Friday Coffee: 24 Mar 2017

Because coffee is better in a ceramic mug.

My last bout of flu was concurrent with the end of my trip to Savannah, GA last month. I went a few days without coffee and while thinking that I would feel like garbage anyway, decided it would be a good time to attempt to quit.

That lasted all of four hours the Wednesday following.

However, I did decide to take moments and savor coffee instead of simply consuming it as I went along my day. To that end, it seemed a rather good idea to combine that discipline with a weekly stint of writing. I’ve struggled for most of the past ten-plus years to find my writing voice. This page is as much of a record of that as any.

This Week in The Cross Fitness

Depending on the day, I’ve lost ten to fifteen pounds in the past month or so. I’m not normally one to track my weight, but I did modify my diet ever so slightly and this seemed as good a measurable as any to determine my progress. I am more happy with the man in the mirror and my CrossFit has improved quite a bit as a result. Body weight movements are especially easier (duh), but I am rather excited that the gymnastics movements have become easier for me too. Pull-ups and toes-to-bar are much simpler to string together and I make considerable progress with my handstand push-ups (HSPU) each time I attempt them.

Weekly Measurables:

1. Did three sets of 5 unbroken HSPU in the Wednesday metcon. That was the wall, but that is also a PR.
2. I am destroying pull-ups. Large numbers are no longer intimidating and for the first time in years I’ve torn my hands doing them.
3. Open Workout 17.4 was 16.4. I had a forty rep PR.

On the mobility side, I discovered after a demoralizing bout with tightness in my knee that a lacrosse ball to the piriformis is my latest pre-workout need. I was getting minimal recovery results with rolling my IT band when I quite accidentally rolled into a sweet spot. A choir of seraphim lead by Rich Froning himself sounded as relief spread down my leg and right into the tight bit of my knee. I feel like a new athlete.

The past weeks have also been concurrent with the 2017 CrossFit Open, a time of year I usually dread and begrudgingly accept as part of the culture. Not so this year! A new box and a series of workouts that are both challenging and fun have made the 2017 CrossFit Open (redundancy because this is a golf page, primarily, and The Open this year is at Royal Birkdale) a joy in which to participate.

Holy Golf!

Cory visited this part weekend and we played 126 distinct holes of golf together. Add in the round on Streamsong Red I played Friday Morning and that’s 144 holes over the course of four days. Saturday was the marathon day with a tune-up round at Grenelefe, the highlight of the day at Country Club of Winter Haven, and a bonnieswoggle* at The Club at Eaglebrooke. Sunday and Monday features rounds at both courses at Belleair Country Club bookended by rounds at Clearwater CC and Dunedin.

I might save my thoughts on the new-to-me courses (Clearwater, Belleair, and Grenelefe) for a different post, but we had fun and it was satisfying to share my enthusiasm for Dunedin and CC of Winter Haven with Cory.

Physically all this golf had very little effect. In 2011, the last time I played 54 holes in a day, I was exhausted at the end of the third round. CrossFit works. As for the physical aspects of my game, I was all over the map. Not surprisingly, the areas on which I have been working (short game and putting) excelled but my driver is stuck somewhere between 1995 Corey Pavin and Boston attorney on the tee at Streamsong Red on a Wednesday morning in February.

I did generate some fizz during my rounds at Belleair and it felt good to go back into the attack the golf course mode. The highlight perhaps being a 210-yard uphill 4-iron stuffed to the back corner of the Par 3 12th on the West Course following a Donald Ross inspired bogey on 11 where my wedge got tugged just enough by the wind to fall short and I missed a dicey four-foot putt to save par.

*I am looking for a word that describes the act of playing an additional round of golf when both daylight and motivation cooperate. An “emergency nine” is technically played at the same golf course. Eaglebrooke was not planned until we were walking up the 16th hole at Winter Haven with six-plus hours of daylight left. Bonnieswoggle it is.

That’s Not Saucy Living

Driving from CrossFit to Publix the other day in a state of post-workout exhaustion/bliss I was absent-mindedly picking my nose with a tissue. Out of the corner of my eye a bright light flashed and I turned to realize that my act had been Snapchatted or some other such form of social media to the world. I laughed. They laughed. But if anyone has received this, let me know, k?

Photograph of the Week

A Killdeer parent guarding the nest at Streamsong. Taken with my new 55-250mm lens on Wednesday Morning.