Prepping for the Total

I am stupid excited - today is the Crossfit Total.

Essentially it's your chance both to find out your true max on three basic lifts (strict overhead press, back squat and deadlift), and to set up some baseline numbers. You have three attempts at each lift, with your heaviest completed lift in each combined to reveal your score.

I dig lifting. I dig finding out what I can do. I'm somewhat conservatively shooting for 435, basing this on a 225 deadlift, 75 press and 135 squat. I do not think 135 is my true max for a back squat, but my form has been awful this week with much lighter weight. Even with a piece of PVC, I find my chest sinking down as I squat. SO...while I think, from my prior squats, I could do more like 155, I'm not going to cry if today's not the day for that. I'd rather focus on doing it right and improving the weight later.

ANYWAY. While in the back of my mind I believe I should hit 450-460 today...I am focusing on making my press and my deadlift heavy, and my squat good. And I am stupid, STUPID excited to both do this myself, AND to watch everyone else kill theirs.

To prep for this, I spent last night hanging out with my dogs, watching Bradley Cooper run around Philadelphia-dressed-up-as-New-York in Limitless, and eating the majority of a rotisserie chicken.

Sophie acted coquettish in the hopes it would make some chicken come her way.

Cosmo reluctantly settled for a bully stick. Neither was impressed by Bradley. Whatever.

I got a buttload of sleep - I don't care if being in bed at 10pm on a Friday night makes me a loser. I only stayed up that late for the dogs' sake, to be honest - I could have crashed at 9 or 9:30. This was a brutal week.

After the pups and I took our usual Saturday morning jaunt, I decided to forego my normal routine of chilling in bed with my laptop in favor of getting down to business with breakfast.

I used kitchen shears to cut two strips of thick-cut bacon into small pieces, directly into the pan. After the bacon started to render, I added half a package of sliced mushrooms and, once the mushrooms were mostly cooked, tossed in a couple big handfuls of baby spinach.

I scrambled the entire mess up with three eggs, some salt and pepper, and called it good.

This paleo thing has been pretty good for me. I truly don't miss bread and dairy at all, though that may be because I give myself a couple of meals a week to eat whatever the F I want. Sometimes that means having Conn's potato chips for dinner.

(As far as I know, they only sell these in the Wheeling, WV/St. Clairsville, OH area. We always had them at my great-grandmother's house when I was a kid, and while I'm willing to bet they're not ACTUALLY that good, the fact that I only get them once a decade, when coupled with the nostalgia factor, makes them FUCKING AMAZING.)

Sometimes that means having a pizza for lunch with my boss. (We tried Serafina at 18th & Sansom this week. I had a pizza with prosciutto and an egg. It was underwhelming.) And pretty much every week, it means I slowly eat a bar of dark chocolate (either 70 or 85% cocoa content) a couple squares at a time over the course of the week.

But in general, I feel good and I am noticeably leaner. If I dialed it in a little more I bet I would shed this fat pretty fast, but I'm liking this whole "hey this takes no effort at all" business.

AND I CANNOT WAIT TO PICK UP SOME HEAVY SHIT TODAY.

How's your Labor Day weekend going? Picking up anything heavy? Performing any other feats of fitness?