Squat Cleans / Burpee Box Jumps

The Asheville Citizen Times Half Marathon is coming up… this Saturday! Accordingly, I have a bit of a different plan for this week, the fifth week of my training cycle. The plan is: full WOD on Monday, strength only (two lifts) on Tuesday, rest on Wednesday, rehab strength on Thursday, Friday rest, Saturday: RUN.

A plan is a plan, but then there’s the reality. And the reality was I got less than 5 quality hours of sleep coming into this morning. So, tired and mentally not fully with it, I arrived at the 6:00 am workout, determined to push on, but feeling like all was not entirely well with my (training) world.

When I got there, I took stock of the workout. Rx’d: full squat cleans (5 heavy reps), followed by a simple, but brutal, WOD: 50 burpee box jumps. Difficult stuff.

The WOD, in brief:

Strength: Squat Cleans

On the record books, I have a 1 rep PR of 150. So I figured, 5 reps at 135 ought to be doable.

Result: 5 x 45 / 5 x 75 / 5 x 105 / 3 x 115 / 1 x 125 / 3 x 135 (pathetic fail on 4).

I felt like there was no reason why I hadn’t done sets of 5 on the 115 and the 125, especially since I didn’t get the 135. I played this strength cycle wrong; and the issue was mental alacrity, not power. I chalk that up to fatigue.

WOD: 50 Burpee Box Jumps

I never question Shanna’s programming, and I won’t today! This was a perfect workout, essentially combining two of my least favorite body weight movements.

I repped this one out, slow as a tortoise, but happy at least for one thing. A year ago, my old broken leg hurt lie hell every time I took a step, and by October I had entirely given up running and jumping, before being knocked out of all dynamic work for weeks starting in February. So when I came in nearly last in the group, at 24″ box / 6:57 / bare feet!, I was happy to be doing it. But bummed to feel so beat down.

My Training Cycle

General exhaustion has me questioning my plan to keep a 7 week training cycle, consisting of 6 weeks on, 1 week off. I have worked very hard for the past four weeks (Aug. 15th to Sep. 11th), hit tons of PRs, made progress in various areas, but now, I’m way tired, and for the past week, my performance has suffered, along with my focus and even my sleep. It all points to cortisol overload and a danger of overtraining.

What could be more frustrating than being exhausted but not being able to sleep? That’s been me of late. And yet, I have only myself to blame. I can’t seem to give up caffeine! Can you? It’s the one anti-sleep factor in my life that I could control, if I chose to. Or is it an addiction? A disease? I don’t know.

Anyway, I’ll try to fix my sleep. But I’m also thinking it’s time to re-think my training cycles.

This week, the start of my fifth week, feels like it ought to be a rest week. (I will rest more this week, but only because the HALF MARATHON is on Saturday!) My level of fatigue has got me thinking that I ought to work on an 8 week cycle with something like 3 weeks on, 1 week of strength only, 3 weeks on, 1 week of full rest. Or something like that.