Thursday, May 24, 2012

A few pics from my fishing vacation last week

I'm too busy to write much, but we caught a number of nice wild browns.  The two biggest fish didn't get photographed due to a lack of hands.  I was by myself, dealing with the fish, an under-sized net, the rod and reel, and I didn't want to drop the camera in the river or kill the fish by keeping it out of the water too long.







Friday, May 11, 2012

Time just flies

Last week, I went to 4 CF sessions - Tuesday through Friday.  Over the weekend, I went fishing with my son a couple times, but I didn't to any formal exercise.  I did finally catch my first trout of the season last Sunday evening.

This week, I've been swamped at work, but I made it to CF four times again - Monday through Thursday this time.  Today is a much needed rest day.  I did a fair amount of work with my shoulder this week, although I kept the weight fairly low.  But, I've been happy with how the shoulder is progressing overall.

I'm leaving on vacation with my son tomorrow.  We are headed to PA for a week of fly fishing for trout.  We are going to fish some pretty famous streams, and on two days, we'll fish with a guide.  I've been looking forward to this trip for quite a while and I hope my son feels the same way.

We will fish the stream I fished as a teenager - Codorus Creek.  We will fish the well known Yellow Breeches. A float trip on the upper Delaware.  A day on the Loyalsock in Sullivan County.  Penn's Creek east of State College.  And the Upper Juniata west of State College.

Sometimes, I'm really glad that I'm not investing 6 hours per day on my weekends with running these days.  I wish I was in better running shape, but the lack of running focus is allowing me more time to hang out with my family - a very nice trade-off.

Tune in next week for fish pictures!


Oh yeah, here is a native brook trout that I caught last Sunday.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

And, I'm Back!

I continued to feel sick until late last week.  Through Saturday, I did nothing at all, although I did managed to work full days from home on Thursday and Friday.

On Sunday morning, my son and I got out for some trout fishing, but I didn't exercise at all.  On Monday, after work, we went fishing again, but still no exercise.  (My son and I are both still waiting for our first trout of the year.  I'm hoping it happens this coming weekend in VT, but if not, I'm sure we'll have a great week in PA starting 5/12 - non-stop fishing for an entire week)

Tuesday, for the first time in 11 days, I came to the office to work for the day.  After work, I went to CrossFit.  My goal was to take it easy for this first week back in the gym.  The Tuesday workout started with pressing complexes - push press, push jerk, and split jerk.  We were supposed to do 6 heavy rounds with a round being one of each of the three lifts.  Because I'm still taking it easy on my shoulder, I did the workout with 75 pounds.  If my shoulder was healthy, I would have used 135-145, but that would be pretty stupid right now.

The main workout was then made up of dumbbell thrusters and box jumps.  Three rounds, your score is your total number of box jumps:

3 minutes:
30 thrusters
Max box jumps

Then rest 2 minutes, and repeat twice more.  My box jump totals per round were 20, 20 and 21.  I used a low weight for the dumbbells and a low height for the box to keep the intensity down a bit.

On Wednesday, we were supposed to start with 5x3 power snatches.  This is a lift that I'm not ready to do at all because of my shoulder, so I substituted deadlifts.  I did my sets at 275#, 295#, and 3 at 315#.  Despite a recent best of 405# for one rep, the sets at 315 felt hard.  I'm guessing that I'm still not 100%.

Then, as quickly as possible:
Run 400 meters
3 rounds of (5 deadlifts, 5 hang cleans, 5 push presses)
Run 400 meters
2 rounds as above
Run 400 meters
1 round as above

Because of the push presses, I again kept the weight low - 65#.  This made the deadlifts a joke, to be honest, and the hang cleans were too easy.  But, doing 30 total push presses at that weight was enough.  My time was 10:24, and some people who used the prescribed weight of 135# took twice as long.  I admired their effort and felt like a slacker, but I have to know when to push and when to back off.

Today, my quads are a bit sore and I'm walking a bit slowly.  But, I'm going to try to get to CF the next two nights, before trying to do some running, cycling and fishing this coming weekend.  I am definitely going to fish some different waters this weekend - maybe the trophy waters on the Winooski River or perhaps the Mad River, where a friend has reported pretty good fishing.  My four outings on two different branches of the White River have not gone well at all.