Can Marathoners do crossfit May 2015

The challenge at the moment is time to train and what are my priorities. While I am making good progress on the lifting side of things my running needs some serious attention as the Dublin race series is coming up. Definetly need to focus and get up earlier again.

When the slack creeps in

The Vienna marathon in April did not go down as I had hoped with a time above four hours when i was aiming for 3:30. This was a very welcome excuse to cut back on the running. The original plan was to rest for two weeks and start back up in May to ramp up to a program that I have chosen from Hal Higdon which mathematically starts at 22nd of June to finish out at the Dublin marathon on 26th of October this year.

Business travel to Germany and a little extra attention from a food perspective from my girlfriend, social commitments, you name it, excuses, excuses. Now it the end of may and I did not run one bit in the entire month.

While a welcome change of pace I think it will come back to haunt me once I will go back to running (tomorrow I promise...). Here is the good bit about bokking your races in advance in the beginning of the year. Pressure is up for me to get back to training again, and I will.

Progress on lifting

I got myself a GOPRO camera and started vlogging on YouTube. Hopefully this drives more traffic to Marathon-Crossfit and also helps to analyze my performance better. Comparing myself to what is out there in terms of lifters I aim a proper weakling. Really have to work on myself.

The good news is that I am now the proud record holder of the bench press record at my local gym at 135kg in the 81-90kg weight class. My back came of the bench, but that does not matter there, even though I have to clean my form up to get more professional around that. I had a serious look into the rules of powerlifting competitions and will have to adjust accordingly. The old record stood at 127.5kg. The one who I pushed from the whiteboard was informed and I am intrigued if he will come back to reclaim his place and start a rivalry with me. I would welcome that, as it can only be good for my personal progress.

In May I also finished my 6 weeks 10x3 program which I was very happy with. You can read a full review including video walk through here.

Currently I am on the german volume training which I will review at a later stage. For now I can say, as so often, I understimated the challenge involved. The prescribed 60% of one rep max were too much for me in week one and I have to delaod the coming week (first week of june).

Progress on crossfit

A skill I majorly suck at are double unders. I am now incorporating 100 double unders for time as a warm up for each session I do. So far I think I am getting more control over my double unders, even though it did not show in a better time yet.

I had a reattempt at Annie, which i finished in 11:22, tried Wilmot and did for time Row 500m, 150 double unders, 50 burpess and asmanay rounds as possible in 20 minutes of 18 box jumps 24inch, 15 toes to bars and 12 pull ups. Former i was able to finish in 12:52 and latter were four rounds + 15 toes to bar. I did these two in the same gym session back to back and it killed me. I personally find that taking two bidyweight WOD's back to back between powerlifting days works really good for me to stay overall healthy and fit.

Getting up earlier

2013 I had a good phase were I got out of bed at 5.30 to go for a 30 - 45 minute run. That was a good habit and I produced my best marathon time to date that year of 3:58. Currently I lack the discipline to do so and to be honest the morning are the only time I could fit them in. Tomorrow I will get up and bloody well get in my 3 miles. Maybe you should too.