Becca Borawski’s Blog

I have a number of blogs that I am committed to reading.  I find inspiration in these pretty regularly.  Not every post is mind-blowing, but a fair number of them resonate in some way and I find myself sharing them with friends and coworkers.  Check it out and see what you find.  If you know any others you think I would enjoy, please let me know in the comments!

Zen Habits - Simple Productivity
Lifehacker - Tips and Downloads for Getting Things Done
Unclutterer - Daily Tips on How to Organize Your Home and Office
Rowdy Kittens - Social Change Through Simple Living
mnmlist - Minimalist Blog
Food Renegade - Challenge Politically Correct Nutrition
Seth Godin - Seth Godin’s Blog

12:00pm - CrossFit, All Levels

My schedule is all crazy this week because of preparing for the Sectionals this weekend.  Consequently I’m going to different classes than I normally do.  The nice part is, I got to work out with a crew of people I don’t normally experience!

TABATA Mash-up:
Push Press (65#)
Ab-Mat Sit Ups (feet anchored)
Sumo-Deadlift High Pull (65#)

One round of this workout would be 20 seconds of push press, 10 seconds rest, 20 seconds sit ups, 10 seconds rest, 20 seconds SDLHP, 10 seconds rest.
You will do a total of 8 rounds. This is a 12 minute workout in total.

Your score is your grand total of all your reps.

Round 1: 30
Round 2: 30
Round 3: 27
Round 4: 25
Round 5: 27
Round 6: 27
Round 7: 26
Round 8: 28

Grand total: 220

To make it easy on myself I just counted up every round and didn’t make note of the reps of each exercise.  I can say in general though I got between 5-8 push presses and then wound up between 19-21 by the end of situps and then scored from 25-30 total after the SDLHP.

I didn’t do the GHD sit ups that were prescribed because I was pretty sure after all the ones we did Saturday and then doing the Murph yesterday (that much kipping and push ups make my abs hurt!) that I’d give myself a hernia if I did GHD’s today.

Someday I’ll retell the story of the time I thought I had appendicitis…only it turned out just to be the glute-ham machine.

7:00pm - Fencing Lesson

Learned a bunch of new stuff tonight.  We worked on a few different counter-attacks, which I really enjoy.  I was more of a counter puncher in kickboxing, too.  For some reason my brain just works that way.

The way the lessons are structured, we work on skills and drilling for about 15 minutes and then we fence a few points for real for the last 5 minutes of the lesson.  Yes, they are 20 minute lessons and yes, your head would explode if you tried to do it for longer.

Today, I made a REALLY conscious effort to try to remember everything we drilled (it’s always a LOT of stuff) and apply it when we fenced for points.  Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, but I felt good about remembering a technique and attempting an application.

7:00am - CrossFit, All Levels

When I stepped out of the ladies locker room at 6:55am this morning and saw none other than Leo standing in the bullpen, I’m sure I literally did a double take.  Leo, for anyone who isn’t aware, was a member of CFLA previously and is the favorite hairdresser of a fair number of CFLA students.  Leo is, beyond a doubt, the most enthusiastic and passionate person I have ever met when it comes to cutting hair.  Leo is the only person who ever interviewed me about my lifestyle prior to cutting my hair for the first time.

Sadly, my passion for Leo’s return was quickly cut short when he drew the Murph card from the Smackdown desk.  Oh, Leo.

“Murph”
1 mile run
100 pull ups
200 push ups (50 toes, 150 knees)
300 squats
1 mile run
1:08:28

Any other day I actually would have been excited to do the Murph.  Last time I did Murph I did it Cindy style with a 15# weight vest, and before that I did it straight through, but due to logistics had to do push ups first, then pull ups.  So, I’ve been looking forward to doing it properly with no vest to get a real score.

Today was not the day.

My arms are still jacked up from Cindy, weighted push ups, muscle ups, burpees, etc over the last week and a half.  I have literally used up all my push ups and they have not come back.

So, today I started out on my toes for push ups, but was quickly down to 2 at a time.  Then 1 at a time.  I realized that being at 1 at a time when I was only 40 push ups in was a very bad sign.  At 50 push ups, I switched to knees.  Due to the fatigue that had already set in, this was surprisingly NOT much easier.  Oh my.

Here is a break down of how the workout went for me (I was able to make note of this since I was going so god-awful slow on the push ups):

00:00 - 09:00 - Finished the first mile in a little under 9 minutes
09:00 - 18:00 - 100 pull ups, spent a lot of time sanding hands between sets, could be way faster
18:00 - 27:33 - Did 50 push ups on toes
27:33 - 33:51 - Did next set of 50 push ups on knees, up to 100 total
33:51 - 40:28 - Another set of 50 push ups on knees, up to 150 total
40:28 - 47:17 - Final set of 50 push ups on toes, totaling 200
47:17 - 58:00 - 300 squats
58:00 - 1:08:28 - Second mile run, actually not horribly slow

Mostly I hit the wall and crashed and burned on this one, and yet I still enjoyed it.

Somehow, even though I must have driven by it a thousand times, I have never really noticed Amandine Cafe in West Los Angeles.  The other day, my boyfriend and I were discussing finding somewhere new to try for breakfast, and I drove by Amandine for the one thousand and first time and finally saw it.  It looked adorable and I thought, that place MUST serve breakfast.

I went home, checked out the website and yelp, and discovered it not only serves breakfast, but specializes in french toast, omelets, and pastries.  Well, you can’t lose with that combination, so we decided to try it out this past Sunday.

My boyfriend ordered the French Toast with Berries confiture, while I ordered the Amandine Omelet (ham, gruyere, and bechamel sauce).  We took it as a good sign that they warn you the French toast will take fifteen minutes, and were not disappointed when it arrived.  The omelet was also excellent and was served with potatoes and cheese, fruit (I liked the banana slices) and a couple slices of brioche.

The pastry and dessert display was probably one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen.  It was simply over flowing with beautiful creations of every type.  The items were all quite large as well, and reasonably priced.  We did not try anything this time (we just drooled on the glass display), but next time we are going to sample some of the goodies for sure.

My only complaint about the restaurant would be the layout.  It can be quite crowded inside and the tables out front are very limited.  We did not realize until we left that there was a back patio area with picnic benches.  Next time we are sitting back there, for sure!

7:15am - CrossFit, Instructor Training Program

Ingrid was Kahuna this week and came up with a fun and challenging workout.  I liked that each round built on the previous round and it was a good combination of movements.

400m run
15 burpees
400m run
15 burpees
20 k-bell swings (16kg)
400m run
15 burpees
20 k-bell swings (16kg)
30 GHD situps
400m run
15 burpees
20 k-bell swings (16kg)
30 GHD situps
60 walking lunges
400m run
25:34

Andy had us estimate before the workout how long we thought it would take us.  I picked between 20-22 minutes, so I was a bit off!  I underestimated how long the glute-ham developer sit ups would take.  I usually crank those out, but after all the other movements in this workout, that didn’t happen this time!  I also haven’t been running hardly at all lately, so that wasn’t as fast as I would like it to be.  I never stopped on any of the exercises except the sit ups, though—all the burpees, k-bells swings, and lunges were done straight through.

1:30pm - CrossFit, Skill Work

I debated with myself all day whether to work out or not.  I knew I didn’t want to do the rowing intervals - I do those all the time at Revolution and thought there was probably a weak spot I should work on.  I ended up deciding to spend some time working on muscle ups and elements of muscle ups.

I did about 20 minutes of work on - bar dips, jumping up and holding support on the rings, and muscle ups assisted by the rubber band.

My shoulders and triceps are still trashed from everything I’ve done the past week, starting with Cindy.  So I wasn’t as strong as I sometimes am, but today was about skill work and burning in good movement patterns, so I was fine with that.

12:00pm - CrossFit, Advanced

My body was feeling SO beat up today.  My chest is actually swollen from the power cleans yesterday and soreness from all the push ups between Cindy and yesterday.  Catching the power cleans too low on my chest left me bruised—my ribs are tender, the muscles hurt, and there’s visible swelling.  Not cool!  Before the class today I had to practice hanging from the pull up bar to stretch out and make sure I could do it!

Front Squat
3-3-3-3
1. 135
2. 135
3. 135
4. 140

I have definitely gone heavier than this in the past, but my left quad was burning in something other than a sore way so I didn’t want to push it too much.  Figured I’d just let the weights be what they wanted to be and not hurt myself.

As many rounds as possible in 5 minutes:
5 thrusters (65#)
5 pull ups
Score: 8 rounds

As much as I am not a fan of the Fran, I actually do pretty decent at it performance wise.  This variation on it was good in that the thruster sets were so short there was no sense ever stopping on anything.  Definitely slower rhythm than Fran though since there were so many more transitions between sets.

6:20pm - Fencing Lesson

Normally I don’t have fencing today, but moved it to today since we have meetings galore on Friday for the SoCal Sectional planning.  I learned a couple new movements tonight, worked a lot on explosiveness, and also on a jump that’s part of the footwork.  My coach is really good with metaphors—he talked to me about a cat pouncing on a mouse, for how the speed of a fencer works.  You go slowly, sizing things up, and then EXPLODE in your attack.  And I kept getting the jump wrong when we worked on it,  until he explained it was like jumping for a shot in basketball and suddenly, even though I never really played basketball, since I’ve SEEN it I totally got it.  Pretty cool.

7:00pm - Fencing Lesson

Okay, so when your arms and shoulders are as messed up as mine are right now, fencing is significantly more difficult! lol!  It was really painful at certain points in my lesson and it was hard to keep my shoulder relaxed.

I learned some new things - using the point of the blade to cut (more like what people think of as stereotypical fencing, as opposed to typical sabre fencing).  We also worked on feinting not just using the blade, but also the footwork.  I still feel dorky and awkward with some of the jumping footwork, but it’s getting better—less bunny-like!

Oh my goodness.  Three hours of sleep is not enough to perform well at CrossFit.

10:00am - CrossFit, All Levels

All the lovely ladies of CFLA came out of the woodwork for class today!  So much fun!  This was a cool workout, too.  Not a bunch of stuff I’m great at, but fun stuff and things I need to put the work in on.

For time:
9-6-3-6-9
Power Cleans (110#)
High Box Jumps (26”)
Weighted Pushups (5# plate)
14:55

I was NOT speedy on this, but I was happy with the weights I did.  I probably should have gone up to 28” on the box jumps.  I will do that for next time.  I started out with a 10# plate on the push ups, but switched after just a few reps into the first round.  My arms are KILLING me from Saturday’s Cindy—they are still sore and are just super weak still.

Today was a good day overall, though.  Workouts have been up and down for me for a couple weeks now due to a variety of stresses in my life and today I had a big personal breakthrough and felt fantastic about life in general.  I was able to enjoy this workout even though I wasn’t super fast or super strong - it just felt good.  It was good to “celebrate” with a hard workout and with an awesome supportive, energetic, hardworking bunch of people.  Onward and upward!

Tonight I am going to fencing and then I am going to SLEEP!

7:15am - CrossFit, Instructor Training Program

Today was the baseline workout for the Cindy Challenge.  I haven’t done Cindy in a while and I did not even match my old personal record this time around.  Push ups are so frustrating.  Could be a lot of different reasons for it.  I plan to put in some dedicated time each day toward working on push ups from here until the challenge finals.

AMRAP in 20 minutes:
5 pull ups
10 push ups
15 squats
12 rounds

I do love watching all the students on these days, though.  So proud of all of you for putting it out there and be amazing teammates and supporters of each other.

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson