Mt. Mansfield hike, Paleo Challenge, More CrossFit

My friend Jeff commented yesterday that I should put up some pictures from the Mt. Mansfield hike on Sunday. I only took two photos on the hike, one of my wife and one of my son on the summit. My wife probably doesn't appreciate that I got a photo of her eating an energy bar, but I was the person with the camera. My son was really tired at this point, but held up pretty well in his first real workout in quite a while.

Here is our hiking route, produced using my Garmin Forerunner, Garmin's Connect software, and Google Earth:

The mileage I got from the Garmin doesn't match the guidebook mileage, and one "lap" isn't even a "Garmin" mile because I hit the lap button by mistake. One thing that I really liked about the Garmin Connect site is how it corrected the elevation numbers that the unit recorded during the hike. The Forerunner told me we'd climbed 4690 vertical feet, while I suspected the actual elevation to be closer to 3000'. The software took the GPS points and corrected the vertical to 2964'. All in all, it was a fun day and my son now needs only Killington to have summited all of the VT 4000 foot peaks on his own power. We may do that one this weekend, and we might even throw in Pico, the highest peak in VT that doesn't hit 4000'.

On another subject, the winners of our month-long Paleo challenge at CrossFit were announced yesterday. I didn't know about it until I got to the gym and a few people congratulated me. I wasn't sure what they were talking about at first. Rather than repeat the details, they can be found here. I'm not sure if I like Jade's comment about "Damon rounding out the top 3." I am spending all my time at CrossFit so I can be a little bit less round.

Since really working to reduce the carbs in my diet in mid-April, and moving to a Paleo-style diet, I've lost about 18 pounds so far. I was at the highest weight I've ever been, and I still have plenty to lose, but things are moving in the right direction. From June of 2008, when I was in great running shape for the Western States 100, until April of this year, I had gained 52 pounds. Not all of that was body fat, but it was still the biggest weight swing I'd ever had in my life, and I'm working hard to revert those bad changes. I'll probably never again be as light as three years ago unless I give up lifting, but I'd still like to lose another 25 pounds or so. Working for a start-up software company for the past few years, plus a serious hamstring injury and a love of good beer has been a bad combination for my weight.

My eating was right where I wanted it to be yesterday, including local rabbit roasted with rosemary, garlic and olive oil. I had that with the fresh-from-the-garden chard and a salad.

That dinner came after this workout:

Biking: 14.2 miles for the day, most of it in a light rain

Strict presses

5 x 95#

3 x 105#

1 x 120#

Push press:

4 x 120#

Close grip bench press:

5 sets of 10 at 85# (still protecting my shoulder a bit)

Pull-ups - 3 sets, max reps, and I dropped to a lower strength assistance band to make it more strength work rather than endurance: 8, 7, 7

Finally, the MetCon was as follows:

10 minutes, as many reps as possible

15 power cleans at 95#

30 lateral jumps over the barbell

I did this one at the RX'd level rather than level 1 (65#). I knew I'd get fewer reps, but the AMRAP workouts are a good time to push the weights to a higher level. On the "as quickly as possible" workouts, using a weight that is too high results in a long, slow slog. On an AMRAP, you just do what you can and you're done when time expires. I did 3.5 rounds in 10 minutes.

Today is more bicycling in the rain and CrossFit. Tomorrow, I'll switch my focus to running for three days - my final real runs before the marathon in just over two weeks. I need to break in a new pair of shoes this weekend.