Becca Borawski’s Blog

Today was my second full day of exploring Colorado Springs with my brother and his family.  Originally our plan for today was actually to drive to Breckenridge for a day of sledding, snowboarding, shopping, etc.  But it was snowing when we woke up and the forecast called for more storms, so we decided to play it safe and stick to Colorado Springs.

First we went to the historic Broadmoor Hotel.  Built in 1918 and residing on a property a few hundred acres in size, the Broadmoor is a grand hotel with beautiful design and landscaping.  You can read more about the history of the Broadmoor on Wikipedia — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadmoor_Hotel

When we arrived the snow was really beginning to fall, but it looked elegant and clean on the ponds and the air was fresh and crisp.  A flock of Canada Geese and swans were also enjoying the ponds.  We checked out a few of the many boutique stores while we were visiting the Broadmoor, as well.

After the Broadmoor, since it is right nearby, we went to check out Seven Falls.  When we arrived, however, we discovered that due to the snow the park was pretty much shut down and the falls were all frozen.  So, that idea for an excursion was rendered pointless.

From there we decided it was time to just chill out and head to the movie theaters.  We saw two in a row - Book of Eli and Edge of Darkness.  So, we went from a day of history and nature to enjoying some storytelling and relaxation.  It was a nice day that hit both ends of the spectrum!

This weekend I am taking a long weekend/short vacation to Colorado Springs, CO.  I have never been to Colorado before and I am here visiting my brother and his family.  My brother is stationed at Fort Carson, with the Army, but actually lives on the Air Force Academy.

Today they took me on a little tour of the area - around the Air Force Academy, the Garden of the Gods rock formations, Manitou Springs (cute little tourist town!), and then we wound up at Wal-Mart.  At Garden of the Gods we walked/hiked for about 2.5 miles and enjoyed the scenery.  The rocks were amazing and looked like something out of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

All in all it was a good day and Colorado is just beautiful.  It was nice to spend time with my brother, his wife, and my niece and nephew also.  Tomorrow I think we are venturing to Breckenridge to do some sledding and shopping.  It should  be another fun day of new stuff and adventure!  Plus, lots of picture taking and posing with the family.

7:00am - IndoRow at Revolution

Ugh, I felt yucky this morning—if I hadn’t already signed up for rowing and it was too late to cancel and lose my money, I probably would have weaseled myself out of it.  But, once I got there I was feeling better and actually had a great class.  Goes to show, that initial feeling in the morning shouldn’t always be believed!

The first wave we did was a seven minute endurance piece—seven minutes at our medium pressure.  This was good practice on maintaining consistency and being precise with pressure and technique.

The second wave was actually five 200m sprints.  Chris, the coach, instructed us that we should pace this in a way that our results were grouped tightly - that the drop off in time should be small from the first sprint to the last sprint.  I think I did well as my times were :44, :44, :42, :42, :41 and I felt like I was going genuinely hard on every single sprint.

Finally we did a race - each partnership did 1000m total, broken into five 100m sprints per partner.  I didn’t have my eye on my speed as much on this on this one, but I believe I was between 1:30-1:40 on all these intervals.

Good sweaty class that felt like it got some of the kinks out of my joints and leg muscles.  I wanted to work out again this afternoon, but have been having weird sinus/inner ear dizziness going on and then got a headache, too, so I decided my body was giving me a hint to chill out.  I’m going to see what I feel like in the morning and maybe get one more CrossFit workout in tomorrow before I go to Colorado for a long weekend.

9:00am - CrossFit, All Levels

Today’s workout was done in the same format as the hero workout, “The Chief.”  I like this format since it is basically a series of mini-sprints and it compels you to go REALLY hard.

5 Rounds:
Each round is 3 minutes in length.
There is a 1 minute rest between rounds.

Each round consists of as many rounds as possible of:
3 Burpees
6 Thrusters (65#)
9 Box Jumps (20”)

Round Scores:
1. 2 2/3
2. 2 1/3
3. 2 2/3
4. 2 1/3
5. 2 1/3

Total Rounds: 12 1/3

The thrusters were by FAR the worst part of this workout.  I found myself dreading coming back around to them each round and was conflicted between wanting to go fast and wanting to run out of time before I had to do thrusters again.  I did all sets of thrusters unbroken through the whole workout.

My score went up and down because if I finished a round by finishing the thrusters I was still really spent after the minute rest, so then I would go a little slower the next round.  This would cause me to end on burpees which were much less exhausting and I actually felt rested again for the next round.

The final round I was aiming to get 2 2/3 but just could not kick it into a higher gear at that point.

7:00pm - Fencing Lesson

I had a really good lesson tonight and I bought my very own mask and glove!  I am legit now.

Things continue to click and make more and more sense.  I still need to work on not gripping the sabre too tightly, but I’m getting much better at thinking of my weapon as leading from the tip of the blade and not from my hand.  We worked more on acceleration and when to time the acceleration today, too.  Things are feeling more natural, looser and smoother in general though, which makes learning new stuff easier also.  Yay!

8:00am - Junior League of Pasadena 10K Race

Oh my goodness this was unpleasant.  This day was the culmination of our “10K Challenge” at CrossFit LA.  A couple months ago we challenged all the students to run a 10K at the gym.  A lot of them had never run 10K before that day.  Then today, they would run in the race in Pasadena to see their improvement and to be able to say they had run a real race.

So, here’s the thing — lately my plantar fasciitis has been feeling tons better.  And this would be because I probably haven’t run more than 400m at a time and more than a mile or so total in a workout in months.  I have been rowing instead of doing the warm up running loop, too, and wearing the goofy little boot at night.  All of this, as I mentioned, is great for the plantar fasciitis.

Not so great for a 10K.

This was probably one of the most painful running experiences of my life.  I was actually quite happy with my pace on the first lap of the 10K.  I remember thinking I was on track to get around a 52 minute 10K time.  My baseline time for the 10K challenge a couple months ago was 54-something, so that would have been great.

But oh, then we had to have lap two.

I just kept running slower and slower and all my joints and my foot just kept hurting more.  The only reason I didn’t walk was because I decided it wouldn’t actually be any less painful to walk.  So glad this was done and I am committed to getting this darn plantar fasciitis to go away so I can start running regularly again and get back to enjoying it.  I was actually enjoying it at one point not all that long ago!

I finished at 55-something.  About a minute slower than my baseline, I think.  I’d like to run one again in the future and get faster!

So, now I’m off to torture myself for a few minutes rolling the racquet ball under my foot, then strapping on the booty and going to sleep.

5:20pm - Fencing Lesson

I took the day off from CrossFit today to rest my legs after all the previous workouts this week and because I just had a LOT of work to get done today.

So, it felt good to end the day by going to fencing and getting moving!

I had a really great lesson this time.  I was focused and relaxed and remembering a lot of things.  We worked on some new things, too—practicing avoiding the opponent’s blade, working on the rhythm and gradual building of the movements, and reinforcing the rules about “right of way” which continue to make more and more sense now that I’ve been doing this for a bit.

At the end we fenced for a few points and my heart rate went through the roof!  I realized fencing is like little shuttle runs from hell.  I’m contemplating adding some shuttle runs into my workouts each week, but doing them running forwards and backwards, of course, no turning around.  I’m thinking, as soon as I can figure out a schedule, of putting a strength day in each week and then doing shuttle runs at the end as a little met-con.

1:00pm - CrossFit, Beginner/Intermediate

I jumped in on the 1:00pm class today due to a change in my schedule.  It was fun to work out with the 1pm crew, since I normally only see them when I’m coaching and not as part of the whole mix.

4 rounds for time of:
50 Sit ups
10 Handstand push ups (Ab-mat + metal 5# plate)
500m row
18:18

I’m always happy to work on hand stand push ups.  Today I was a little frustrated because it felt really hard to get down to just the ab-mat.  In the past I’ve been able to do that at least for part of workouts.  Still good practice and I think I may in future classes, if there are push ups in the warm up, sub out hand stand push ups so I can get more practice and get lower.

Sit ups I went for speed so I used my arms—I was happy I NEVER stopped during any of the four sets on these. 50 straight each time.

The rows were ROUGH after IndoRow last night, but I pushed hard and was particularly pleased I kept a good pace on my final round.

Really cool workout!

Today was a full day - lots of things on the workout schedule…

9:00am - CrossFit, All Levels

Weightlifting today!  Normally I like the heavy weight lifting days, but I was feeling pretty wrecked from yesterday’s windmills.  Basically, I felt like (and still feel like) somebody kicked me repeatedly in the kidneys….hard!

So, I wasn’t lifting as heavy as I would like, and I haven’t been lifting heavy as regularly as a did a year ago, so that’s reflected in my numbers, too.  It kinda bummed me out, but whatever—every day can’t be a PR day.

Back Squat
1-1-1-1
1. 155#
2. 165#
3. 175#
4. 175# Miss

My old PR is like 210#.  Argh.

Part two of the workout was strangely enjoyable since it was a quick way to get some metcon and balance out the weightlifting.

3 minutes - max burpees
45

I think I may have gotten 46, but just to be safe I went one number lower in case I messed up my counting.  I pretty much never stopped the whole time and told myself just to keep moving, keep moving.  My 2 minute max burpee record is 38.  Clearly the 3 min interval is a much different pace!

6:00pm - Fencing Lesson

I wasn’t feeling totally focused in my lesson today.  And consequently I wasn’t feeling very good about the whole day of working out since this was activity number two and I wasn’t rocking it.  Not that my lesson wasn’t good - they always are, but I wasn’t feeling like I put everything in to it and was mentally totally in it.

We worked on my footwork some more and also acceleration.  One thing about fencing is it’s about being able to accelerate forward very quickly.  There’s a certain rhythm to it, always building in speed with both the footwork and the sabre movements.

I also need to remind myself not to grip the sabre so hard.  It’s hard to be precise and quick if I’m not gripping lightly.

7:00pm - IndoRow at Revolution

Okay, so third time is the charm apparently.  Since my fencing lesson was an hour early today it gave me a chance to head over to IndoRow and take class with Josh Crosby.  And finally, I got the workout rush I’d been attempting to get all day long.  Phew!

We did about 15 minutes of rowing for warm up - working on technique, setting our easy, medium and full pressures, etc.

Then we did a series of 30 second sprints, alternating between full pressure and easy pressure.

After that were two 5 minute waves.  Each was 2 minutes easy, 2 minute medium, 1 minute full.  After the first wave, we checked out our distance covered, which for me was 1170.  Our goal on the second 5 minute wave was to beat our distance.  I think I got 1192 on the second one - so I did it!

Rowing Roulette was next—we broke into 3 teams of 3.  Josh would call out different team names at different times and that was our cue to row 10 full pressure strokes.  We didn’t know when he would call our team or if we would have to do 10 strokes back to back.  It was fun and for 10 strokes, you can go REALLY hard.  The great mental thing was being able to go REALLY hard again even if your team gets called immediately after you just finished 10 strokes.

Finally, we did the race.  In our same teams we did a relay race.  Josh handicapped the teams, so the other two teams did 100m pieces for their relay and our team had to do 120m pieces.  I got down in the 1:20’s and 1:30’s on each of the three rounds and the handicapping worked out perfectly as all the teams pretty much finished right together!

7:00am - CrossFit, All Levels

I like these “complex” workouts, so I was looking forward to this one.  There was a little confusion on what the advanced weights were, though, so I only did a 35# d-bell instead of a 40#.  That bums me out a little, but it was still a good workout and I’m sure it’ll come around again in the future.  Probably 35# was for the best for whatever is still a tiny bit funky in my left shoulder (still the weird nerve thing from sitting around over the holidays - I literally somehow hurt it by doing absolutely nothing).

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 rep rounds for time of:
Single arm D-bell Clean (35# d-bell)
Single arm D-bell Front Squat
Single arm D-bell Thruster
Single arm D-bell Windmill
14:52

I divided it up between my arms by doing round 10 on my right, round 9 on my left, round 8 on the right, etc.  It made it really easy to remember which round I was on, as well.  The thrusters were probably the hardest part for me, but I kept a steady pace on everything through out.  Good fun workout!  This is a great one to remember if you’re traveling and stuck in some bad non-CrossFit gym, too—all you need is 1 d-bell!

Today my boyfriend and I decided to spend the day exploring Little India.  Little India is located about thirty miles south of Santa Monica, in Artesia.  While it lacks the glitz and cohesiveness of someplace like Chinatown, it also feels more authentic and provided us with an entertaining day.

First we went to the Naz 8 Cinemas to catch a Bollywood film.  Naz 8 boasts to be the first multi-cultural cinema showing international films seven days a week…but I’m not so sure as to the veracity of that claim.  The theaters reside in a mostly vacant strip mall and have a very aged feeling to them, but the staff was quite friendly and there were many families out together.

On the recommendation of a friend, we went to see Three Idiots and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I know it is playing a couple different places around Los Angeles, so if you get a chance I highly recommend it.  It is quite long (there was an intermission an hour and a half into the movie), but it moves quickly and the characters are very endearing.

After the movie we went to one of the local restaurants that is very well reviewed, The India Restaurant.  Despite its unoriginal name, the food was exciting and delicious.  Service was fast and everything tasted great.  For about twenty-five dollars each we had an entree, naan and rice for two, as well as crispy bread and chutneys for an appetizer.  I would visit this place again, for sure, to try all the different dishes.

As a final stop, after reading about it in my 2010 Eat: Los Angeles guide, we visited a sweets shop, named Ambala Sweets & Snacks.  Upon walking in and glancing up at the undecipherable menu, we promptly turned around and went back out to the car to reread the page in the food guide.  We weren’t sure what they were, but the guide recommended the rasmalai and cham-cham.  So we went back in and ordered those as well as a rasgulla, because I thought it looked cool.  On the whole, we decided maybe we were just not cut out for Indian desserts, as they all seemed to be cold and soggy.  Of the three, the rasmalai, soaked in a bowl of milk, was the most tasty.

Now, here I am at home, quite content with my stomach full of Indian cuisine and my heart warmed by the Bollywood film.  I would recommend a day in Little India for anyone in LA looking for a mellow but interesting near-home adventure.