the "off-season" and a "real" push-up

I used to call my summer months "the off-season" because I only trained for the LA marathon and didn't have another race after that. In the last three years, I have also started running a marathon in October. I've run the Nike Women's Marathon for the last two years and also plan to run the Long Beach marathon this October.

What I really mean to say is that the "off-season" is when I train alone, me and my music, my dogs and routes south of Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area and more in my neighborhood.

It is also a time for me to reevaluate what I do at practice for the youngsters during the school year, to get them trained for the LA marathon.

A couple of months ago, Amazon sent me an deal email for a month membership to the local Crossfit "gym". I've never had a gym membership in my life (except when I was in college and it was a part of my student fees-I went twice). I thought this training would be good education to share with my runners. This isn't a typical gym. In fact, they call it "the box" because it is. a box with weights, pull ups, rings, etc. Simple.

My good friend is a Crossfit trainer/coach on the other side of the country. He took me to a workout once and I left feeling light-headed, my arms felt like spaghetti, and yet I was excited to try more. A person can go on the general crossfit website, watch the videos, learn how to exercise the crossfit way and not have to pay for a membership. The women on these videos are bad ass.

I do modified Workout of the Day (WOD) with my runners every now and then. They do burpees and squats on the regular during marathon training season.

Nothing compares to what I went through today-well maybe marathon day. I had a piece of toast with peanut butter (typical pre race food), checked the directions for the place, fed my dogs and got on my way.

Today, was my first day of fundamentals class. Crossfit has us newbies learn all the proper stances, movements and warm ups before setting us out into the "real classes." The warm up consisted of leg lifts, high knees, lunges (again, I learned the proper way), some bear crawl things, and running. I was sweaty with just that. Fun stuff.

Midway through the class, when Adan was teaching us how to do a proper push up, I thought to myself "F*#&, I've been doing them wrong my whole life." I'm in for a tough WOD. Yikes. I take back what I said in my last post. I can only do two real push ups. All the others are a "nice try".

Then it was time for the WOD. He writes it down on the board: Deadlifts, pushups, squats, run (4 times). Push-ups? I'm screwed. And I was. It took me almost a minute each time to get through 10 push-ups the "right" way (barely). The other stuff I could do and enjoyed it. I am excited that I actually am learning how to lift weights properly. By the end of the third run, I was burping up that toast and peanut butter. Probably wasn't a good idea for this workout. Lesson learned.

My arms feel like spaghetti, my legs (which are used to the pain) are yearning for more and I was starving and craving carbs after the workout. I went to the market and bought two peaches and immediately ate one of them. Came home and made myself some waffles. I smeared one waffle with Nutella, another with peanut butter (we eat a lot of peanut butter in this place) and smothered the top with a peach and banana compote.

The pancakes were from store-bought Bisquick. But the compote is something I came up with on a whim once.

Banana and peach compote

(You can substitute the fruits for whatever you like)

1 banana (as ripe as you can find it, even with black dots on it)

1 peach (soft and squishy to the touch)

1 tbsp butter (I use the low calorie Smart Balance stuff)

1 tbsp sugar (you can also substitute a tbsp of honey)

a pinch of nutmeg and cinnamon

a dash of vanilla extract

Heat the sauce pan to medium heat, add in the tbsp butter let it sizzle, add in the ingredients and let simmer. The more ripe your fruit, the less sugar need.

The bananas will melt within a minute. The peach will melt into the compote soon after, depending on the firmness of the peach (I ate the wrong one coming back from the market....I ate my super soft one, but I digress). Let it simmer while stirring the compote together to mix everything evenly. I added in a splash of strawberry nectar this time and I really like how it added to the texture and flavor.

This paired perfectly with the waffles. And the peanut butter. And the Nutella.

In the box, I noticed the white boards had lots of writing about proper nutrition and how food affects the fit body. I smiled, thinking how awesome this training is going to be. In huge red letters at the top of the board, it read "No Sugar". Yeah, that's not going to happen.

I do look forward to tomorrows workout! Maybe I'll be one step closer to doing a pull up.