This past week was a 4 workout week. It wasn’t easy and I really thought about canceling my 4th workout of the week, but I’m so glad I went through with it. This ended up being one of those weeks where I thought it would be normal and then something amazing happened. And after amazing things happen, my confidence in my workout ability goes up so much!
Monday was a pretty fun day. It was a power day and we did switch between blocks. But all of the blocks were about 3 or 4 minutes long, so we were never anywhere for too long. This worked out pretty well for me for my running because I had a lot of all-outs that I could run for. All of the all-outs were between 30 seconds and a minute, and while it’s still not as easy as walking for me it is getting easier to run. In fact, the 30 second runs are starting to feel the same as power walking up an incline for me. It’s totally a sign that my cardiovascular strength and endurance is getting better!
The floor work was pretty great that day too. Again, with all the blocks being really short, I never had time to get too tired. We had a couple of row blocks so I did a 4 minute row and a 3 minute row (those felt so long!). It was a pretty arm focused floor that day so there were also a bunch of shoulder presses, dips, and push ups. But it all felt pretty great to me and I was happy with my workout and how much easier the day felt for me than some other recents workouts have felt.
Wednesday was probably the highlight of my workout week. First, it was a run/row day (which I love). It was an endurance style run/row so I had long distances on the treadmill to work on my run/walk plan. I pretty much kept it the same the entire time with running for a minute and then walking for a minute. I was keeping my run at about 4.8 miles an hour and my walk at about 3.6 miles an hour and that is starting to feel more comfortable for me. Since I’m still walking I am using the walk distances on the run/row (which is half the distance that the runners do). I know that I should probably start splitting the difference between the run distance and walk distance eventually, but I’m not quite there yet.
The second to last run segment of the run/row was .5 miles, so I did .25 miles. I realized how much faster my time is when I’m doing the run/walk method and while I was on the rower started to think about how long and far I’ve run so far. My record time before Wednesday was just under 2 minutes. The final run segment of the run/row was .25 miles (.13 for walkers) and I had figured out that if I bumped up my run speed a bit, I could run .25 miles in just over 3 minutes. It would be the longest and farthest run so far, but I was almost done with the run/row so I figured it couldn’t hurt to try.
My friend Dani was in that class with me and I told her I was going to try to run .25 miles. She’s been a power walker with me, but she used to run so she said she would run on her treadmill next to me while I tried. The first minute went pretty easily and I’m so glad that Dani was paying attention to the distance on my treadmill because when she told me I was halfway there I knew I was going to be able to do it. For the last .05 miles I was really struggling. I wanted to quit and say that I had tried (and it would have still been the longest and farthest run so far), but with Dani cheering me on I knew I had to keep going. And when I got to .25 miles, I had run the entire thing and I was beyond excited!
It was just over 3 minutes of running and even though I proved I can do this it’s not going to be something I do regularly quite yet. I’d like to get to where I start doing the shorter push paces (between 1-2 minutes) as a run so I can work getting more used to running versus running longer distances right now. But to know that I can do this was just so incredible and I know I couldn’t have done it without Dani pushing me and cheering me on.
That day, my floor work did suffer a bit. I was so tired after that run and I had to spend more time catching my breath and taking breaks than I would have liked to. Fortunately, we had a lot of arm work and work on the ab roller so that was helping me calm down a bit after the run.
Friday was an endurance, strength, power day where we didn’t switch between blocks. During the endurance and power blocks I was running during the all-out segments and walked during the base and push paces. I wanted to try to run a bit more than that, but my body was still a bit tired from Wednesday (I’m aware I might have overdone things a bit). For the strength block, since I’m not really ready to run up hills yet I just did my power walking. I was able to get my inclines up higher than usual so that was a nice accomplishment for me. And on the floor I got a ton more leg work in with squats, lunges, and deadlifts.
Saturday was another endurance day and I’m glad that I was on the bike for it. We didn’t switch between the blocks and we had some really long push paces. Between the 2 cardio blocks, there were 2 pushes for 3 minutes, 2 pushes for 2 minutes, and 2 pushes for 90 seconds. Even with being on the bike (which is much easier for me than the treadmill), I was really tired during those long pushes. I’m not sure if I wasn’t working as hard as I should have or if my heart rate monitor was being glitchy, but I couldn’t get my heart rate up during the cardio. I tried not to let that bug me, but it was annoying when I felt like I was working so hard and my heart rate was at a speed like when I’m stretching during a cool down.
Despite the heart rate issues during the cardio, I was pretty happy with my floor work. There were 2 blocks on the floor and each started with a long row. The first was 1,000 meters and the second was 500 meters. My 1,000 meter row wasn’t so great (I had a rower that didn’t have the right setting for my smaller feet) but my 500 meter row was a similar time to my Peak Performance Week time. Considering that my 500 meter row on Saturday was almost at the end of my workout, I’m really happy that I could almost match my row at the beginning of a workout. During the first block, I didn’t get a ton of time to work on the strength work because my row took so long. But since my second row was so fast, I had plenty of time to work. There was more ab roller work (knee tucks and rollouts) and I really was feeling my abs working hard to keep my form right. I actually like when I can feel my muscles working because then I know that I’m working the right thing and I can feel all the work I’ve done before in my strength.
It was a pretty long and awesome week of workouts. I’ve been working on planing out my month of workouts since I’ve got a lot of things that will either keep me busy or not able to work out for some other reason. I think I’ve got a plan to hit my target number of workouts for the month, and this past week was a great start!
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