Measuring Progress

Measuring has never been something that has been my forte.  In high school, I never understood why Tim always wanted me to be his lab partner because I always did awful in lab.  In some ways, I love to be exact.  When things are exact they are perfectly clear.  It makes it much easier to track mistakes when something goes awry.  But sometimes in real life we can't measure everything out to an exact science.  As much as we try to use recipes and follow procedure, sometimes you just can't make Grandma Noblett's Apple Pie like she used to.

I'm having a little trouble with this lately.  Since starting the Zone, I have been very tough on weighing and measuring my foods to get the proper proportion of my nutrients, and I think it has been working.  The problem is that over the past two days I have not been so exact on blocking out my food and haven't been checking my references.  Doing a lot of eyeballing.  But, suddenly today I had an amazing WOD.  Here's what we did:

WOD Monday 09/27/10

1000m row (Concept2 rowers)
Tabata Hang Squat Snatch (45#, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds rest, 8 rounds)
1000m row

Score is total time and number of snatches.

The snatch is a really difficult move to execute.  For these, starting with the barbell at a normal hang with a wide grip, you use a hip extension (plus a little muscle) to get the bar over your head while squatting underneath, and standing up with the bar still overhead.  But somehow, between the warm-up and being in the Paleo-Zone, I was able to pull off a time of 12:39, with 36 SNATCHES!!  After being one of the "athletes" who always scales and sometimes finishes last in the class, I rocked it.  At Rx, the prescribed weight of the day!  [NOTE:  The name "Life as N(x)" is a parody of "Life as Rx," a CrossFit apparel organization]

But here's the problem...what gave me such great results?  Was it staying in the Zone all last week?  Was it a change in my diet by adding in more fish?  Was it because I was less stressed with school?  Was it because I ate pre-WOD?  Started taking Progenex, a protein powder for recovery?   Was it because I hit FGB5 hard and was just ready to rock out?  Too many variables were changed.  It wasn't a positive result.  It could have been a fluke; a perfect storm of epic proportions.

I wish I had a better way of measuring my progress.  I just have to be more diligent about being consistent now and making sure that what I'm doing works.  I guess I learned something in high school chemistry after all...