This past week of workouts were interesting for me. I was finally getting over my bronchitis, but I also started dealing with nausea. It was really annoying timing because the day I was finally feeling better from one thing was the day that I started being nauseous. It was also an interesting week because the workouts were designed to help us get ready for the Dri-Tri. At the beginning of the week, I was on the waitlist for the Dri-Tri, but by Friday I knew I was officially in. I was hoping to get in so I did do my workouts with the assumption that I was prepping for it.
Monday’s workout was the class that was very clearly prep for the Dri-Tri. We had a workout with endurance, strength, and power and the endurance portion of the class was a 2000 meter row benchmark. This is the same distance that we have as the row for the Dri-Tri. While it is a benchmark, we don’t do it that often so I was happy that I had it as a part of my workout so I could have an idea of what I’d be able to do.
I knew I wouldn’t get a personal best with the row because of how I was feeling. I also know that my endurance is still lower than it’s been before so I have to work up to that again. But I still wanted to set a goal time in my head. I would have loved to have been under 9 minutes, but I knew that would be pushing myself too much. I wanted to push myself a little, but also not hurt myself or make it so that rowing throughout the week would be painful. So I went with just wanting to be able to do the row in under 9 1/2 minutes. That’s still better than many of my 2000 meter rows and it seemed like a good number to have in my head.
I was pretty steady with my rowing. I didn’t change up the speed for a majority of the row. I was just going and trying to not push too hard since that is the downfall for longer rows. I kept checking in with my time and my distance and saw I was right about what I would need to be to get to my goal time. But I also knew at the halfway mark that I’m often slower for the second half than the first half and if I wanted to hit my goal I would need to push it at the end. So when I got to the last 200 meters, I just went hard and I made it under my goal!
The cardio work was decreasing distance runs. We were doing our own tracking and timing. For the bike, it started at 2 trips and then we had a minute to recover. Each round went down by .4 with a recovery after. I was trying my best to track my distance each time, but sometimes I got a bit distracted. I always went the full 2 trips if I forgot what distance I started at. I figured overdoing it was better than under-doing it.
And on the floor, we had a mix of Bosu work and weight work. On the Bosu, we had back extensions and running men. For weights we had squats to overhead presses and tricep work. We also had bicycle crunches. I was going heavy for my tricep work and medium heavy for the overhead presses. Even though I was going from being on the ground to standing up over and over, my nausea wasn’t kicking in during that the way I was expecting it to. That was a nice surprise and allowed me to do more rounds on the floor than I thought I would be able to do.
Wednesday’s workout was a strength based class, and it ended up being special because I realized it was my 50th class of 2019! I’m ahead of my goal for my workouts this year and that’s exactly where I want to be. I want to be ahead so that when I do have a week where I can’t do 4 workouts that I already have workouts banked to cover that.
For cardio, we had 2 blocks that had a similar format. We started with doing a distance run/bike and we were supposed to go to a recovery once we hit that distance. I was having a really bad nausea day, so I never hit the distance by the time we were moving on. But that just meant I skipped the recovery time which was fine since I wasn’t pedaling too hard. After the distance each block, we had incline work. We increased the incline/resistance level every 30 seconds and it ended with an all out pace. The way the resistance levels worked for me, I increased the level every 30 seconds and 1 level higher than the hill was my all out level which worked out nicely.
On the rower, we had 2 similar blocks. We started with a 2 minute timed row. After the row we had lunges with rotations for the first block and regular lunges for the second block. Then we did half the distance we got on the 2 minute row with more lunges. And we ended with cutting the distance in half again. I never made it to the lunges after the 3rd row, but I was happy with how I was doing with the rower for all my distances.
And the floor was 1 long block with almost all weighted exercises. For weighted exercises we had kneeling low rows, sitting shoulder presses to stands, hip hinge reverse flies, and double crunches. We also had low rows on the straps. Because of the nausea I was dealing with, I had to go a bit lighter on the weights. I was able to go a bit heavy on the double crunches since I was laying on my back, but the other exercises were bringing my nausea out a bit.
Friday was my last regular workout of the week and the first workout I had were I knew for sure I’d be doing the Dri-Tri. I went easy on myself because of the nausea and because I knew I’d have a hard day the next day. I’m glad I knew to go easy because I would have hated it if I worked hard and was sore and then found out I got off the wait list for the Dri-Tri.
The cardio was 2 blocks with hill climbs. Each block started with a 90 second hill where the incline/resistance level increased every 30 seconds. We had a base pace with no incline work before a 90 second push pace without incline. Both blocks ended with a push pace and an all out pace. I was using my new resistance levels for all the work and the hill work was around the levels I use for my push and all out paces.
On the rower, the first block was timed rows with lunges between each row. We had a 90 second row, 60 second row, and 30 second row. The second block was distance rows with lunges between. The rows were 400 meters, 200 meters, and 100 meters. I did pretty well with how far I got with the timed rows and how quickly I could do the distance rows. But I struggled a lot with the lunges. For the second block, I decided to do squats instead. It can get tough for me to step over the rower to have the space for the lunges and I can do squats just standing over the rower.
And on the floor, we had 2 blocks as well. The first block had sit-ups to sumo squats, goblet squats, and bicep curls. I had to separate the sit-ups and sumo squats because it’s very difficult for me to do them as a single move. But because I split them, I could go heavier with the weight I used. And the second block was push-ups, squats, and side plank rotations. The second block was a bit harder for me in terms of my nausea, but it wasn’t as bad as it was on Wednesday.
After my 3 workouts for the week, I did feel as prepared as I could be for the Dri-Tri. I am always a little nervous before doing it and I’ve got a little extra nerves this time because I’ve never had to do the Dri-Tri while getting over a cold and dealing with nausea. But I know I did a lot of work during my workouts to be in the best place I could be going into it. My expectations were lower than other times and I was curious to see what would happen. And I’ll be writing about how it went a little later this week!
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