Coaching!

One of the things I'm spending my time on now that I'm not working full-time is training to become a coach at CrossFit Cedar Park. Before I can be a full coach, I have to be an intern and spend time watching the other coaches teach classes. I also get to spend time at Tillman Physical Therapy to learn more about stretching and mobility, as well as seeing how some injuries are treated. I'm really enjoying it so far. In a few weeks I'll be taking the CrossFit Level 1 Certification course as well.

Today I got to do something fun. I got to coach the 9:30am Community Open Gym workout! I've actually participated in most of the Open Gym workouts for the past five months, so I'm familiar with the kinds of workouts that work well with the bigger groups we often have on Saturdays. I was just a little nervous to be coaching, since it was my first time, but it helped that I knew many of the athletes by name and most of the rest were familiar faces. Usually the coach leading Open Gym gets to pick the workout, so I got to come up with my own workout. I had them do:

25 minute AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) in teams of 2
400m partner run holding a med ball
50 squats with med ball
40 partner sit-ups with med ball
30 push-ups while partner holds ball overhead

The squats and push-ups could be split up however you wanted. I wrote the workout before I knew that we were short on space, but luckily I didn't need to change it at all to have us do it entirely outside. Before the workout I led a warm-up, and after we did some stretching. It was fun for me, and several people said they enjoyed the workout so I think it was a success.

16.1 Done!

I completed 172 reps in the CrossFit Open workout 16.1 tonight. It was hard. I did all of my chest to bar pull-ups one at a time, which cost me a lot of time but I only had one no-rep. 172 reps is just over 6.5 rounds, so I did a total of 48 chest to bar pull-ups, which is by far the most I've ever done. I look forward to being able to doing sets of 8 as my skill improves.

After my own workout, I had the honor of judging for Kelley Galant and Franklin Pan. As a judge, I had to make sure every rep was completed according to the published standards, as well as count how many reps had been completed. Kelley and Franklin both did really well.

Now it's time to rest up and recover.

The CrossFit Open

I will be participating in my first CrossFit Open this year, starting today. For those not familiar with the Open, it's a worldwide 5-week competition with scores tracked online. Each Thursday, the workout is announced, and you have until Monday to submit your score. To enter, all you have to do is sign up online, and then either do the workout at an affiliate in front of a judge or submit a video of yourself doing the workout. In the US regions, the top 20 men, top 20 women, and top 15 teams advance to the Regionals competitions in May.

As a long-term goal, I want to make it to Regionals. But I have no illusions about how this year's Open is going to go for me, it's not going to be pretty. I have a couple of major weaknesses that I'm fairly certain will appear in the Open. First, I don't have muscle ups yet. And second, my double unders need some serious work. So this year is just to see how well I can do. I'm aiming for Regionals starting next year because I need an ambitious goal to keep me focused.

Today's workout is actually pretty good for me I think. It's a 20 minute AMRAP, which will be fine for me as long as I don't start off too hard. From games.crossfit.com, the workout is:

WORKOUT 16.1

Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 20 minutes of:
25-ft. overhead walking lunge
8 burpees
25-ft. overhead walking lunge
8 chest-to-bar pull-ups

Men lunge 95 lb.
Women lunge 65 lb.

I've never actually done overhead walking lunges with a barbell, but I've done them with a plate, and I've also done just walking with a barbell overhead. I think that it will be challenging but doable. The official short description of the workout doesn't say, but those burpees are actually barbell facing burpees, so the rep is completed when you jump over your barbell. I don't mind barbell facing burpees, so it'll just be something to get through and to break up the overhead lunges. Unless the lunges are a lot harder than I think, the challenge in this workout for me will be the chest-to-bar pull-ups. I've never done 8 in a row - my record is 4, and I did that on Monday. So it should be a good challenge!

Rest Day

Thursdays and Sundays are my rest days now. I've now done seven workouts with the Competitors class at Crossfit Cedar Park, aka the MAD Athletes program. Doing the MAD workouts is definitely what I needed to keep pushing me to the next level and to help me improve my skills. But I'm definitely still adjusting to the significant increase in volume. A regular Crossfit workout usually has a skill, a strength set, and a WOD. But the MAD workouts seem to have a skill, 2-3 strength sets, and either 2 WODs or one longer WOD.

In addition to the increased volume, I've been trying new things with my food, and I'm working out at a new time of day. I haven't yet figured out the right amount to eat throughout the morning, since I keep getting hungry just as I'm heading to the gym at 10:15. I don't entirely feel like myself during the workouts, I've definitely been fatigued and not performing as well as I should be.

To make matters even worse, I haven't been getting enough sleep. A few nights this week I've been up in the middle of the night with a crying baby and up for the day at 5:30 or 6am. My happy place for sleep is 8.5 hours, and 5-7 hours of broken sleep just doesn't cut it. Last night I got close with about 7.5 hours. So in summary, I'm beat.

When I read what I've just written, it almost sounds whiny. But the reason I'm writing these things out is to reflect on what is keeping me from being my best right now. It's more or less my fault that my eating has been less than good, and although I can't control whether my kids will prevent me from getting enough sleep, I should be making more of an effort to go to bed early the night after my sleep is disrupted. So that's what I'm going to work on.

Struggling with Nutrition

I've gone through a lot of excuses for why I haven't been eating healthily. Some of them are fairly valid, while others are just lousy excuses. Let's list a few:

• I don't like vegetables
• I like desserts
• I burn a lot of calories working out, so it's okay if I eat whatever I want
• I can't eat a lot of uncooked fruits and vegetables
• I can't eat almonds
• I can't eat Paleo because I love milk too much
• I just don't see any reason to eat better than I do
• I was pregnant and had odd cravings combined with constant hunger for a while
• I don't have time to prep healthy meals

Now let's take a closer look at some of these.

Allergies

The two most valid of these are that I can't eat a lot of uncooked fruits and vegetables, and that I can't eat almonds. I have fairly bad seasonal allergies, and I'm one of the unlucky ones who as a result also suffer from Oral Allergy Syndrome, also know as Pollen-Food Allergy. There's quite a long list of experimentally determined foods that cause minor allergic reactions when I eat them raw. Most of them I can eat as long as they're fully cooked without causing symptoms. In most cases, I just get a kind of itchy feeling in my ears, but for some my lips will feel puffy and my chest might get a little tight. Bananas in particular seem to cause an upset stomach and bad gas. 

Among the many foods I can't or shouldn't eat are cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew, broccoli, carrots, some kinds of salad greens (I'm not entirely sure which, since they're often mixed together), avocado, grapes and sugar snap peas. I can't remember for sure if I have reactions to stone fruit - sometimes I have very minor reactions, but they tend to get worse with repeated exposure. Plain raw avocado usually disagrees with me, but sometimes I can get away with eating guacamole - and sometimes I eat it even if my ears start to itch. I actually need to re-check some of the foods I've been avoiding due to OAS because I've been getting allergy shots for my seasonal and mold allergies and there's a good chance that some of the crossover foods will cause less or no reaction now. I tested raw carrots a few days ago and I got a small reaction, but not as bad as it used to be.

Time

Two more of these excuses have changed recently. I now see a reason to eat healthier because I want to become a better athlete, and I have a little more time to prep healthy meals without a full-time job. I'm easing into eating healthier as I experiment with different meals and combinations that conform to Zone blocks, while increasing the quality of the foods that I eat. Yesterday I didn't eat enough vegetables because I didn't plan out my lunch. But there have been many days in my life where I ate zero fruits or vegetables, so I still consider it a success that I had steamed broccoli with dinner. I can also amend my earlier excuse reasoning that since I burn a lot of calories I can eat whatever I want to be instead that I burn a lot of calories so it's okay if I eat a lot as long as most of it is nutritious.

Tastes

A lot of my problems with food are tied up with how things taste to me. As my husband José will confirm, I'm quite the picky eater. There are a lot of vegetables that I just plain don't like. I can often get around this if they are incorporated into a dish so that they're not the star. For instance, I hate cooked spinach. It's one of my least favorite foods, no matter how it's seasoned. Part of it is a texture thing, and part of it is the taste. But I'll eat spinach in reasonable quantities (aka not big lumps) in a quiche or lasagna, etc.

Based on my own experiences, I also believe that tastes can change. I have long had a huge sweet tooth. I can only stand to drink tea if it has an absurd amount of sugar in it. I used to eat large quantities of sugary cereals - on the tame side Honey Nut Cheerios, but I'd also eat super sweet things like Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I love chocolate, especially in the form of cake and ice cream. But recently I've been at least halfheartedly cutting down on the added sugars I'm eating. I still add a lot of sugar to my tea (when I drink it, which isn't often), and until quite recently I had been putting brown sugar in my oatmeal. And reducing my sugar intake has made a noticeable difference in my tastes - specifically my liking for sugary foods. A few weeks ago José brought home a bag of Marshmallow Mateys, one of our favorite sugary cereals that we get occasionally as a treat. They're the Malt-O-Meal version of Lucky Charms, if you're not familiar with them, and we've always thought they're just as tasty. So I sat down with a big bowl of Mateys and I found that they were too sweet! I ended up eating a bunch anyway, but I mixed them about half and half with plain cheerios, which made them pretty delicious. 

Knowing that my tastes can change makes me optimistic about my new resolution to eat healthier, since I think that I can get used to eating foods in ways I haven't previously liked. The past couple of days, I've eaten my oatmeal with no added sugar, just with blueberries in it, and it was pretty good.

Being Realistic

I know myself fairly well, so I know that I have to be realistic in my expectations of myself and avoid being too strict about either quantity or quality of foods. I've gone through phases before where I'm "trying to eat healthier", and I'll go into the kitchen hunting for food when I'm hungry. As often as not, I'd not find anything healthy that I actually wanted to eat, so I'd go back to whatever I was doing without eating...until a little while later when I got so hungry that I'd just go eat whatever I could find, which was invariably more unhealthy than what I could have eaten before. So I know that it is imperative that I plan out what I'm going to eat before I get hungry and go looking for food, because once I'm hungry, nothing healthy sounds good, even if I would actually enjoy eating it.

That's why at least for now as I'm just getting started, I'm giving myself some leeway. I was craving chocolate yesterday and I couldn't quickly come up with something else to eat, so I ate a few pieces and didn't feel bad about it. I'm aiming for a Zone diet, but for now I'm keeping it a little bit approximate - I figure it's okay if some of my meals aren't quite balanced, they're already more balanced than they used to be. For instance, I'm not used to having quite so much protein. As a former vegetarian, I'm not accustomed to eating large quantities of meat, and many of my meals are meatless by default. For years, dairy has been my biggest source of protein, but dairy tends to also provide either fat or carbs in cheese and milk.

I'll write about it more once I've finished the book, but I'm also trying to continue following some of the guidelines from the book Intuitive Eating. Basically, I'm trying to make sure I maintain a healthy relationship with food and I don't develop any more disordered eating than I already have.

Ancient History

My Athletic History

I have been an athlete for most of my life. I did my first 1 mile fun run at age 6, and my first 5k runs at age 8. I played soccer for 10 years. I was on the summer swim team for I think 8 years. I got a black belt in Taekwondo at age 12. I continued running road races, mainly 5k and 10ks until age 16. At 16, I went off to MIT and became a rower in a Division I program for four years. It was there that I was first introduced to the weight room, where I learned that I could deadlift, back squat, and bench press a respectable amount of weight.

Rowing was the first sport where I got close to an elite level. The summer of 2007 I was invited to the U.S. Junior National Team Selection Camp, after qualifying with a good time on a 2k erg test. I didn't make it onto the team, but it meant that I was in the top 50 or so U19 rowers in the country. Two years later I placed 10th at the 2009 C.R.A.S.H.-B. Sprints World Indoor Rowing Championships.

I started becoming a cyclist the summer after freshman year at MIT. My boyfriend Jose (who is now my husband) was spending his summer cycling across the US, and my Dad was becoming an endurance cyclist (more recently he finished RAAM in 2014). So it was pretty much inevitable that I would become interested in cycling as well. I started cycling that summer, and my interest grew over the years as it become a primary mode of transportation. Jose and I biked across the US together in the summer of 2008 with an organization called Bike and Build, and in 2010 I started racing in the Bay Area. I quickly rose from Cat 4 to Cat 2, so that I was racing against professional cyclists in many races. To be honest I was never that great on the road, but my abilities as a sprinter and time trialist served me well on the velodrome. I competed at Nationals and placed 3rd in the Team Pursuit and 6th in the Individual Pursuit.

Cycling is what introduced me to Crossfit. One of my teammates owned a Crossfit affiliate, and our coach started doing a Crossfit-based winter strength training program. I did the program for 2 winters, and then in 2012 I decided I was done with bike racing for the time being and joined the Crossfit gym full time. By that time, the gym had changed ownership, so I was working out at NorCal Crossfit in Mountain View. That June, I injured my back doing a clean and jerk and stopped working out for a while.

Fast forwarding a little, I got pregnant and had my daughter. When she was 6 months old, I finally resumed working out, this time doing bootcamp tabata workouts. I continued doing bootcamp through my second pregnancy until my son was 3 months old, at which point I joined Crossfit Cedar Park, where I've been working out for the past 5 months.

So What's My Point?

So, after that rather long-winded history of my athletic career, what's my point? There are two big things that I've learned since working out at Crossfit Cedar Park, and I'm hoping that these revelations can help me become an elite athlete. The first is that mobility and stretching is extremely important. I'd been told in various ways over the years that you should stretch before workouts - no, after workouts - no, stretching is bad for you, etc. I knew that stretching could help improve and maintain flexibility. What I didn't know is that mobility and stretching exercises can significantly aid recovery. I don't know why it took so many years for me to learn this and experience it myself, but now I know that I will be significantly less sore and less tight if I do appropriate "mobi" after my workouts.

The second big thing I've learned is that nutrition is important. Okay, so I'll be honest, I kind of knew that already. But the thing is, I've never quite put the whole picture together before. Over the years, I've learned a lot about nutrition and various ways of counting calories and macros. I already knew that you've only got 30-45 minutes to have some carbs after a workout before the glycogen window closes and recovery is slowed. I already knew how to fuel for and during extended duration workouts. I already knew that eating before a workout was important. What I didn't realize is that the quality of the food and the ratios of macros that you eat can be extremely important, especially if you're trying to reach a very high level of fitness. It sounds stupid when I say it, but it's true, I was in denial about how my poor eating habits have been affecting my physical performance for so many years.

I have been eating less than ideal foods my entire life. Growing up, I ate reasonably well, but we ate a lot of carbs. I love bread and cereal. I love chocolate and desserts. I was a vegetarian for about 10 years, until 2012 - but I was a vegetarian who hated vegetables. So I ate mostly grains, dairy, sugar, etc. Not a lot of vegetables, not a lot of fruit. While pregnant, it was even worse, because I was nauseous for nearly half of each pregnancy, and also constantly hungry - so I really only ate quick to prepare foods that sounded appealing. I always managed to eat about the right amount, since my hunger and fullness mechanisms function quite well and I'm good at listening to them, so for the most part my weight stays stable. Unfortunately, I have held onto some weight gained during my first pregnancy, so to become a competitive athlete I should probably lose 20-30 pounds.

Now that I have a little more time, I'm gradually making my diet better. I'm working to make my meals conform to the Zone plan (40-30-30 carbs-protein-fat), and I'm trying to improve the quality of the foods I eat by eating more whole foods (fruits and vegetables). I'm excited to see what the future may bring. After all, if I was able to accomplish all that I did eating poor quality foods, what will I be able to accomplish if I'm eating well?

Day Zero

I'm not going to bother with much of an introduction about me, because the chances are that if you've found my blog, you've found it via my posts on social media - which are currently set such that only people who know me can see them.

 The purpose of this blog is to serve partly as a journal and partly as a resource for anyone who'd like to try similar things to what I'm doing. My intention is to learn quite a lot about many aspects of being healthy, getting fit and becoming an elite level athlete, and I will share what I learn here.

A couple of things have prompted me to start writing about my experiences. One is that I now have time to do so, because this past Friday was my last day for the time being as a software engineer. Perhaps I'll talk more about that some other time, but in short, I was becoming increasingly unable to juggle working full-time, exercising, getting enough sleep, eating healthy (yeah right), doing my share of household upkeep, and spending time with my husband and kids. The second thing is that I've been inspired to improve my eating habits by a well-timed nutrition seminar at my local CrossFit gym, Crossfit Cedar Park. The coaches talked about 3 approaches to good nutrition aimed at improving health and therefore also athletic performance: counting macros, Paleo, and Zone. I'm going to be exploring the benefits of the Zone diet combined with increasing the quality and "cleanliness" of my foods. One of the recommendations in the seminar was to write down what you're eating and how you feel to help assess whether a particular diet is working for you or not. I'm not going to write the minutiae of my daily meals here, but I will talk about how it's going on occasion. 

Lastly, although I'm no longer employed as a software engineer, I still have the mindset of an engineer. So I'll be trying to take a more rigorous approach to fitness and nutrition. In the past, I've never devoted a lot of energy to planning out my eating, partially because I haven't felt I needed to lose a lot of weight and partially because I felt mostly okay and didn't think it was necessary to focus on nutrition. Now is a good time to focus on it, since I'm pretty much becoming an aspiring professional athlete. This means that I need to shed some weight (I'm 20 pounds up from my pre-kids weight), and optimize my recovery so that I can push my body to become stronger and avoid injury.