Monthly Archives: September 2021

Before I get into the recap of my workout week, I have an unexpected update from the Dri-Tri I did on Saturday. I never do the Dri-Tri to be competitive with others, only with myself. But a few days later, the studios posted the top 3 men and women for each location. I had shared the photo with a group text with my workout friends because my friend’s husband got first place. But then after I sent it I realized that I was listed as 3rd place!

I was beyond shocked, and still am. I know that it’s likely because not a lot of women did it, but I’m still taking this win. Especially with how it seemed like so much was working against me.

Now onto my regular workout recap.

Monday’s workout was an endurance day. I was a little sore after the Dri-Tri, mainly because I was trying to not take painkillers because of the burst blood vessel in my eye (it can make it worse if it’s still spreading, and at that point it still was). But it wasn’t the worst endurance day to do when you aren’t 100% there.

We had 3 blocks for cardio that all had the same pattern. We had a push pace, 90-second base pace, push pace, 1-minute base pace, push pace, and a 30-second all-out. Each block, the push paces got longer. We had 1-minute, 75-second, and 90-second push paces. I did try to push myself a bit, but was mindful of how I was feeling as I went a bit harder.

On the floor, we had 2 blocks. The first block started with a mini-band mini-block. We had 3 rounds of a squat to leg raise and hip bridges using a mini-band. After completing that, we had a 300-meter row before continuing the first floor block. The rest of the first block had sumo squat front raises, bicep curls, uppercuts, and tricep extensions all using weights. And the second block had lateral step-ups, lunges, and sumo deadlifts. I did the lateral step-ups as lateral lunges so there was a little modification.

Wednesday’s workout was a power day and it was a crazy one! The cardio block was all about all-outs! The entire cardio block was rounds of 1-minute all-outs followed by 90-seconds to recover. And we did that for 10 rounds! Each time we had an all-out, I tried to increase how fast I was going on the bike. Around the middle, I tried to increase the resistance level too, but that was too hard to keep doing for a minute so I went back to just focusing on pedaling faster at my regular all-out resistance level. I think the hardest thing about this was having all the all-outs being 1-minute long. I feel like I’ve done a similar workout with 30-second all-outs, but 1-minute ones are so different. But I felt so accomplished when I was done!

On the floor, we had 3 blocks. The first block had sit-up to jump squats (I did sit-ups to squats and calf raises), lateral lunges, lateral hop-overs, and seated shoulder presses to standing. The second block was a core block and we had static crunch in and outs and toe reaches, both using the mini-band. And the last block had burpees, step-ups (I did lunges), squats, and reverse grip low rows. It was a lot of variety on the floor, but it was also a lot and I was getting a bit sloppy with my form toward the end.

Friday’s workout was another endurance day. And it felt much more like an endurance workout than the Monday one.

We had 3 blocks for cardio. The first block started with a 3-minute push pace followed by a 90-second base pace and a 1-minute all-out. The second block had 2 rounds of a 2-minute push and 75-second base before the 1-minute all-out at the end. And the last block had 3 rounds of a 1-minute push and 1-minute base before the 1-minute all-out.

And on the floor, we had 2 floor blocks and 1 row block. The first block had suitcase squats, lunges to low rows, and plank taps. The second block had sumo squats to upright rows, lunges, uppercuts, and plank shoulder taps. And the row block had rowing plus squats to calf raises. We started with a 100-meter row and increased by 100 meters each round. I unfortunately was struggling a lot on the floor because my hip was really hurting after the bike. But I tried my best and I think most of what I did wasn’t affected too much besides my rowing.

Saturday’s workout was a strength-based day, but it also was a 90-minute class! I’ve done one other 90-minute class before, and it was a great challenge. This class happened to be during my regular Saturday class time, so I didn’t pick it for that reason, but I also didn’t avoid the class either. I figured it would be a great way to close out my week and I was right. Just like the other 90-minute class, we had the regular 60-minute class rotations and then added on another set. So we had 3 blocks on cardio, 2 blocks on floor, 2 blocks on cardio, and 2 blocks on floor.

For cardio, the first 4 blocks had a similar pattern. We had base paces at inclines with a 1-minute flat road base between and ended with a 30-second all-out at incline too. The first block had 30-second inclines, the second block had 1-minute inclines, the third block had 90-second inclines, and the fourth block had 2-minute inclines. And the inclines went down each block as the time got longer. I did go a bit higher on the resistance levels than I normally go, but they were short intervals so it was a good way to test out what I can do. And the last block of cardio was 4 rounds of 30-second all-outs that had decreasing inclines each time.

On the floor, we had a lot of variety in the exercises. For the first part of class, we had chest presses with weights, squats to bicep curls, knee tucks, rollouts on the ab dolly, high rows on the straps, and y-raises. We also had a little bit of rowing with stroke drills (the floor work from the first part of class is a bit of a blur so I don’t remember what was each block). When we were in the bonus floor blocks for the 90-minute class, the first block was on the floor and the second was on the rower. The floor block had low rows with weights, chest presses using the straps, and knee tucks. And when we got to the rower we followed the same pattern as the treadmill with 4 rounds of 30-second all-outs with recovery time between.

I really feel like I had a great workout week this past week. Between how great I felt after my Dri-Tri and finding out that I placed 3rd and having another awesome 90-minute class, it really was great. I did have some issues with pain in my hips that I couldn’t manage the way I normally do, but I feel like I pushed through and didn’t let that stop me. I know whenever I have one of these good weeks, I always say how I wish I could always feel like this. But I also know that I also have to deal with the bad weeks. But when I have those bad weeks, remembering these good weeks helps me make it through that time.

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I’m going to be sharing just the first part of my workout week from this past week in this post. I’ll be sharing about my Saturday workout in tomorrow’s post because this past Saturday I did the Dri-Tri! For the other workouts this week, I was trying to mentally prepare for the Dri-Tri but also not overthink things too much. I was also getting over being nauseous and that affects my workouts quite a bit, so it did help me from going too hard and being sore on Saturday.

Monday’s workout was a strength-based class, and it was the day I was feeling the worst this past week. I wasn’t doing as bad as I had at the end of the week before, but it was still a struggle in class to get through a lot of it.

For cardio, we had 3 blocks. The first block started with a progressive hill with the incline/resistance level increasing every 30 seconds before having a base pace and then a flat all-out. The second block had 1-minute intervals with push paces at increasing inclines/resistance levels with flat base paces in-between with a 30-second all-out at the end. And the last block had rounds of push paces at an incline followed by an all-out at the same incline and then a flat recovery between each one. Because I normally use the resistance levels to be for my push and all-out paces, I went lower on those this time so that the incline work was not at the same level.

On the floor, we also had 3 blocks. The first block was a mini-band block and we had monster walks and squats to side leg raises. For the other two blocks we were supposed to do 2 rounds and then we had 200-meter rows after. The second block had sumo deadlifts, lunges, and plank reaches. And the last block had sumo squats, lunge jumps (which I did as regular lunges), and plank jacks. The plank work was hard for me to do with the nausea, but not unbearable. So I just did them using the bench and took a lot of breaks when I was feeling really nauseous.

Wednesday’s workout was an endurance/strength/power day and the first day I wasn’t nauseous since it hit this time. So I was ready to work hard, but I was still taking it a bit easy as I was still dealing with some cramps.

On the treadmill, the first block was all about 3-minute challenges. We had a 3-minute push pace, 90-second base pace, 3-minute push pace, 90-second base pace, and 3-minute run for distance (which was basically like a 2-minute push with a 1-minute all-out after). I kept my push pace at my normal resistance level and challenged myself to keep it there the entire time. It wasn’t easy, but the base pace after helped me get ready for each round. The second block was all about all-outs. We had an all-out at an incline, recovery, all-out on flat incline, recovery, and so on for a total of 6 rounds. So we had 3 all-outs at the incline and 3 without. They did get shorter each round, which helped (2 all-outs for 1-minute, 2 for 45-seconds, and 2 for 30-seconds).

The first block on the floor had hip hinge swings, single-arm low rows, deadlifts, and single-arm high rows. And the second block had single-leg deadlifts (which I did as regular deadlifts), single-arm bicep curls, and uppercuts. And for that second block, we were supposed to use the same weights the entire time and try to not stop during the reps until we finished all 3 exercises. So I had to go a little lighter on the weights because it was based on my uppercuts plus we had a lot of reps to do for each exercise.

Friday’s workout was a strength-based class, but knowing I had the Dri-Tri the next day I knew I had to go easy. I also wasn’t feeling super confident that day. On Thursday, I noticed a burst blood vessel in my eye. It’s harmless, but it looks weird. And on Friday, it was looking even worse (as I write this post on Sunday, it has continued to spread but I know that’s a part of the healing process). So I was feeling a little down and self-conscious, even though I don’t think anyone in class noticed it. The theme for the class was about doing drop sets, and even the cardio had that theme.

We had 3 blocks for cardio and they all had the same pattern. Long push pace, base pace, base pace at incline, push pace without incline, base pace without incline, push pace at incline, and an all-out. Each block, the incline/resistance level went up high and the first long push pace got shorter. But the idea was to have the base pace at an incline feel similar to what the push pace without the incline felt like. Just like earlier in the week, because I use the resistance levels for my push pace on a normal day, I had to adjust those levels so that the incline work felt different to me. But I tried to keep the levels a bit lower because of the Dri-Tri the next day.

For the floor, the first 2 blocks had rowing to start the block. We had a 300-meter row in the first block and a 200-meter row in the second. We were supposed to keep the stroke rate super low for the first half of each row and then sprint for the second half. I know some people struggle with the low stroke rate, but I naturally row pretty slow so that part is easier for me. Getting the sprint done was a lot harder. And all 3 blocks had 1 drop set exercise (where you go heavy for 4 reps and then you use a lighter weight for 12 reps) and 1 regular exercise. We had drop set chest presses and bridge rows on the straps, drop set reverse grip low rows and triceps on the straps, and drop set bicep curls and chest presses on the straps.

After my weekday workouts this past week, I was hoping I was ready for the Dri-Tri. I felt like I had pretty good workouts and didn’t push too hard so I wasn’t tired or sore. But I wouldn’t know until the next day. And that’s coming in tomorrow’s post!

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