Pop, Snap, Riiiiiip

“Pop, Snap, Riiiiiip”

Those were the sounds I heard and the sensations I felt yesterday as my calf muscle tore. Yes, I tore my freaking calf muscle.

I’d like to say I was doing something cool, like running down an antelope or jerking 200 pounds. Unfortunately, I was having a skipping relay race with my four year old cousin in the local Dairy Queen parking lot. 

I guess that will teach me to act my age.

No, you’re right. Probably not.

Anyway, my amateur internet diagnosis says it will take about 4-6 weeks to heal itself. So that means I will miss my judo test for the third straight time. I am going to be a brown belt for infinity.

Tuckered Out

We got our calves sold yesterday. It wasn’t a complete disaster, but not nearly as good as it should have been. Such is life.

Today we sorted out our yearling and two year old heifers and vaccinated and poured them. (“Pouring” means to douse them with de-lousing solution.) As a result, half of my day was spent sprinting up and down a manure-slicked alleyway clapping my hands together furiously and begging about sixty five energetic heifers to please just go through one more gate.

Then we moved them to their winter pasture, which wasn’t too bad because the two year olds knew where to go so there wasn’t much crying, cursing and beseeching involved.

Then I drove 90 miles back to town to make judo class because I thought there was a test next weekend. Turns out it was switched to the weekend after that, so I have more time than I thought. Whew.

We did all left sided throws tonight, which was great because my left knee is the one that’s currently blown out so it spent most of the night hanging in the air instead of supporting all of my (substantially growing) body weight like it does on right side throws.

I did really bad on my eating yesterday. Yesterday was the number one most stressful day of the year, and I tend to drown my stress in food. Lots of cookies were consumed. On top of that, the sale barn cafe has one of the best bacon cheeseburgers in the state. With about 4.5 million pounds of prime beef going through there every sale day they ought to have good burgers. Then the sale barn pays for dinner at the steak house of your choice, and we had filet mingon. Yummy.

Today’s food: Breakfast: sausage and scrambled eggs. Lunch: 2 beef brats, almond butter. Snack: Zone dark chocolate bar, chocolate peanut butter, cheese, mixed nuts. Supper: cheese, mixed nuts, apple.

The Second Most Stressful Day of the Year

My view for most of the day.

A very, very long day. We sell our calves tomorrow so we spent all day rounding up the cows and calves from our various pastures. 

Sale day is stressful. Just imagine getting paid only one time per year, and then your wages are determined not by the quality of your product or your work but by some trading board and market prices in a city two thousand miles away. Yeah, that’s stress!

However, the day before sale day is also stressful. Riding, running, jumping, screaming. LOTS of screaming. People screaming at cows, people screaming at people, cows screaming at people. Even with very tame, very experienced cows (which ours are) there are always a few that won’t cooperate, hence the screaming. I’ve seen very calm, peaceful, gentle people have an absolute nuclear meltdown on sale just because one cow went through a gate she wasn’t supposed to go through. No lie.

So, I didn’t want to work out tonight when we finally got home. But I did.

Deadlift

• Warm up with some DLs at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 153#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (138#)

Press

• Warm up with some presses at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 60#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (54#)

I was also cursing my decision to start the clean eating program today. I really, really, REALLY wanted to have a bowl of ice cream tonight. But I didn’t.

Today’s Food: Breakfast – almond butter, deli sliced turkey. Lunch – 2 beef brats, almond butter, 3 slices cheese. Supper – 1 ham steak, scrambled eggs. Snack – apple, sliced turkey.

PTP Workout Five + Mini-Metcon

Deadlift

• Warm up with some DLs at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 148#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (133#)

Press

• Warm up with some presses at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 55#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (50#)

Metcon:

7 rounds for time:

7 hang power clean, 63#
7 push-ups
7 sit-ups

6:55

The push-ups were what held me back today. They’ve really gotten weak from where I was at this summer. Chop-chop. Time to hit the goats.

My knee has felt much better the last two days. I tried a tiny, TINY bit of jump rope today and it felt ok. I don’t think I’m ready to start doing squats or 30″ box jumps or anything, but I can work on some of my goats, like pull-ups, push-ups, maybe GHD sit-ups.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to try to start Melissa Urban’s Whole30 eating challenge. Thanksgiving will fall right at the end of the fourth week, so I don’t know how that will work out. I need to do something, I’m miserable eating the way I am. Also, my eight-year old cousin told me I’m fat and have a big butt. Ouch. The truth hurts, especially when it comes from an eight year old (who claims to love you.)

PTP Workout Four

Deadlift

• Warm up with some DLs at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 143#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (129#)

Press

• Warm up with some presses at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 53#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (48#)

The Maul

Behold, the maul. No, not the Mall – the Maul. The maul is the sledgehammer’s older 6′5″, 250# linebacker on steroids brother. I had to use the maul last week because I made an, “ahem”, miscalculation when I was repairing a building. Ok, several miscalculations.

I have about 35 chickens, which live in a coop that used to be an old garage. When I say old, I mean old, like circa 1940’s old. Anyway, between housing chickens and cars it also housed pigs. Pigs are totally evil animals, trust me on that one. They tore the sliding doors off the front of the building, pushed the walls out a bit, and actually tore the cement floor partially out. I have no idea how a pig tears up a cement floor when its only tool is its little pink snout, but they did. Pigs are fascists. Remember Animal Farm? Fascists.

So, one end of my chicken house has no wall. A few years ago when I moved the chicks in we slapped up a hastily cobbled together mishmash of 2×4’s and old plywood that was less than ideal. I’ve always wanted to put up a proper wall with windows and an extra door, so when I had a bit of spare time last week I rounded up some supplies and set to work. 

According to my calculations it was 86 inches from the top of the remaining wall to the ground. Long story short, my wall ended up being just short of 90″ due to math errors and the fact that I wanted to dig it into the ground a bit to discourage predators from digging under it. Well, that would have been fine and dandy, except I didn’t realize that two inches under the dirt was a layer of solid rock and cement. Guess the fascist pigs missed that section. Thanks a lot.

So, I had two options: take my framed up wall apart and shorten it, or dig the rocks out. 

I chose to dig. And dig. And gouge. And hammer. The cement was not a problem, it was old and rotten and crumbled under the shovel pretty easily. My dear old Grandpa, however, had decided to sink a bunch of giant rocks into the cement. Hitting them with the shovel didn’t even make a scratch so I lugged the maul over and started whacking. 

I whacked for about three hours. At about hour two the handle of the maul snapped in half. Great. So for the last two hours I whacked giant rocks with a maul that sported a jagged spike-like handle that bounced inches from my body every time I swung it. 

Did I mention I’m not all that bright?

Finally, FINALLY, I broke up enough rock to get the new wall wedged into place and I went and laid down for a long, long time.

So, the moral of this story is: measure twice, cut once and check for giant rocks.

Today’s workout:

Deadlift

• Warm up with some DLs at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 148#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (133#)

Press

• Warm up with some presses at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 55#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (50#)

PTP Workout 2

Deadlift

• Warm up with some DLs at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 143#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (129#)

Press

• Warm up with some presses at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 53#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (48#)

Amateur Internet Diagnosis-es

Yes, I know. I haven’t posted in a long, long time. 

It turns out I hurt my knee worse than I had originally thought. About four years ago I hurt one of them while I was running (damn cambered roads!) and the other while I was working outside. Based on my own internet medical diagnosis I’m pretty sure I have torn lateral collateral ligaments in each knee. They will heal a little bit, and then I’ll step wrong or get thrown in judo or land funny on a double under attempt and they either re-tear or become inflamed again. A logical, normal person would go to a real doctor and get this cleared up once and for all. However, I think we all know that I am far from normal or rational. 

1.) I do not like doctors. I only go to the doctor when I am literally about to go on life support, and even then I seriously consider just taking an extra Tylenol and hoping it will clear up/go away.

2.) I do not like our local hospital. People tend to go in and either not come out alive or they come out with MRSA, staph or something of that nature. This does not help with my doctor/hospital phobia.

3.) If my amateur internet medical diagnosis is correct I would have to have surgery on both knees. This is a problem because: a.) I hate doctors, doctors do surgery; b.) bad, bad hospital; c.) I need to work, and I need my knees to do this – even if they are not fully functional knees.

So, now that I’ve gone through all that – I think I’ll just take an extra Tylenol and hope it goes away.

Today I started CrossFit 603’s PTP Program:

Deadlift

• Warm up with some DLs at lighter weight
• Set 1: 60% of 1RM, 3-5 reps (138#)
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 3-5 reps (125#)

Press

• Warm up with some presses at lighter weight
• Set 1: 60% of 1RM, 3-5 reps (48#)
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 3-5 reps (43#)

Since I can’t do much with my bad knee I didn’t do the metcon portion. However, since I spent most of the day literally shoveling sh*t (we cleaned out our big cow barn) and building a windbreak, I didn’t sweat the metcon.

AMRAP Suckitude

WOD:

AMRAP 15 minutes of:

5 Thrusters
7 Hang Power Cleans
10 Sumo Deadlift High Pulls

10 rounds – 42#

It doesn’t look that bad, does it? Well, thrusters were involved, so I say its suckitude factor was high. But… there were also cleans involved, so its awesomeness factor was also high. As for the SDLHP, meh – I’m like Switzerland on them, completely neutral. I don’t hate them, but I don’t love them either.

I picked up my lost jump rope afterwards and started messing around with some double unders and I hurt my knee. I’ve had bad knees all my life (runs in the family) and they tend to pop in and out sometimes. It felt like it was just out of place and I spent all morning trying to pop it back in. Usually center thrust kicks or round house kicks will make it snap, but no luck today. If anyone was watching out the windows of my apartment building this morning they were probably wondering why the strange girl in the parking lot was stopping intermittently and kicking thin air. Don’t worry, she was just off her meds.

Anyway, I had to go to the store and as I was wandering around with my shopping cart it popped back into place. I could literally hear it click. Weird, but oh did that feel good. (If anyone in Runnings was wondering why the girl by the stocking cap display suddenly stopped and said “Aaaaaahhh” and smiled contentedly, it’s not what you think.) It still hurts, so no judo tonight, but at least all my parts are back where they are supposed to be. For now.

Power Cleans

Power Clean 5 x 3

96#/101#/106#/106#/106#

I tried to really concentrate on form and on deadlifting to mid-thigh then exploding into the pull.