Plethora of topics.

The fun thing for me about keeping quiet on this blog recently is watching Merrill torture himself each day with self-doubt, questioning and rationalization. It's really a deep, dark entertaining look into his psyche.

Still, I suppose I'll get back into this, as the injury is feeling good, even after a hard weekend, and I can test it once more. But first, a few things to weigh in on...

Paleo: Merrill, be sure to actually figure out what you're supposed to be doing before you get into this. Otherwise, you will be in some serious trouble in regards to your training - or just quit really quickly, as expected. For instance, Paleo is not "no carbs," it's no refined carbs or sugar (bread/pancake/pizza/twinkies), which naturally makes it much lower carb than the traditional American/Merrill diet.

I feel like I have a pretty strong top-level understanding of paleo, thanks to Robb Wolf, and am pretty close to paleo outside of dairy and the occasional slice of bread or low-carb wrap. I've also done the Zone diet for an extended time in the past, which worked great for cutting body fat.

Overall, paleo's been pretty great for me, but since starting CFE and adding the extra couple WODs and running to the mix, I've had a lot of trouble keeping my weight up (and I assume, losing some strength, which was and is a big point of this endeavor). That's with the additional protein shakes I hit post-WOD daily as well, which definitely aren't paleo.  So at the least, Merrill, I'd suggest loading up on starches like sweet potatoes and potatoes with all the endurance stuff you're doing. Eat them all the time.

The Open: is upon us. Well, tomorrow night it is. This should add an interesting twist to the training, because I want to be competitive in our Crossfit group's Open contest. Bragging rights and all that... There may be a bit of a drop-off in CFE WODs in order to work around rest and recovery for the Open over the next few weeks. Merrill, are you doing this?

Inspiration: I am truly psyched Merrill got signed up for the half in April. I hope to join him, but I'm still waiting a bit longer on the injury thing before pulling the trigger for my May half. Hopefully getting a CFE WOD in tomorrow.

Meantime, came across some great longform running articles compiled by Slate. I've already hit the Prefontaine and fake marathoner story (which I may need to emulate if I want to beat Merrill in the fall).

Finally, an endurance WOD today: Time trial, 5K row.  

mywrite: 21:55. I had quite a bit of DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) from the weekend work, so really used this as an active recovery day. Most of it was at 2:15/500M pace, which is quite slow. My PR is 20:14.