR'd my overhead squat by 5 lbs. My max attempt was 145 lbs and it felt really good. I also felt like things were promising with my shoulders after my visit with my chiropractor and he worked on them helping me target my problem areas. That same day pressing weight over my head felt better than it has in a really long time. This also brought on some frustration the next day because we were doing push jerks and jerk balances and although I didn't feel as much pain as I had felt previously, I felt weak and still limited in my range of motion. I was very tentative and not punching out more in fear of it hurting than because of actual pain. I know I am pregnant and I have other areas that hinder my ability to jerk efficiently (such as no core and my quickness to drop under the weight isn't there), however I have been working so hard on my mobility and getting my shoulder range of motion better so the slow progress or set backs still really frustrate me. I know from others' point of view it might seem like I should never get frustrated during a workout because I have an "excuse", but I think it can be even more frustrating because I am still working hard but progress is slowed and in some areas it is regressing for now and patience is not my strong suit.

Some pics of my pregnant Fran

Fran

Fran....a classic or should I say "THE" classic crossfit benchmark workout. I still remember my first couple of times doing Fran which is 21-15-9 of Thursters at 65# and pull ups. I remember how hard the round of 15 was b/c I burned myself out in the round of 21. I think it took me until my third attempt to realize it wasn't smart to do all 21 or as many pull ups as you could unbroken in the first round. I knew she would come again at some point in my pregnancy. We usually give her a go every 4-6 months. I have thought about whether it would be a good idea to do Fran when she came up b/c although she is short (my best time is 4:47 last September) she takes a lot out of you! Would I be able to "listen to my body" which I still sometimes struggle to do? If I feel OK tomorrow I am going to give her a go. Being this heavy (I am now 153 lbs or +25 from my starting weight) I will likely fail in strength quickly on the pull up bar, which will allow me to keep my heart rate in check.  I have no idea what time to expect but I suppose if I could get through her in around 8 minutes, that would be pretty good.  I will let you know in my next update how it goes!

I am nearing 33 weeks and have really felt like I have slowed down this past week. I am feeling really tired and so hot! Every day it has been nearing 110 degrees and when you have your own furnace growing inside of you, 110 feels like 120. I have still managed to get my workouts in but my body just feels slow. The one thing that keeps me going is the alternative to going in and working out is staying at home and falling further behind in my training. Right now I may not be able to make gains but I do feel like I am maintaining, which will help out a lot when it is time to return from having this baby.

I have an ultrasound coming up this week. I am a little worried b/c I have been measuring exactly on track up until my last appointment. My doctor said my belly was measuring smaller, which could mean a number of things. It could mean nothing, it could me that fluid levels are too low, or she isn't growing as quickly as she should. My doctor did not seem too concerned so I have tried not to concern myself too much either but anytime something is slightly "off" I do worry that I am doing everything right for my baby girl.


Some highlights this week:
-I was able to do GHD raises, which I wasn't sure if I would be able to with the extra weight and I hadn't done them in months
-Squats still felt good, I did 185 lbs for 5 reps
-Not necessarily a highlight but I completed Fight Gone Bad RX for 285 reps. I was gassed.
-I feel like she is dropping a little (maybe she will arrive on time or a little early???)
-It was a short work week and we get a long weekend, Happy Independence Day!


Some not so highs this week:
-I continue to struggle with Jerks and Push Presses. Despite my increased mobility I still feel pain when doing these movements. It has nothing to do with being pregnant, they are just hard for me.
-2K row took me 8:33, I can't wait to get my endurance back!
-I got my first leg cramp at night of this pregnancy. I got them during my first pregnancy but haven't had them this time until the other night. Despite drinking 100 oz of water in the day, I still got one and it was excruciating. I think Jarod thought I was going into labor b/c of the ridiculous noises I was making b/c the pain was so bad. He stretched my foot to extend my calf and even he had a hard time doing moving my foot because it was so tense. I put some deep blue on and that took care of it. I keep it by my bed now so if I feel any cramping coming on I put it on and I haven't had one since then. Deep Blue is the bomb!

GHD Raises with 25 Extra LBS