2x 5 min intervals, 2 min rest — maximal distance

5×1 min intervals, 30 sec rest — maximal distance

Warm-up:

• Three’s No Secrets This Year – Silversun Pickups (easy spin)
• I Was a Teenage Anarchist – Against Me! (false flat, standing jog, seated acceleration adding 10-20rpm)
• Thunderstruck – AC/DC (seated/standing climb between medium and high resistance)
• Lights and Sounds – Yellowcard (flat road with accelerations of 20 rpm)
• Black Heart Inertia – Incubus (easy spin)

2×5:

• Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) – Journey (5 min max distance)
• Rock ‘n Roll Band – Boston (rest)
• The End Is the Beginning Is the End – Smashing Pumpkins (5 min max distance)
• Big Me – Foo Fighters (rest)

5×1:

• Clubbed To Death (Kurayamino Variation) – Rob Dougan (60s:30sx5)

Cool down:

• Swing Life Away – Rise Against
• Sweetness – Jimmy Eat World

I need to create something sustainable.  The key word in that previous sentence is “I.”  Not “we,” and not “my coach.”  No one can give me a training plan — hell, a life plan — that I didn’t have a hand in making.  It’s my goals I need to achieve.  All these plans can do is hope to help me.

One thing I love about Robb Wolf is how he basically refuses to answer questions about training athletes for their sports.  The short of it is… if the person is still progressing, if they’re happy, then why mess around?  What’s the takeaway?  The formula to get someone to continuously improve, at first, is simple.  It’s when the progression stops that it’s hard.  Why is that?

Training changes from physical to mental.  I have a 400+ lb deadlift, but if I just don’t feel like working on that, it’s not going to get any better.  I have a reliable 1:43 half marathon; if I stop running, it’ll only get worse.  At some point, I’m just going to run out of steam.  I’ve got a full-time job, 2 part-time jobs, I need to train for some races I want to run, and I’ve got a social life that is too hectic for its own good.  In the rare time that I can balance all of this stuff, I’m a rockstar.  When something gets out of balance, I’m a mess.

In the last few months, from say late February through today, I’ve been more of a mess than a rockstar.  So how do I fix that?

I’ve been burnt out before, or just tired, or something.  But in those times, I knew that if I got up at 5:30 and went to work out at 6:15, there would be a group of people that would welcome my return, which would fuel my desire to get back on track.  More and more, this is not the case — that group of people is completely different.  The community is so large that it’s hard to re-enter.

This is a different kind of burn out.  This one is making me rethink everything.  For you CrossFit haters that read my blog, it’s got absolutely nothing to do with that… I still believe that CrossFit as GPP and sport-specific training layered on top is way more powerful than the traditional weekend warrior training plan.  Everyone should know how to clean a barbell and squat effectively.

It’s time to go back to square one, to come up with goals.  I need a coach for not only my athletic ventures but for life.  A confidant that knows how to motivate me, not just yell or criticize my food log (which I don’t have at the moment).

I don’t have the answer to this one… I don’t even have a good start at an answer.  All I know is that tomorrow, I need to move.  And how I move is going to be important.

How do you bring yourself back?  Post your thoughts to comments.

1. Home – LCD Soundsystem: warmup
2. Neutron Star Collision – Muse: seated/standing climb
3. Tear You Apart – She Wants Revenge: seated/standing climb
4. Turn Your Back – Billy Talent: standing climb
5. You Will Leave a Mark – A Silent Film: false flat, accelerations
6. Going Wrong – Armin Van Buuren: time trial
7. Move Along – All American Rejects: seated climb, standing jog
8. I Was a Teenage Anarchist – Against Me!: seated climb, accelerations
9. Sunburn – Muse: false flat cadence challenge
10. Survive – Rise Against: false flat power intervals
11. Word Forward – Foo Fighters: sprints
12. You and Your Heart – Jack Johnson: cool down
13. Hey, Soul Sister – Train : cool down

Over my 12 days in California spent with family, close friends, and quite a bit of alone time, I realized that many of my friends are nomads.  We travel between intense moments with little to no rest.  Any free time is taken up by one or more hobbies, which are another set of intense activities.  We’re always on.

In my industry (the computer one, not the fitness one), we have a phrase called five 9′s, which means that a system needs to be available 99.999% of the time.  That’s practically all the time.  It’s the phrase we use to indicate that something has to be always on, it can’t go down, it can’t break.  I think I’m surrounded by five 9′s people, I think I’m one myself, and I think that’s horrible.

Why is it so bad?  Because the vast majority of those people (myself included), when the 0.001% downtime occurs, quickly realize that between all the stuff, the new friends, the old friends, and more stuff, they’re still alone.  We’re so over-stimulated that everything has to be done for time, for reps, maximal effort, everything we’ve got, nothing but the best.  Sometimes we need to just mail it in to bring some balance back.

In a world where most everything is noise, it’s really hard to find the signal.  It’s even harder if you never give yourself a chance.

So when I tweeted a while back about slowing down the game, it wasn’t just in relation to athletic endeavors (although at the time it was).  I think I need to spend more time “off,” because being on all the time is impossible.

I want to the find the signal.  First stop: get rid of the loneliness, it’s been around too long.

I think a great barometer of the quality of a friendship is how “resumable” it is.  When you graduate high school and then college, and then move away, you find yourself wanting to keep in touch, and maybe you’re successful for a bit.  But over time, people get busy, and life happens.  This is why I love my Memorial Day weekend trip.  It’s called Dogpatch, and it’s a big ass reunion.  And you can tell who’s different, which connections are weaker or stronger.  And it’s good to know that when I came back, I felt like all the friendships resumed.

To be sure, Austin is now home for me (I miss it when I’m gone, and I do miss my Austin friends just as much as my California friends these days).  But California sure feels great when I make it back here.  Why?  The ability to totally reset.

There’s no better way to take things into perspective than getting the hell out of dodge for a bit.  And while we have no wifi or cell reception at Dogpatch, the Starbucks 4 miles away does.  So I can make a quick trip back into town to catch up on reality if I want.  And in my reality scanning while waiting for my Venti Iced Americano, I came across a post by lifestyle coaches Melissa Urban and Dallas Hartwig (aside: just reading Melissa and Dallas’ material is awesome. you should do it too) about their Whole30 participants sticking to the diet (and their commitments) during the long weekend.  Nutrition aside, there’s one line in particular that struck me:

Take a minute today and list one thing in comments that is significantly better NOW than it was two weeks ago, thanks to your Whole30 efforts.

I’m not participating in this round of the Whole30, but if you’ve followed my blog, you’ve noticed that I have a lot going on lately, both personally, professionally, and in my weekend warrior endeavors.  So as part of my reset button, I’ve instituted some Whole30 tenets that I know have worked for me in the past.  No need to list those here, because my point is that regardless of what you’ve been up to, go back to the bold text, read it, and do it.

After two weeks, reduced training volume, some serious deadlines checked off, and a slight cortisol management scheme, I feel like I’ve got my groove back. Energy levels are back up and steady, I’m back to making progress in the gym, and most importantly I’m back to feeling clear in my head.  I’m happier than I was even a few days ago.

Now I just need to find a way to keep it up when I get home.

The last line from that post that I need to share:

Motivate, re-dedicate, and then get out there and enjoy your holiday weekend.

Replace “holiday weekend” with “life.”  Motivate, re-dedicate, and then get out there and enjoy your life.

That thought immediately brought me to two quotes from Rip, here’s the first:

On response to a guy who had some life problems lately and afraid of sounding like a “pussy”: You don’t sound like a pussy at all. You sound like a normal human being, just like me, who thankfully has a barbell to keep him sane when things get shitty…and realize that one workout out of thousands does not affect your overall progress. Training is a process, not the events of one day. [Source]

That sounds like it was directed to me, even though it wasn’t.  And if you wanted to recap the last few “personal posts” of late, that’s the general message.  Powerful people are powerful in body, mind, and spirit.  You must train all three.

Second quote:

There is simply no other exercise, and certainly no machine, that produces the level of central nervous system activity, improved balance and coordination, skeletal loading and bone density enhancement, muscular stimulation and growth, connective tissue stress and strength, psychological demand and toughness, and overall systemic conditioning than the correctly performed full squat.

So that tells me how to train my body.

What are the most powerful exercises to train one’s mind and spirit?

And then I went to Vegas.  And San Diego.  And Colorado.  And Canada.  Then there was SXSW somewhere in there.

And the list goes on…

My Type 1 personality leads me to believe that I can handle all of it.  I can burn the candle at both ends.  Work, train, party, race.  Hell, I won my age group in a duathlon with 1 week of prep time.  I’m invincible, right?

Wrong.

(aside: HUGE thanks to those who checked in with me after reading my last post.  Now that I have an explanation for what’s going on, I feel MUCH better now… I’ve got some personal life repair work to do, but that’ll come in time)

In thinking about the last week or so, culminating in the last post I wrote, I spent some time thinking about what I’ve been up to, and why I would have such high highs and low lows.  And then, listening to Robb Wolf, something hit me… adrenal fatigue (funny thing when you run into this listening to the Paleolithic Solution podcast

Robb ran into this situation,  best described from his blog post:

For those of you unfamiliar with this condition, your adrenals begin to give out [due] to too many life demands. Sleep, stress, training can all take their toll. I think I’ve had a mild to moderate dose of this condition for a LONG time. I have always burned things pretty hard … This combo of shitty food and bad sleep really takes me down at the knee caps.

…

What my adrenal fatigue boiled down to was this: Crushing fatigue most of the day, only perking up a bit in the evening. This is a reversed  cortisol profile in which I have higher levels in the evening than morning. this is about a stage or two away from the full systemic melt-down that leaves on in bed, immune compromised and generally feeling like death. Cortisol competes with testosterone for the substrate pregnenalone. High cortisol means insulin resistance, low strength and slow recovery. Excessive metabolic conditiong makes things worse. What’s excessive? You never make progress, you feel like absolute death doing anything over a few minutes duration. I’ve also had 4-5 sinus infections in the past about 8 months. No bueno.

This. Sounds. Familiar.

I’ve had similar issues with energy levels.  I didn’t want to get up in the morning.  I couldn’t get to bed when I needed to.  My mind was constantly racing at night, and I got really bad sleep.  My diet went to shit — for every good meal, I would have 2 bad ones.  I was drinking way too much, way too often.  And I was still trying to train hard and race.  Do a google search for adrenal fatigue and alcohol, and you’ll find countless results that contain the words “emotional outbursts.”  Awesome.  Do another one for adrenal fatigue and emotions, and you’ll find more results that link the two.  Bingo.

No wonder my CrossFit WODs have been crap, my races have been a bit slower, I’ve been constantly sore and irritable.  No wonder people have asked me if I’m ok several times a week for the last several weeks.  No wonder I’ve felt like I was walking on a wire for the last month or so.  And no wonder the situation culminated with two emotional outbursts that I can’t explain, because the kind of thing I reacted to is not something I normally care about.

I’m overdoing it, big time, and it’s all got to stop.  Yesterday.

I started my plan to recover on Sunday.  Here it is:

• CrossFit WODs will be short.  I’m going to lift and do some CrossFit Endurance track/pool/bike work.  All of it will be short.
• I need to get back into my routines that I know work for me.
• I need to cook meals more often than not, and they need to be solid.  Which also means I’m going to be food logging for a month.
• I’m going to stop drinking until Memorial Day weekend, where I’m going camping with lots of old friends.  And then I’m going to stop drinking again until after my Half Marathon on June 6.  After that, we’ll evaluate it along with everything else.

How will I know I’m good?  When I can:

• Sleep well.
• Even out my energy levels throughout the day.
• Feel happy, constantly.
• Train well, with purpose, and with great results.

If your world is going haywire, and you’re one of the Gen X Weekend Warrior Rockstars, take a step back and read what Robb Wolf and Melissa Urban have to say on this topic.  Maybe your candle is burnt out.  I know mine was.

Breakfast

• Snap kitchen blue corn migas, no cheese
• Catalytic Coffee’s Blast Off Blend, black
• Snack: Larabar

Lunch

• Whole foods sonoma chicken salad
• Mixed berries and pineapple
• Kombucha
• Snack: rest of chicken salad, more fruit

Dinner

• Zucchini noodles tossed with bell peppers and onions, ground bison marinara sauce, 2 teriyaki sweet potato spears
• Water
• Dessert: paleo banana bread

Supplements

• Nuun Kona Cola
• Progenix recovery, growth, SRG (after CrossFit)
• 25 caps of fish oil (per Whole9 calculator)
• ZMA

Tuesday

Breakfast

• Snap kitchen blue corn migas, no cheese, no potatoes
• Black coffee
• Snack: Paleo banana bread

Lunch

• Zucchini noodles tossed with bell peppers and onions, ground bison marinara sauce, 2 teriyaki sweet potato spears
• Kombucha
• Snack: paleo banana bread

Dinner

• Cast iron skillet bison NY strip, roasted asparagus

Supplements

• Nuun Kona Cola
• Progenix recovery, growth, SRG (after CrossFit)
• 25 caps of fish oil (per Whole9 calculator)
• ZMA
• 5000 IU vitamin D3

Wednesday

Breakfast

• 2 eggs scrambled with spinach and organic chorizo
• Black coffee
• Snack: paleo banana bread.
• Later on, bad snack: 2 Round Rock donuts.

Lunch

• Cast iron skillet bison NY strip, roasted asparagus
• Snack: paleo banana bread

Dinner

• Cacao nib pork chops, spinach, butternut squash with honey and cinnamon
• Water

Supplements

• Nuun Kona Cola
• Progenix recovery, growth, SRG (after CrossFit)
• 25 caps of fish oil (per Whole9 calculator)
• ZMA
• 5000 IU vitamin D3

Thursday

Breakfast

• Omelet with double spinach and some bacon
• 2-shot Americano

Supplements

• Nuun Kona Cola
• Progenix recovery, growth
• 25 caps of fish oil (per Whole9 calculator)
• ZMA
• 5000 IU vitamin D3

So it’s 0830 on Sunday morning.  Normally I would still be sleeping, but instead of nursing a hangover, I pulled the ripcord at Molotov around 1230 and took off.  One of those nights where nothing I drank was getting me drunk, and I felt uncomfortable in my own skin.

I’m in a funk, and I can’t figure out how to get out.

I feel like I’ve allowed the following things to happen:

• I’ve managed to piss off or otherwise irritate some new friends of mine (you know who you are).
• I’ve stopped progressing in CrossFit.  I’ve stopped progressing in triathlon.
• I’ve stopped caring about my job.

Until I took a few minutes to pause, all I had for the above things are excuses, no real reasons.  I can blather on about feeling unwelcome, or not training because I don’t have time, or work being just plain annoying.  But all of those things are my refusal to provide the one thing that I demand from everyone else around me: respect.

Respect, and with that, loyalty, are the two things I demand from any relationship or community I choose to join.  That’s because those are two things that I fiercely provide in return.  For better or worse, I will throw myself in front of a bus for someone I just met 5 minutes ago, if they fit into the respect-loyalty relationship.

I spent the afternoon Thursday listening to Robb Wolf’s podcasts, and one thing he mentioned is the notion of training without ego.  Ego belongs on the field, when you’re competing, but it doesn’t belong in your training.  You’re not too good for drills, you’re not too good to practice a lift at 95lbs before you lift it at 135.

Same goes for life and relationships — it’s not a competition, it’s more training.

I’m not too good to expect that new friends will treat me like they’ve known me for years.  I’m not too good to expect that I can PR on a race without training.

In the words of Jimmy Eat World’s A Sunday, the inspiration for this post (again):

The haze clears from your eyes

On a Sunday

So to those who think I’m a total headcase, I’m not, and I’m sorry for the bullshit.  The bullshit is over.

To my other communities, I’ll find that vigor, fire, that so many of you have seen.  It’s somewhere.

21-15-9

pullups
thrusters (M: 95lb, W: 65lb)