Pushing Hard Again

In the last 8 days, I've had some good breakthroughs.

I'm finally done with pain medication from my September surgery.  I still have some discomfort, but nothing that requires medication.  I've been able to add planks, box jumps, running and rope jumping to my workouts.  I even did 50 knee raises while hanging from a bar this week.  I still worry that sit-ups will be uncomfortable, but I'll try them in the next week or so.

Monday, I had an appointment in Boston and my wife came along.  After the appointment, we took advantage of the nice weather and walked for 2.5 hours - just talking and sometimes just enjoying the day in silence.  We met some friends for a very nice dinner after the walk.  Oleana in Cambridge is just an amazing restaurant and there is nothing close to it in Vermont in terms of cuisine.

On Tuesday, we went to CrossFit, and I did deadlifts (up to multiple reps at 245# after maxing out at 185# a week before), planks, some 40# ball slams and hanging knee raises.

Wednesday, we met a friend for dinner and enjoyed a rest day.

Thursday's workout is a "pick your poison" type of workout.  You pick 4 tasks, one from each of 4 different categories, and repeat them once per minute for 40 minutes.  If your tasks are A, B, C and D, the workout is ABCDABCD..., rather than AAAAAAAAAABBBBB...

I chose to row 175m, do 8 ring rows, 5 box jumps (first box jumps since surgery) and bench presses.

Tonight, we have a very tough workout that we do twice a year in honor or extreme skier Ryan Hawks, who had a tragic accident in competition on 2/27/2011, and died two days later.  Today would have been his 30th birthday.

The workout involves rowing, deadlifts, thrusters, box jumps, burpees, lunges and rope jumping.  The five middle movements are done in blocks of 50 reps.  This is a brutal workout that I'm not quite ready for yet.  But, I don't want to miss it either.  So, I'm going to do the workout, but scale down to 30 reps of each exercise, to match my current fitness level.

This weekend, I'm going to take a chance at catching some Lake Champlain "steelhead", something I've never tried before.  I put steelhead in quotes because to many fishermen, a rainbow trout is only a steelhead if it lives part of its life in salt water, rather than a large body of fresh water.  No matter what you call them, these can be large, fat rainbows coming out of the lake, and you never know when you'll hook up with a big fish.  The weather will be raw, but we can't ski yet, so I may as well fish.