The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (of the weekend)
The Good: Dinner with friends. Lucky Boys Confusion Concert. CrossFit, Fight Gone Bad. How to Write Better class. Da Bears. Food, Food and more Food.
The Bad: Da Bears. Food, Food and more Food.
The Ugly: Food, Food and more Food.
Thursday night we met up with Rafal and Magda, took the train downtown, met up with Ricardo his girlfriend Johanna and their friends Elana & Sasha and enjoyed dinner and drinks over great conversation. Ricardo & Johanna were visiting Chicago from LA so we wanted to take them to our favorite restaurant, Avec. Problem is Avec doesn’t accept reservations. When we got to Avec and told them we were a party of 8 we were greeted with an approximate 2.5 hour wait. We decided to look for a place nearby to wait and wound up at Nia Restaurant, a Medeterannian Tapas. I ordered a Greek Salad and a cocktail, Pillow Talk (as seen below). The drink was a combination of White Sangria, cava and strawberry and it was delicious.
No this drink is not paleo. When I go out I don’t restrict myself, unless I’m in the middle of testing my body with a personal experiment. As I tell almost everyone who asks about being Primal/Paleo, it’s a lifestyle not a diet. We follow these simple rules 80% of the time. The rest of the time we have whatever we want.
We left Nia and walked to Avec. With a little over an hour before our train was scheduled to leave we were able to enjoy the full Avec experience in a compacted period of time.
Friday afternoon I went to my Not-A-CrossFit class and Jason took it easy on us with a sprint workout, in anticipation of Saturday’s Fight Gone Bad. Previous to our 20 sprints I maxed out at 160lbs for deadlifts and was quite excited about that.
Friday night Mike, Jeff & I went to the Joe Sell memorial/15 year anniversary Lucky Boys Confusion show at House of Blues Chicago. Doors opened at 11pm and we had Foundation Room access so we arrived pretty close to that time and didn’t have to wait out in the cold to get in. It was the first time we had experienced a concert from the Foundation Room level, which gave us access to every level but we chose to stay on the third level center.
We watched Gumby flying around in the mosh pit surrounded by the sold out crowd. It was the first time we heard LBC play Champion live. The mash up of the older songs were a sweet combination and it’s always awesome to watch Stubhy’s reaction when the crowd sings louder than him (specifically during Blood Drops). But Mr. Wilmington was by far the most emotional song of the night.
Two nights in a row we were out pretty late but Saturday morning I woke up early to make a variation of my Cauliflower Rainbow Salad to bring to the CrossFit Roselle Fight Gone Bad BBQ. A little background behind Fight Gone Bad.
Fight Gone Bad is one of the CrossFit benchmark WODs. It was designed to simulate the time domain of a mixed martial arts bout of five minutes of work followed by one minute of rest. It was named after BJ Penn, a professional mixed martial artist, who remarked that it was like a “fight gone bad” when asked how it compared to a real fight.
In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of “rotate,” you must move to the next station immediately for a good score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each calorie is one point.
Fight Gone Bad was 3 rounds of the following stations. (My scores are also recorded below, my final total was 222.)
- 14lb Wallball Shots (23, 19, 20)
- Sumo Deadlift High Pull (17, 15, 15)
- 20″ Box Jumps (12, 13, 13)
- Push Press (16, 14, 13)
- Calorie Row (10, 11, 11)
Friday at our Not-A-CrossFit class was the first time I had attempted a box jump in my life. I was pretty hesitant about doing them because a 20″ box is almost half my height! During the first round of box jumps I was asked if I wanted to move down in height, after already doing a few I knew I could do it. I felt good after I finished all three rounds and really didn’t foresee how hard it was going to hit me just a few hours later. After sleeping through one full college football game I jumped right in to catch up on my writing homework.
Not only have I been taxing my body with CrossFit lately, I’ve also been pushing my limits in a completely different direction. I don’t think it’s any secret that I dislike writing. With Josh’s motivation I signed up for the How to Write Better class and I’ve absolutely been loving it. I highly recommend it whether you’re a writer or not. It’s definitely helping me put more of a priority on writing and creating the habit.
After quite an intense Saturday I had absolutely no interest in cooking so we went out for pizza at a local joint (again not paleo).
Needless to say, Sunday was a low key/catch up day for us. We watched the Bears and their ugly, nail-biting win but after drinks Thursday night, sushi Friday night, pizza crepes and cherry pie Saturday, all the grain and sugar felt like a train rolled over me then rolled backed up and over just for good measure. Even though all the food tasted great, the last few days have been a stellar reminder of why we chose over and over to be paleo.
Sugar is so addictive for me that when I left the house to return a book on Sunday I was seriously scouting which local bakery I was going to stop at to pick up a brownie. CRAZY! We had an eventful weekend and all the food was a great reminder that it’s time to lay off the sugar, again. I see another sugar fast in my near future.
How was your weekend? What was the highlight?
