Week wrapup: Swimming, running, OEC-ing, CrossFitting, resting, regrouping

The past several days have brought two exciting training milestones: My last open-water swim of the season, and the successful completion of my weekly long run, a seven-miler with Steve on Sligo Creek Trail. It also brought some cool events in my life as a volunteer ski patroller, including my first time helping to teach at an annual Outdoor Emergency Care refresher in my journey toward becoming an OEC instructor.

The sun set on my swim season last weekend.

Unfortunately, those exciting-but-energy-sapping milestones were followed by something completely predictable, given my already-trashed immune system and my lack of rest: The itchy, sore throat that’s been with me since Montezuma’s Revenge’s angry older brother left a couple weeks ago has morphed into a bark-like cough and laryngitis.

Earlier in the week, I resisted the inevitable post-sickness slow-down, taking two CrossFit classes as part of a story I’m writing about the wildly popular workout program for Bethesda Magazine’s January/February issue. You’ll get to read more about it when the magazine hits newsstands, but for now, a few takeaways:

I had a lot of fun doing the skills portion of a class focused on Olympic lifts. My barbell use is mostly limited to squats and deadlifts now, so it was kind of fun doing stuff like clean-and-jerks, which I’m simply not going to do on my own.

I also enjoyed the class that consisted of this workout: LIFT: Back Squat, 3-3-3; CONDITIONING: Row 500 meters. Then 10-9-8-7…1 burpees, 1-2-3-4…10 pull-ups.

It’s been a long time since I did so many pull-ups. By the last set, in which we were supposed to do 10, I was jumping in addition to using a band. Not my finest workout moment. But the band reminded me I can always modify an exercise on my way to mastering it, and my sore lats and forearms reminded me that there *are* body parts pull-ups work that I’m not hitting up in other ways. I kind of want to buy one of those bands now.

I also got some helpful tips on using the rowing machine, which I’ve long struggled to figure out.  I’ll definitely be adding that to my cross-training regimen this winter.

ANYWAY. Now that that stuff is behind me, it’s time to regroup and rest until I’m no longer barking and voiceless. I’m kind of freaking out about missing some workouts ahead of the Philadelphia Half Marathon, but I’m trusting some wonderful advice I got before my first half marathon in 2007: It’s better to show up on race day 10 percent undertrained than 1 percent overtrained (in this case, with pneumonia or some other ill effect of not giving myself time to heal).

Happy weekend, all!