Finding My Inner Bombshell

This past week of workouts was another one of my good weeks. But just like the week before, I didn’t push myself too much. I wasn’t planning on going easy for both of my good weeks and worry that this will cause me to struggle a bit more with my bad week, but that’s how things turned out this past week. I had to go a little easier due to some hip pain associated with the weather, which is something out of my control. And then I chose to go easier on Thursday for another reason.

Thursday was a benchmark workout, which I usually push myself for. This time, it was the 12-minute run/bike. This is one of the harder benchmarks since it will always take 12 minutes to complete it. With the other benchmarks, you can tell yourself if you go faster it will be done faster. That won’t work for this one. I’ve been very lucky to be able to improve on my distance on the bike the last few times, but this time I knew that pushing myself wasn’t the right choice. I was going to be at a work event that evening and I would be standing around in heels for several hours. So I needed my legs to not be exhausted after my workout. It was a little annoying to not push myself when I would have loved to see if I could beat my past distance, but I didn’t want to be miserable later that day. So I took it easy for those 12 minutes. I set the bike resistance level for between my base and push pace levels and just tried to bike as long as I could without take a break. I did still have to take a few breaks, but they weren’t that frequent. I also tried to ignore the distance I got since I knew it wouldn’t be great, but I did look at the end and it was so much worse than almost all my past benchmarks. But I just reminded myself that I wasn’t trying so I can’t compare my distance from when I was trying.

A lot of the rest of the week had a lot of endurance work, so I spent my workouts being focused on keeping things steady and not having too many hills and valleys with how I was feeling. I’m probably a lot better at power or sprints for cardio than I am for endurance, so it’s not the worst thing for me to slow down a bit more than I would like. It’s not easy for me to do since I do like to push myself, but I’m trying to understand more and more that I can have more well-rounded workouts that aren’t always pushing me to the limit.

I know that my bad week is likely to start this week, but I’m trying to stay hopeful that either it won’t happen or won’t be as bad as it can be. I don’t know if I’ll be able to push myself much this week, but I really want to try as long as other factors allow me to. I do worry that I will feel worse about my bad week, but I also know that if that happens it’s only a minor setback and I’ll be feeling more like myself again soon. But even if I know that, it can still mess with my mind when I feel like I’m not able to do what I know I can do. I hate that I get down on myself like that, but it’s just how my brain works. Maybe having an easier week when I’m feeling good will make an easy week not as emotional and tied to a bad week and that can help me feel better about it. I guess I’ll find out after the next week or two when I’m over my bad week.

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I was feeling much more like my normal self this past week. This is always good, but it’s extra nice for my workouts. I will always have the potential to not feel great between the pain I sometimes have with my hip and the nausea I get with my injection, but when I know there’s a chance to have a good week it automatically puts me in a much better mood. I did have a little bit of hip pain this past week, but it wasn’t much worse than what I deal with daily. And I must have gotten my injection in the right spot because I didn’t have much nausea. I did inject myself in a spot that caused the worst bruise I’ve ever gotten from a shot, but that pain is a lot easier to deal with since I only have to be careful about how I bend down so I don’t make it hurt.

Typically, when I have a good week like I had this past week, I use it to push myself really hard. I feel like I need to make up for having to go easy the week or two prior. But this past week, even though the workouts always have a mix of endurance, strength, and power they felt more like they focused on endurance. A lot of the workouts focused on being steady with what you were doing in the block or repeating the same thing several times so you could work on improving what you were doing the time before.

For cardio, we had some workouts that were focused on longer hills that didn’t go as high as some of the inclines/resistance levels normally go. We also had some workouts that were long push paces followed by base paces and that pattern repeated itself for the entire cardio block. It allowed me to not feel like I needed to go too crazy on the bike and by not pushing myself I also didn’t need to take as many breaks to deal with my hip pain.

On the rower, we had a lot of repeating rows. Sometimes it was about repeating a specific distance and sometimes it was about repeating a specific time. But it was a lot of repetition and I used that to play around with different rowing styles to see how I could maximize my speed and wattage but not burn myself out too quickly. I know that whenever I do the Dri-Tri next, I will want to make sure that I get through the row quickly but I also know the risks of burning out and having to go slowly for the last part of the row. I don’t think I’ve found the perfect combination of rowing techniques for me yet, but I was happy with how much better my wattage was during this past week’s workouts compared to what I normally do.

On the floor, I didn’t feel like I had the same type of success as I did on the bike or rower. But I was able to play around with some heavier weights for some of the upper body work, which was fun. I learned pretty quickly that I’m not really ready to increase my weights just yet, but I’m so glad I tried. And I felt like they weren’t as much of a struggle as they have been in the past, so I know I’m getting stronger and closer to being able to go heavier with what I use on the floor. I also allowed myself to take a bit more time on the floor and not feel as rushed about getting in as many rounds done so I could make sure my form was ok and I took the time to stretch when necessary. Because of some of the hip pain I have, stretching can be hit or miss with me. Sometimes it doesn’t help me feel better so I’m careful about stretching during the workout. But this past week, it was the type of pain that got a bit less intense with some stretching so I did that when necessary on the floor.

Overall, this wasn’t my typical good week of workouts, but I think this was exactly the type of week I needed. I felt like I found some new baselines for myself that I could use moving forward. I do still like to push myself in my workouts so I’ll probably try to do that this week, but this past week was a good alternative option for me when I’m feeling good and probably a good idea to do from time to time to check in with myself and how my progress with endurance is going.

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Even though I wasn’t feeling physically great the week before during my workouts, I was feeling mentally good about the efforts I was able to make. That week went a lot better than a lot of my bad weeks in the past have gone, and I think a lot of it was because I had so many amazing workouts leading up to it. After that week, I was a little concerned that this past week wouldn’t go the same way because it would be a bad week after a bad week, so I might not have the same high from the good workouts as I had the week before.

I had a mixed week this past week with my workouts. Some days were pretty bad with a lot of pain and nausea. I had my usual monthly pain plus I had a lot of extra hip pain this past week because of the weather. But I feel lucky that I wasn’t feeling really horrible every day or throughout the entire workout. I had bad moments, but I didn’t have any day that was all bad without some moments of relief. And when I had moments that I was feeling normal or closer to normal, I tried to take advantage of those and do little bursts of working harder.

For most of the workout, I wasn’t pedaling or rowing hard, but when I could do a little sprint I did that. We’ve had workouts before that were focused on a base pace with little surges in them, and that’s pretty much what I did on my own. And when I was on the floor, I tried to lift heavier weights when I was feeling a little better and then used lighter weights when necessary. But that was a bit harder to do because I was worried I would have a really bad cramp while holding heavier weights and possibly drop them. So that wasn’t done as often as the increases on the bike or rower. I also wasn’t getting as much sleep this past week so I was feeling a bit more fatigued, so even if I was feeling good I probably wouldn’t have lifted heavy weights.

It did help this past week that on Monday I did get to sleep in a bit since I didn’t have work and I could take a later workout. In a perfect world, I would take a class a little later than what I do now. But since my only other option is to work out after work (and I don’t want to go at 7pm), I just have to continue with my early mornings. But it was nice to have a little extra sleep on Monday since that was one of the worst days for me with nausea.

We also didn’t have any signature workouts or benchmarks this past week, so I didn’t have to feel like I needed to push myself more than I knew I could do. It was good to not have that pressure on myself and to just allow myself to do what felt tolerable. That goes along with my challenge for this month with listening to my body more. I really paid attention to how I was feeling and if things started to get bad, I eased off. I know I can’t control when my nausea gets severe, but it was nice to not feel as bad as I have before and not need to leave class because I was worried I was about to be sick. So I’m choosing to believe that by listening to my body and not being upset about what I can or can’t do, I made my bad week a little bit easier on me.

I’m hoping that this week will be good, but I know that’s not always something I can predict. Everything should be in my favor to have a good week, and as long as I’m feeling ok I plan on pushing myself again in my workouts. I know that maximizing my good weeks before these past 2 weeks really helped me get through the tough times. And if I can repeat that and make my next round of bad weeks just a little better, that will be a huge victory for me!

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I was prepared to go into this past week of workouts that this week would likely be bad. I never know if I’ll be feeling horrible for the entire week or just for some of the workouts. And I never know how extreme it might be. Unfortunately, I’ve been having a lot of significantly worse weeks in the recent past. I never used to have to leave the workout to let my nausea pass or to be sick, and that happens from time to time now. It’s not as bad as it can be at home, and I still have no idea why I’m not as bad in my workouts as I am at home. Maybe it’s the fear of knowing how much worse things can be that somewhat keeps things under control.

I had just had some really amazing workouts the past few weeks, so I was on a bit of a high in general about how I was feeling about my fitness. And I’m glad I had those good workouts leading up to this past week because I didn’t get as down on myself as I have in the past with my bad weeks. I did wish that I had been able to do better with different exercises, but I was more forgiving with myself and the limitations that I had.

The only workout I was worried about this past week was the one we had on Valentine’s Day. That happened to be a partnered signature workout and I didn’t want to have to stress about doing a workout with partners. This signature workout was Capture The Flag and I feel like I have been trying to do this workout without a partner the last few times we had it. For this workout, you have one partner on cardio, one on the rower, and one on the floor. The person on the floor controls when the group switches. They complete a round of the floor exercises and go to tag the cardio person. Then the cardio person goes to the rower, and the rower goes to the floor. The goal of the workout is to get as far as possible on the row so you are supposed to really push yourself there. And for different distances that your group gets to, you can earn different colored flags.

The morning of that workout, I was pretty nauseous. I knew that I would be going slowly on the floor and the rower, which were the spots that would affect the entire group the most. Fortunately, there was going to be an odd man out after the groups were formed so I got to do the workout alone. I wasn’t able to do all the floor exercises because of my nausea, so I did the ones that I could do. And I just did the bike for about 2 1/2 minutes and the rower for the same amount of time so I was doing my own rotations. I didn’t count how many times I got through it on my own, but I did get about 1300 meters on the rower. Most people who were in groups of 3 got between 5,000 and 6,000, so I wasn’t too upset with my distance knowing I wasn’t able to row that hard.

The rest of the workouts this past week went pretty much like my bad weeks usually go. I biked and rowed slower than normal and I modified a bunch of things on the floor. But mentally, I was doing a lot better and that made me happy. There’s a very good chance that this week will go pretty much like last week did, and I’m just hoping that I finish out the week with the same mindset that I had after this past week.

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