Category Archives: Exercise

Memorial Day and Functional Fitness

Posted on by

Hello! I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. I spent most of mine sleeping and staring out the window wishing I could be outside doing things in the amazing weather, and then realizing that my complaints are petty compared to WHY I have the day off to do all these things.

In CrossFit, difficult workouts are often named after soldiers who were killed in action (hero WODs) and women. On Memorial Day, most boxes do a workout called “Murph” after Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005. It’s a tough one, and I was really looking forward to it being my first “benchmark” workout to honor a fallen soldier. It goes like this:

  • With a 20# vest:
  • 1 mile Run
  • 100 Pull-ups
  • 200 Push-ups
  • 300 Squats
  • 1 mile Run

My box did that workout on Saturday since a lot of people were going out of town and wanted to do it before the holiday. I didn’t go since I’m still of the broken leg persuasion, and I feel bad that coaches have to take time to pay special attention to me and create a custom workout. Oh, well! There’s always next year.

I was able to go on Monday. It was a team workout, and I know people didn’t want me on their teams since I’m the broken one. Fortunately, another member, Anna, showed up late and was more than happy to share a workout with me. She had a cute son named Owen, and she was a bad ass. I’m glad she joined me. The plan was to have 4 people on a team, all doing 2 hero WODs in one: Roy and Witten. Since Anna and I were a two-person, half-borked team, we did our own version of just Roy, followed by 100 situps.

Memorial Day CrossFit Murph

That’s me with the purple shorts… and crutches. Anna is sitting at my feet! (source)

Everyone at CrossFit likes to ask me about my injury and then congratulate me on being a bad ass for still working out. I’ll admit that’s probably 3% of the reason I go. That, and I’m addicted to working out to make sure I stay sane. But what I always end up talking about is how functional CrossFit actually is.

Sure, there’s no real reason that someone who works in an office will need to know the technique of a clean and jerk, but I can tell you that I’ve done a whole heck of a lot of pistol squats trying to put on my clothes every morning (hello, pants). My life is one series of one-legged dead lifts after another–not to mention the importance I’ve found in being able to pull my own body weight up from various heights. Even the old Turkish get-up has come in handy when I’ve been getting dressed.

I’m really glad I started CrossFit, and I’m so glad my box has been wonderful in helping accommodate my little … injury.

I hope your Memorial Day weekend was wonderful, relaxing, and full of remembrance. Here’s to a 4-day work week!

Working Out with Injuries

Posted on by

It’s been so long since I’ve written! Sorry to keep you guys hanging. I just feel like it’s been nonstop since I broke my leg last Monday. I can’t believe it’s almost been 2 weeks. I’m hoping the rest of the recovery goes that quickly, as well, so I feel like I’m out of a cast in no time.

I got the great news on Wednesday that I don’t have to have surgery. Though some ligaments in my ankle were torn, it wasn’t bad enough to warrant surgery. They put me in a cast that day and sent me on my way. Never have I been so glad to get the news that I only need a cast.

I was also cleared to head back to CrossFit at my Wednesday appointment. You should have seen the look on Sean’s face. He’s certain that, if anything will impede my recovery, it’ll be the fact that I’m working out. I beg to differ. I say, if anything, it’ll make it better since I’ll be getting stronger in completely different ways, and it will keep me sane.

Working out is my therapy. It burns the extra energy that becomes frustration and meanness and whatever else, and just makes me feel like a better, healthier person. I don’t like to not feel healthy. So, getting my sweat on makes me feel better about myself, which makes me feel better about what’s going on around me.

So, I made my way to the box yesterday for my first day back to CrossFit in a week and a half. Remind me to never take off that long if I don’t have a solid excuse (like a broken leg). It was hard. Halfway because I haven’t been in so long, and halfway because I was doing things modified for one leg.

Working Out with Injuries

Warm up started off with one-legged rows. By the end of 700m, my butt was killing me–but only on one side. Ha! I watched everyone else do mobility (since I can’t kettlebell squat or swing yet). While everyone else worked on pullups, I worked on ring rows. Ring rows are not easy when trying to balance on one foot.

The WOD was 7-13-23 back squats and ring dips. People who couldn’t do ring dips modified to box dips. I got my own special, no-feet WOD of 6 min AMRAP 10 pushups, 10 sit ups. This was tough since I hadn’t been in the groove of working out, and since I had to ease around my foot and leg the whole time. I managed to get 5 full rounds + 8 pushups. I was gunning for 10 before the 6 minute mark hit, but came up 2 short. Oh, well, it was still tough, and I’m so glad I got to go back.

I even saw friends from my 5:15am class! So, at least they know that I didn’t just fall off the face of the earth.

Happy Friday, folks! I hope you push through adversity to find the good in the day. If nothing else, it’s Friday, right?

Dealing with Injury

Posted on by

I had this whole post written about staying positive and focusing on the good in times when you’re feeling low, but I felt like it’d be really disingenuous if I posted that out there in the world when I’ve been acting like the exact opposite.

My leg is in the most pain from about 8pm to 6am. I didn’t really need the pain meds in the hospital the night of the incident, but I woke up at 3am on Tuesday morning begging Sean to find the pain meds. I really think it has something to do with the position I’m sleeping in. There’s no other way but to sleep on my back, but I think my body’s so used to turning to one side that it’s just naturally inclined to turn when I get sleepy.

Since then, I’ve been only taking pain meds right before bed, which has served me well until yesterday. Usually, I fall asleep quickly and don’t wake up until Sean’s work alarm goes off. When I wake up, it feels like my body registers that I’ve been in a weird position all night and my ankle tries to compensate all at once with pain. Yesterday, that meant me eating some dry toast in bed, taking another pain pill, and falling alseep again until about 9am.

Broken Leg and Cat Bonanza

That was all fine and good while I was in the splint.

I thought the splint was uncomfortable because it felt really tight around the ankle. Any time my foot was not elevated, my toes would start to throb and turn purple. No good. I kept telling Sean, “They must have formed the ankle of this splint incorrectly. It always cuts off circulation to my feet.”

We visited the orthopedic doctor yesterday. His nurse delicately cut off the splint and put my ankle up on a pillow (pretty, pretty princess!) to wait for the doctor. My whole ankle was even more swollen than before and blackish-purple. Sean and I made jokes about it, ha ha! My mom’s ankles were this swollen when she had hip replacement surgery. Look! It’s like a tennis ball in my leg. I didn’t even think that the reason my splint was getting so uncomfortable was because my ankle was continuing to swell.

Nasty Foot Shot

The doctor came in and I was being my jovial self, because that’s how I am at the doctor’s. It’s my defense mechanism when confronted with medicinal bad news. He checked out my ankle, pressing on areas and asking where it was tender, and he glanced over the leg where the actual broken bone is. Then he just mentioned in passing that I’m on the brink of needing surgery.

Acawhat?! I thought it was a joke. I whipped my head around and, still half-smiling, said, “No?!”

The huge ankle and tenderness to the touch meant that ligaments are probably torn. We have three options: 1. just do surgery (why would I choose that if I don’t need it?!), 2. put a cast on it and hope it’s not torn ligaments, but if it is your ankle will heal all wonky, 3. put on a temporary boot, get an MRI to determine if surgery is actually necessary, and go from there.

I was still stunned from the surgery thing. Let me remind you that no one at the ER even thought my leg was broken… So we went from, “This is probably just a bad bruise!” to, “It’s a broken leg!” to, “You’re going to need orthopedic surgery” in less than a week. Since I became a bumbling idiot, the doctor just decided to go with the MRI.

With a Boot

The MRI was supposed to be today, but my insurance needed to hear from the doctor that I definitely needed it. So it’s been moved to Monday, and I have to reschedule my follow-up appointment with the orthopedic doc. That just means I have to wear this damn uncomfortable (100#) boot and wait to hear what is all around bad news, really, for that much longer. And I’m just not feeling that positive about it all, honestly.

Sometimes I’ll just sit somewhere and tear up about it. Oh, woe is me! Why me? I know that I have it pretty darn good, actually. I know that. I really, really do. But it’s so hard to tell myself that and believe it. It’s hard to feel positive about sitting around and not training for races or playing soccer or doing CrossFit. Heck, it even sucks to think that I might spend my vacation days recovering from surgery. Hip, hip, hoorah…

But at least I have insurance. And at least I have vacation days to cover it. At least I have Sean who takes care of me better than I probably deserve. At least, at least, at least. Friday’s mission is to be grateful for what I do have.

Being Thankful