This week was a tough week of workouts. But they weren’t tough because the workouts were hard. They were tough because I was struggling. I know that having off days is a part of making progress, but knowing it doesn’t make things easier when I’m having an off week.
I knew Monday might be tough because I was still recovering from my night shoot over the weekend. But I got a lot of sleep on Sunday night, so I was feeling pretty good waking up on Monday morning. So I thought that maybe I wasn’t going to have a bad day and my exhaustion was done. And when I got to Orangetheory and saw that it was a run/row day, I was pretty excited because I knew that those days are easier on me with keeping the treadmill time to short bursts.
But it was also a strength day which meant hills on the treadmill. I tried to run the first segment on the treadmill (with incline), and it just wasn’t going to happen. After trying to run for that first segment, I realized that there just wasn’t going to be any more running that day. I did power walk everything else and it wasn’t my best speed or incline but I got it done. And we did have to do calf raises after each row segment so I was able to catch my breath a bit between rowing and the treadmill. Fortunately, I did a bit better on the floor that day. We did a lot of shoulder work and also had some rollouts on the straps (which I felt great because my body needed that stretch). We also had a 6 minute block on the floor that was just ab work using the Bosu ball, which also was less taxing on my body.
Wednesday I was finally feeling more like myself. I’m shocked how long it took me to recover from the night shoot, but I also think I pushed myself too hard the 2 days after the shoot so I wasn’t able to recover as fast as I could have. The workout was endurance, strength, and power and we were switching between blocks so the class seemed to go by pretty quickly for me. For the endurance and strength treadmill blocks, I walked the base and push paced but I did run for the all-outs. But on the power section we had 30 second all-outs followed by 30 second walking recoveries and I was able to run for all of those all-outs. I was going pretty quickly for those 30 second segments, typically staying above 5 mph.
The floor work was focused a lot on arms and abs. I was doing ok with that until the very end of class where we had a short buddy challenge. My friend Dani was in class with me so she and I partnered up. We had to be in a plank and alternate bringing one hand up to high-five each other while staying in the plank. At the beginning I was doing ok, but my body was so ready to be done by then. I tried to keep up my part of the partner work and to bring my hand up every time so Dani always had a buddy to high-five, but I wasn’t able to keep my plank the entire time and was feeling pretty out of breath while trying. Again, I was frustrated that I had to give up during the workout, but I was trying to remind myself that I had just done a big workout and did some pretty fast run sprints.
Friday was the day that I was back to my usual workout self. We had a strength day that did switch between the blocks. Since I’m really not ready to work on running on hills, I stayed with power walking for almost all of the treadmill work. I was keeping my inclines up around 6-10% and my speed was usually between 3.5 and 3.7 mph during all the push paces. One of the all-outs was on an incline so I walked that one too. But we did have 2 all-outs that were at a flat road and I ran those. For the 1 minute all-out, I ran for a minute at 5 mph which felt really fast that day but it was great not having to be at an incline! And for the 30 second all-out, I was going at 5.5 mph which felt like flying to me! I really love doing those sprints because I’m able to go really fast and I love feeling that. I just really need to work on my endurance so I can start running more often in the workouts.
The floor work on Friday was a good mix of rowing and arms. We had a bunch of 200 meter rows which I was able to do in under 55 seconds every time. The rows were tough toward the end of the workout, but since they were short they weren’t too bad. We also had to do ultimate burpees in the first block which were much easier for me than they have been in a while. I was able to include the push up with each burpee and I was using some pretty heavy weights for them as well. All of my arm work was done with 15 pound weights, which aren’t the best I’ve used but since there was so much arm work I was happy with that.
Friday’s class also marked the last class I’ll get to take with my friend Dani for a while. She’s leaving next week to go to Africa where she will be hiking up Mt. Kilimanjaro! While I’m sad I’ll be missing my workout buddy for a few weeks, I’m super excited for her! This is going to be a huge hike and I know she’s been working really hard on getting ready for the trip and making sure that she’s in the best shape possible. She’s been using super high inclines for all of her treadmill work and she’s been doing really long hikes every weekend to make sure her endurance is there. She got an Orangetheory hat as a gift from the studio we go to and I’m so excited to see the picture of her on the top of the mountain wearing it! So since this was our last class together for a while, I figured we had to get a post-workout sweaty selfie together.
The next two weeks of workouts will be working around my trip next weekend, but I’ve finally got it all figured out! I might not be hitting all of my workout goals this month (like wanting to try to run for 5 minutes), but at least I’m not giving up!
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