A Very Good Thursday

Dave came into the kitchen this morning while I was making my sweet potato frittata and asked his usual morning question, “How’s my sweetie?”

I launched into a monologue on my workout, Smudge, the weather, today’s to-do list… an energetic, stream-of-consciousness list. And he said, “Well, this ride is fun. You’re a totally different person than you were yesterday.”

He’s right. Tuesday and Wednesday, my energy was through the floor. I sat at my corporate overlords’ desk yesterday, fighting to keep my (burning) eyes from drooping shut. Thanks to my broke-ass thyroid, my energy levels are unrelated to the amount of sleep I get each night (8-9 hours) and the food I eat (clean as a whistle). It’s unsettling because it feels so random.

This morning, I knew as soon as I started my first set of warmup pushups: I feel good today. The 400m warmup run was “feel-good hard” instead of demoralizing, and our workout filled me with enthusiasm instead of dread. I’ll take it; the trend is toward more good days than bad as I head into my fifth week on this Synthroid dose.

Today, I got to play!

CrossFit Women
21 – 15 – 9
ring dips (for me: with a band)
kettlebell swings, 16kg
barbell squat cleans, 45# bar
Russian twists, 14# ball

My time: 13:53
I finished first in the class (!) – which is just such a treat in the midst of the broken-ass thyroid adventure.

Cashout
4 X :15 tuck holds on the rings
1:00 sprawl + sumo deadlift high pull w/ kettlebell, 16kg

This workout was really challenging, but in the best way possible. A struggle, but not too much of a struggle; hard in that really satisfying way. The ring dips with the band were on like Donkey Kong – and are a total triceps burner. (Here’s a demo video of how to use the band. And thanks to CrossFit Rockwall for this demo photo.)

For the cashout, Crystal wanted us to do L-sits on the rings. I was feeling confident about my abilities because I’ve been doing holds on the dip bars at the craptastic gym (and there’s this photographic evidence of my legs at almost parallel), but the rings are a whole different thing. The best I could do was a (viciously challenging) tuck. And after the first two rounds, I could only hold that for about 5 seconds before everything kinda gave way to noodle-y silliness. It’s amazing to me that anyone, anywhere can do something like this:

Or this:

I tried to find photos of women on the rings, and came across this badassness:

That is Thera Storm (unfair name advantage!) rockin’ it out.

And then there’s this:

… which I would LOVE if a) her arms weren’t quite so reminiscent of twigs; and b) the next photo was of this glamour girl rocking any actual move on the rings. I may not have looked sexy this morning, but I was working it.