Like I mentioned yesterday, I technically did 4 workouts last week. My Saturday workout wasn’t a regular class at Orangetheory, but instead one of the special classes they offer for members from time to time. This time, it was a 1 hour running class. So instead of the hour being split between cardio and weights, it was cardio only.
I’ll admit that I wasn’t feeling too sure about signing up. I actually didn’t sign up until Friday because I was going back and forth if I should do it. But there was one space left when I was there on Friday and I saw that as I sign that I was supposed to go. I had already talked to the coach, Dana, about it and she said that I could do it as a run/walk without too many issues.
While working on Saturday before the class, I was thinking that I made a huge mistake. I knew I couldn’t back out, but I was having some serious regrets. But I decided to try to have a positive mindset and hope for the best (similar to how I was feeling for the Dri-Tri). And by the time it was time for me to drive over to take the class, I was feeling a bit better about things.
I knew that there would be endurance, strength, and power work during the hour, but I wasn’t sure how it would go and was a little nervous that I wouldn’t know how to split things between running and walking. So when class started, I jumped on my favorite treadmill (number 11) and was walking to warm up.
The first thing we had during the class was endurance work which was really more like speed work. The plan was to try to bump up our base pace and push pace each time, but I knew speed work wasn’t what I needed. So for all the 90 second push paces, I ran at the speed I’m comfortable running at (pretty much between 4.5 and 5.0 mph). I walked during all of the base paces, but was able to run for all of the 90 second pushes.
Our next work was timed distances. The first thing we had to do was .25 miles, which I knew I could do. But since I knew I could do it, this time I did want to try to bump up my speed to see if I could get a bit faster. I was able to get my time down below 3 minutes (2:53 to be exact) and was feeling super exhausted and out of breath after that. We were supposed to then do .5 miles for time, but I knew I couldn’t run that and to run/walk it was going to be very tough because of how much I pushed it with the .25 mile. So I just walked it at an incline and tried to calm my heart rate down a bit.
Our next segment was strength, which is all hill work. I’m not ok with running on hills really, so I did this entire segment as a walk. I tried to keep my inclines up higher than normal, but I’m really having trouble doing anything beyond 12% incline. But this part went by pretty quickly for me so I’m glad that I didn’t have to just walk for too long.
One of the last segments was power work. This was short push to all out paces. Some of them were at inclines, but below 4% which isn’t too bad for me (4% is considered flat road for power walkers). For all the push to all outs, I ran everything. I did walk during the walking recovery, but I know that I ran a lot more than I have ever so that was pretty awesome.
To finish up the run class, we had a mile challenge. We had 8 or 9 minutes to get it done, and I knew I wasn’t feeling ok to do an entire mile (nor could I finish in that time). So I decided that I was going to push myself to do a half mile as a run/walk with 1 minute runs and 1 minute walks. This is the pace I feel like I might be able to do for my next 5K, so I really want to work on feeling more comfortable with this pattern and get my endurance up. It wasn’t easy considering how much work I had already done, but I was able to get it done and felt pretty great that I finished!
We had to keep starting and stopping our treadmills, but I knew I’d want to know my distance so every time we stopped I got a picture. And here’s what I ended up doing within the hour.
That’s 3.55 miles in 56:36! To put things in perspective, my last 5K was about 20 seconds slower than the class was and I did almost .5 miles more! That’s way more improvement than I would have expected! Since we had the treadmill segments broken up, I have no clue what time it was when I got to 3.1 miles but I still know that I am faster!
After class was done, I was so happy that I decided to go for it. It was not easy and there were times in the middle that I questioned doing it, but I know that I need to push myself like this. It’s only going to make me stronger and faster in all aspects of my life. While I’m still nervous about my next 5K, I’m feeling slightly better that it’s not going to be impossible and that I can at least run/walk part of it!
I’m hoping to start doing some non-Orangetheory run practice soon. I need to figure out a safe time for me to be running on the running path near my house (so during the daylight but not when it’s too hot). The more practice I can get in, the better! And this class was a great way to get that practice started!
