Paleo Treats and Physical Feats

Ok, it took me way too long to think of a title for this post and it’s still lame.  But I had many different things going on here and no good way to wrap it up with a pretty bow (title) on top ;)

On Saturday, my Crossfit box had a little Intra-gym Throwdown to celebrate a year of being open!  The actual 1-year mark was back in early February but the celebration didn't’ happen until this weekend. 

The “throwdown” was just an extra special workout (actually 3 different workouts) followed by a Paleo potluck!

I love weekend workouts when there’s a big crowd, so I knew this would be fun, and I was excited to try my hand at a Paleo baked good that I would actually serve to other people besides Brian.

I’m still by NO means eating Paleo, but I still like to try out the recipes!  My Paleo almond-coconut pancakes have been a favorite weekend breakfast around here ever since I first made them (as you’ll see again shortly).

I was bummed I wasn’t going to have any pictures from the actual Throwdown but look what I saw when I checked my gym’s website today (they post each workout, usually with 1 photo from the day):

ME! (and my lovely frizz ball of a ponytail)

Obviously I didn’t even know my coach took this, but it’s a pretty cool photo!! 

This was the last workout of the day which was a ladder workout of Thrusters (45lb for women) and pull-ups.  Basically, the ladder means you do 1 thruster, then 1 pull=up, then 2 thrusters, 2 pull-ups…and so on.  We had 6 Minutes for this.  I ended up with 7 full rounds of each. 

A Thruster is when you squat with the bar, then”thrust” it up over head as you stand. 

The first 2 workouts before this one were:

1. option of the Open’s workout 12.2, which I had done on Thursday and did not feel like repeating it, or a 10 minute AMRAP (as many reps as possible) of:

30 ground-to-overhead (GTO) at 35lb

30 GTO at 55lb

30 GTO at 75 lb

I did the first 60, but 75lb was a bit too much for me so I just did a few 65lb GTO’s until the time was up.

2. Workout 2 was:

8 Min AMRAP:  100 sumo-deadlift-high-pulls, followed by 50 kettlebell swings (35lb), and then box jumps until the time is up.  Unfortunately the KB swing weight was a bit much for me and I didn’t make it to the box jumps (which I actually like!). 

So yeah, that was the throwdown!

For the pot luck I made some Paleo brownies and I’m currently obsessed with them!!

I was unsure at first, but I love them and want to make them again.

I used this recipe by Baker Gal with the following substitutions:

• used 1 cup raw honey
• 1 cup raw almond butter
• 2T apple sauce added
• used 1 egg
• added 1 oz of 72% dark chocolate to the honey in the pan to melt together.
• Baked for 40 minutes but my one change next time would be to check them earlier, I wish they were a little underdone :)

You’d never know there was no flour in those.  I was even asked what kind of flour I used.  They are not too sweet, just deep dark and chocolaty! 

Even Brian loves them.  I’m making sure he saves me the last one. 

Inadvertently, our breakfast this morning also ended up being (mostly) Paleo!  

I’m telling you, those Almond Coconut pancakes are damn good!!

Also had a few slices of ham that we threw on the griddle.

I made extra this time.  I wanted leftovers to stash in the freezer.

Lovely flowers from Brian…I was joking that my Valentine’s day flowers needed to be replaced since they were dying.  And this is what I came home to Friday!

A breakfast feast.

After some digesting and cleaning, we went out for a little run!

I was pumped to try out some of my New Balance gear

I’m wearing:

• the Icefil Short Sleeve
• NBx Prism Capris
• Tonic Crop sports bra
• NBx Cocona Low Cut Socks
• the 870v2 sneakers

Also wore:

The NBx Prism Half Zip 

Thoughts:

• Everything is SOOO soft!  Love the materials.
• The half zip is probably my favorite thing so far.  It fits great and I love that the sleeves can fold over your hands as mittens!  This was great for today’s run.
• Love the t-shirt, especially the neon pink color.  I’ve never really worked out in t-shirts (in warm weather, like instead of a tank) so I’ll have wait until it gets warm out to try that.
• The capris are great, they have a draw string which I love and felts so smooth on my legs.  The material isn’t as thick as some of my other capris but I’m sure that will be much better for the warmer weather.
• I like the sports bra, very comfortable, but I’d probably go for something with more support normally.  I even added cups from another sports bra (I always like a little padding), and was happy there was slots for my to insert the cups.  BONUS: is that it has a little cleavage stash pocket! 
• Verdict is still out on the sneakers.  They are stability shoes which is good for me, but I think I need a bit more arch support so I added my inserts that I always wore with any other running sneaker.  At one point I thought the inserts were bothering me so I stopped and took them out mid run.  But then once we started running again, I started feeling a little arch pain so I put them back in.  We’ll see.  In the end everything was fine, and I might just need to break them in. 

You have until Saturday to use my discount code for 15% off + free shipping at newbalance.com!!  There have been some issues with some of the other girl’s codes so please let me know if you try to use it and it doesn’t work!! 

By the way we did a 3 mile run, plus 2 mile walk with the dog :)

There’s a whole part 2 to this weekend’s activities that include MANY shenanigans at Elizabeth’s 30th birthday party but for now I’m going to keep this post all “healthy” ;)