Trying to catch a buzz saw.

TRAINING:

Let me preface what I'm about to say with this: I LOVE how strong I am getting training for my powerlifting meet on November 3.  LOVE IT.  However, I cannot wait to get back to doing crossfit and oly-lifting on the regular.  This weekend's training was a serious reminder of that.  I went to a saturday morning workout session at the Novato gym that Gilly runs so that interested clients and athletes can do team workouts and practice transitions and communication and such.  It's awesome.  I paired with my colleague Brittany, who is SERIOUSLY FAST for the following partner workout:

3 rounds:

each partner does each of the following

200m run

15 box jumps (24/20)

15 KB thrusters (44/26) (i used 53s because there ere only 1 set of 44s)

15 Toes to bar

Here is the horrible video of my first "round"

At least I look pretty bad-ass when I'm not trying to do anything athletic...I mean dem traps...dayum.  But WOW, my lungs are gone.  And I'm tubby.  I ended up giving myself a DNF based on near puking and almost passing out twice during the second round and the box jumps during the 3rd.  I apologized profusely to Brittany and then headed off to get cleaned up for a busy day of coaching and being social (more on that in a few...)

Sunday, Gilly and I headed down to Santa Cruz to pick up some equipment from CF Santa Cruz that we're borrowing, and to do some wedding stuff and catch up with friends and family.  It was an awesome day.  I was able to grab a quick workout at CFSC, and it happened to be friggin' death by thruster at 115#.  Dove into it after some convincing by Gilly, with hopes of making 10 minutes...and again, ended up trying to catch a buzz saw (pretty awesome if you can pull it off, but highly unlikely). Wheels started to fall of 7 minutes in and I didn't make it out of the 9th minute.  Felt really strong, I just have SUCH poor conditioning right now.  I was going to edit the video pretty heavily to just see my thrusters...but I wanted to share my awesome dance moves with the world...and show video proof that NICOLE BENSON IS A CHEATER-CHEATER-PUMPKIN-EATER (1:55 in the video).

FOOTBALL:

Marin Catholic.  Good Gracious.  Talk about trying to catch a buzz saw.  My JV knuckle-heads played hard all day, and were actually WINNING 8-7 at the close of the first quarter, but they started to wilt a bit after 2 blocked punts, one for a TD, and a kick return touchdown.  And the fact that they were running a no-huddle offense really wore them out.  But I am really proud of the way they hung in there and just kept chopping' wood. I think the final was 8-40ish.

Varsity was a bit of a different story, but a more or less similar result.  Rolling into our bye week after the whipping we took is definitely a boon.  Some interesting and necessary changes are coming that will pay dividends in the future but will probably be difficult to manage in the interim.  Read this.  I don't really want to keep thinking about it.

LIFE:

Saturday night, our gym community threw us an engagement party! I have no words for how tremendously honored and loved it made us feel.  It was a great way to end a really difficult, trying day (what, with the DNF and 2 blow-outs).  Here is a rad pic of my best man, Officer Dahlberg, and Gilly and I from the party:

In summation: Sometimes, life throws a buzz saw at you and you're forced to try to catch it.  The likelihood it'll end up going miserably, painfully, blood-drenchingly bad for you is unfairly high...but it will be the coolest thing ever if you can pull it off.  If not, well then hey, at least you have a cool story to tell about why you have no hands and 2/3 of a face.