My Growing Concerns with Crossfit and Crossfit Endurance

This is by no means a CFE bashing blog, but I do have 2 concerns about the methodology for me.  Everyone is different, so these may not impact others.

1.   I am too heavy.  My body fat is lower than I can ever remember, but on the scale I simply weigh too much as I am just under 200 lbs.  This is impacting my running and causing me to be slower than I would like.  I am by no means a fast runner, but I should be running faster than I currently am running.  I think the combination of Crossfit and lots of anaerobic training (CFE) is increasing my muscle mass.  If I wasn’t training for an Ironman, I would be very excited about this, but I fear this weight will have a major negative impact on the run leg.

2.   I cannot pace.  It seems through all of the CF and CFE WOD’s I have lost my internal gut feeling of how to pace a long swim, bike, or run.  However I think this can be easily solved by just a few practice “long slow distance” sessions.

To accommodate for these two concerns I am switching up  my programming for 4 weeks to include “LSD”.   These weeks will look something like this:

Monday: CF WOD, CFE Run WOD

Tuesday: Long Swim

Wednesday: CF WOD, CFE Bike WOD

Thursday: Long Run

Friday: CF WOD, CFE Swim WOD

Saturday: Long Bike

Sunday: Rest

This format will allow me to hit an interval and an LSD session per sport per week.  I do fear I may run into recovery and over training issues, but I will adjust if needed.  In the end of the 4 weeks, I hope to see that I weigh less and run faster. 

Link to training plan

In the meantime, here is my favorite Ironman motivation video.  It really starts to get good about a minute into the video.

Brick Repeats and Disney

Well my pure volume week went well.  I ended it with a crazy brick repeat session of 4 rounds of 20 mile bike/ 3 mile run.  Time wasn’t my concern, but it did take over 7 hours to complete which included bathroom breaks, drink refills, etc.  This was a good workout but it if I didn’t have scheduled time off after, my training would have been hampered as it took several days to recover from. 

I got a long delay during my second round while a Williamson County sheriff deputy who was concerned for my safety issued me a $197 citation for running a stop sign.  Keep in mind I was on my bike.  She seemed happy to inform me and another cyclist that she had caught others.  It seems as though we were targeted.  To be honest the deputy would better serve herself to get on a bike instead of harassing cyclist.  To say the least she appeared a little out of shape.  I did get a laugh when she commanded me to dismount my bike.  I guess she was afraid I would try to speed away, but obviously I couldn’t out run her patrol car.  My question to her, where are they when dump trucks almost run us cyclist over.  Well my opinion of the sheriff’s department is not good.  If I go to court I wonder if they will send me to cyclist safety school. 

Last week I went to conference in Orlando then spent several days at Disney with my family.  I did not train during this week as I just wanted to spend time with my family.  I walked a total of what seemed like 50 miles and stood on my feet in long lines.  My diet consisted primarily of fast food like meal (e.g. bacon cheeseburger, French fries, and coke).  Somehow I lost 5 pounds, but my AM Crossfit WOD today took a serious performance hit.  I also ended up with some indigestion and other GI related issues that I will not describe here.  I am ready to get back on track now.

This week, I have a short training week that ends with Muddy Buddy. 

Link to training plan.   

Not My Day

Well on April 30^th I ran the ½ Country Music Marathon.  During the week I had some conferences and seminars to attend which required me to pull back on my training due to scheduling issues.  It setup me up for a nice taper.  Friday morning I was feeling good about the race and hoping to PR a ½ marathon.  Then later in the day I started to feel head cold like symptoms come on.  They just got worse through the rest of the day.  When I got home from work I had a massive head ache.  I knew then that the ½ marathon wouldn’t go well.  I woke up Saturday morning feeling worse.  I would not have trained feeling the way I did, but I was already registered for the race and didn’t want to waste the money.   So I went ahead.  I started off a little too fast then got into a nice pace.  I momentarily had delusions that my head cold would not slow me down.  Around mile 6 I was hurting and slowed down.  I ended with 2:08 which I find horribly disappointing.  However the ½ CMM is not my goal of the year, so I told myself to let it go and move on.  I will just write it up as another crappy CMM.  Last year I attempted the full but was cut short for 4 miles due to bad weather which really wasn’t that bad. 

After a short recovery, I have about a week of pure volume training outside the CFE protocol that I will now put in until I take a week off for a conference and vacation.  My goal is to simply put lots of yards and miles in and then recover during the trip. 

Link to training plan