Benjamin McCormack

One of my near-term goals is to improve my push-up endurance so that I can get 20 rounds of Cindy (5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats) in 20 minutes. I’ve been doing more and more push-ups each day, but Saturday I think I overdid it.

I decided to try doing 15 push-ups every minute on the minute for 5 rounds, with a 5 minute rest, for 4 sessions. That’s 300 push-ups in 40 minutes. Oh, and for the first 2 sessions, I threw in 10 sit-ups for fun.

I did manage to complete the workout (took me 41 minutes because of extra rest required toward the end), but my arms and chest felt absolutely destroyed afterwards. I definitely pushed myself way beyond fatigue. I had planned to take a rest day on Sunday anyways, so I figured everything was cool.

Monday rolled around and I did the prescribed WOD of 400m run + 30 Kettlebell swings (53 lb), AMRAP for 20 minutes, and while I felt fine during the WOD, once I got to work that morning, I was in pain. Specifically, my somewhere in the right side of my chest it’s quite sore. Add to this a dull pain I’ve had just to the right of my mid-lower back and I’m in need of some rest.

So I overdid it. I certainly know what kinds of behaviors to avoid and to more gradually try to test my push-up endurance. While lamenting my self-induced rest period, I remembered that this is how I used to function all the time: no exercise, no athleticism, no pushing myself to the limit. I won’t be going back there again.

Food for today

I brought home leftover petit filet of beef with horseradish aioli from lunch today and had it again for dinner. The sauce probably has some non-Paleo elements in it, but it is amazing! Also, Emily made a “pot liquor” of collard greens and bacon. Yum!

The Workout of the Day is called, appropriately, “Friday the 13th”. I was a bit scared going into it, especially of the 135 lb Thrusters (Front Squat into a Push Press, for those keeping score at home), since that’s 40 lbs heavier than the thrusters in Fran, and Fran destroys me.

You see, I had intended to “warm up” at 95 lbs and then, because it was going to be so awful, simply do that for the workout. But I can’t do math at six in the morning and I grabbed two 45 lb bumper plates for my 45 lb bar. 45 plus 45 doesn’t even equal 95, so I’m not sure what I was going for.

Since the weight was there, I decided to give it a go, and what do you know, I was able to do it! I even did the WOD in sets of four, four, and then five. I had been planning on 3 + 2, but Coach Mikey talked me into 5 straight. Not that I was arguing (I was barely breathing), but his encouragement helped. So that was a PR on Thrusters in a WOD. Woot!

I also got my first jumping muscle-ups today. My arms hate me. A lot. But it was worth it. Now I just need to keep practicing them so I can get them off the ground!

Breakfast

• Leftover Paleo Pumpkin Chili
• Blueberries
• Almond Butter

Lunch

• Pork with bourbon mustard sauce
• Salad
• Asparagus
• Snack: 4 strawberries and some almond butter

Dinner

• Chicken with Mango Chutney
• Steamed Veggies

WOD

“Friday the 13th”
13 – Pistols, Right leg (with blue band)
13 – Muscle Ups (jumping)
13 – 135# Thrusters
13 – Burpees with 1 foot Jumps
13 – Pistols, Left Leg (with blue band)

14:17, pretty slow, but I finished!

200 push-ups, which after those muscle-ups, was quite the challenge.

I think I like the rain the least during the winter time. If it’s going to precipitate, it might as well snow, right? Because of rain when I woke up this morning, I decided on the evening CrossFit class instead, and it was great!

Breakfast

• 4 Egg Omlet w/ bacon & mushrooms
• 10 oz Spinach

Lunch

• Lamb Korma (Paleo? Maybe?)
• Salad
• Diet Root Beer (Not Paleo)
• Almonds for Snack

Dinner

• Spiced Pumpkin Paleo Chili (Yum!)
• A few Marcona Almonds
• Post-WOD Pear (I shared with Sophia)

WOD

10 x 1 Weighted pull-ups: 20 – 25 – 30 – 32.5 … (workout) … 35 (fail) – 30 (rev) – 30 (rev) – X – X – X

5 rounds: 25 cal row + 25 sit-ups: 12:08

200 push-ups

I need to get more sleep. Believe it or not, sleep is a big part of Paleo and if weight loss is your goal, not getting enough sleep is a surefire way to miss it.

Other than that, today was great!

Emily made a super-easy-to-make vegie for dinner tonight. It consisted of 5 pieces of fried cut-up bacon with collard greens and sliced mushrooms. Fry the bacon, sauté the mushrooms, and throw in the collard greens. Doesn’t get any easier than that, and it tastes amazing!

Breakfast

• Mixed steamed veggies
• Lemon Pepper Chicken
• Blueberries and Pineapple
• Almond Butter

Lunch

• Salad day
• Tons of different veggies
• Shrimp Salad
• Steak
• Chicken
• Cashews for Snack

Dinner

• Lemon Pepper Chicken
• Collard Greens, Mushroom, and Bacon yuminess!
• Maybe a piece of fruit later

WOD

7×3 Backsquat – 155-165-175-185-185-185-185

Going to try for 200 push-ups again today, but so far I’m only at 100.

Again?

Yep. Last summer’s Paleo challenge was great and it really got me moving in the right direction, but then December happened. No, I didn’t gain all my weight back and yes, I’m still in pretty decent shape, but I want to crank it up a notch. I want to go into 2012, eating cleaner, looking leaner, and getting meaner during the CrossFit WODs.

This Paleo Challenge is just Emily and me. There’s no prize other than a better her and a better me. But we’re looking forward to it! Also, I’ll be trying to blog regularly, but there’s won’t nearly as many pictures this time and the posts will be shorter.

Food!

Morning

• Paleo Meatloaf 
• Mixed Steamed Veggies
• Small container of organic apple sauce
• Coffee

Lunch

• Chicken
• Broccoli
• Salad

Dinner

• Egg & Veggie Frittata
• Mixed Steamed Veggies
• Broccoli
• Marcona Almonds
• Dark Cholocate

WOD (Workout of the Day)

15 minute AMRAP:
30 double-unders
15 Power Snatches

3 rounds + 5 and very sore hands. I really need to work on my double-unders.

200 Push-ups throughout the day

OK, so the title of this post is a bit lot misleading. I haven’t implemented cURL in Powershell, but I did want a simple way to simply do an HTTP GET against a URL and download its contents. With cURL, it’s as simple as:

$ curl http://isitchristmas.com

Easy! This will download the URL as a string that can be piped into another command. In Powershell, it’s a bit more cumbersome:

PS > (New-Object net.webclient).DownloadString(
      'http://isitchristmas.com')

It will get the job done, but that’s a lot to remember just to get a string from an HTTP GET. I’ve added the following bit of code to my Powershell Profile to make this task a bit easier:

function Get-URL([string] $url){
  (New-Object net.webclient).DownloadString($url)
}
Set-Alias curl Get-URL

Those expecting the full functionality of cURL with the curl alias are going to be disappointed, but if you’re simply wanting to grab the contents of a URL, this will do the trick. Now I can get the contents of a website and pipe it into another command in Powershell, such as installing pip:

PS > curl https://raw.github.com/pypa/pip/master/contrib/get-pip.py |
     python