I feel like I must have cursed myself when I posted last week that I was hoping this past week of workouts would be a good week for me. I really thought I was going to have no health issues and it would help me do some of my better workouts. I wasn’t expecting to have to deal with a bladder infection and the side effects of antibiotics. But that’s what happened and it affected my workouts quite a bit.
Monday’s workout was before I was able to get antibiotics so I was feeling really awful. I was in a lot of pain and was very uncomfortable during the entire workout. I didn’t think about not showing up because I knew I would still be able to do something, but I knew I also had to take it very gentle on myself. Unfortunately, it also was partially a partner workout so I had to work with someone else and I did feel a bit guilty that they were partnered with me.
The first half of the class wasn’t partnered. The cardio block was rounds of push paces to base paces and ending with an all out. I felt very similar to how I feel when I’m dealing with pain and nausea so I adjusting what I did on the bike to be what I had done the week prior. And the floor block had bicep curls on the straps, squats, plank work, and sit-ups. These all were able to be done normally, but I took a lot of breaks. I don’t think there was one exercise that I could do without taking a break in the middle of the reps.
Then it was time for the Capture The Flag partner workout. The goal of Capture The Flag was to hit certain targets on the rower. You and your partner switch off who is rowing and you don’t reset the rower for the entire 23-minute block. The person on the rower is rowing until they are tagged. And the other person does floor and cardio work before going to the rower.
The floor work was all medicine ball work. We had squats to overhead presses, push-ups with one hand on the medicine ball, and double crunches. There was also a sprint run/bike after those exercises and all those sprints took 2 minutes or under. I really tried to not take breaks when I was on the floor or bike since I knew my partner was waiting on me, but I also know that I took a lot longer than my partner did. I warned my partner that I was not doing well and that I was sorry about things, and they seemed to understand. But I was partnered with someone I didn’t know so I have no idea if they were upset with me or not. But I did my best and that’s all I could do.
By Wednesday, I was taking antibiotics but I was dealing with the side effects from them. And those side effects were very similar to the pain and nausea that I’m used to each month. It wasn’t exactly the same and the pain affected me a different way, but I guess I should be grateful that I’m used to working through it and having modifications so I wasn’t too thrown off.
Even though it was a 3 group workout, it was a run/row format. Cardio and rowing were 4-minute blocks and we switched where we were each block. So when I started on cardio I did cardio, rowing, cardio. And when I started on the rower I did rowing, cardio, rowing. Every time I was on cardio it was a sprint run/bike, then 10 squats, and then running/biking for distance with an incline. I always made it to the incline work and I did adjust the resistance level on the bike a bit. But I didn’t go as high as I would have if I was feeling ok. And every time on the rower we started with a 100-meter row and then we had 10 squats. Then it was a 150-meter row and 15 squats and 200-meter row. I didn’t get to the 20 squats after the 200-meter row for any of the 3 times I was rowing, but I was very close to finishing that last row.
And the floor was one long block. We started with ground to press with weights. When it was supposed to be hamstring curls which I modified to be weighted hip bridges. Next was supposed to be bench sit-ups to sumo squats, but I had to split those exercises up and do them separately. Then it was ab dolly work. And finally, it was suitcase squats and we were supposed to do step-ups. But I did suitcase squats as its own exercise and then did lateral lunges with weights instead of the step-ups. I was glad when the workout was done because I really wasn’t feeling ok. And the usual things I do to help with pain and nausea like waiting for it to go away since it comes in waves didn’t help me this time. I guess pain and nausea from medications are different from when it’s from hormonal fluctuations so I can’t manage it the same way. But I tried.
Friday had similar issues as Wednesday. I was on my last day of antibiotics, but I was having the same side effects that I had every day on them. I was trying to do better than I had earlier in the week, but I also knew not to push too hard because the symptoms I was experiencing wouldn’t go away the way that I was used to. But it was also a strength day so I knew I wanted to try at least a bit to see what I could do.
For cardio, we started with a push pace without incline before starting with incline work. We had a few different push paces with incline and I did work on increasing my resistance levels on the bike. We finished that section with an all out at a flat incline before moving on to the next part. We then had rounds of all outs, and some of them had inclines and some of them didn’t. I really did try my best to do the resistance levels the way I knew I should, but it was tough. I ended up taking a lot of breaks to recover a bit, even in the middle of the short all outs.
On the rower, we started with a 400-meter row and then we had squats with a medicine ball. Each round, we went down 50 meters and had the same squats. It was a bit repetitive, but that’s what I liked about it. Even though I struggled a lot with the rowing, it allowed me to focus a lot on my power and speed. I could see what I was able to do for different amounts of time and it really did help me with figuring out what some good strategies could be for future rowing challenges.
And on the floor, we had a really unique workout. We had 3 main exercises that each had 2 parts to it. The first part we always did once and the second part started with 1 rep and went up to 6. For example, the first exercise was a lunge to a neutral half thruster. First, it was 1 lunge with 1 neutral half thruster. Then it was 1 lunge and 2 neutral half thrusters, and so on until we did 6 neutral half thrusters. After completing all of those, we had burpees to a bicep curl. But I had to split up the burpees and bicep curls. Then we had push-ups (always 1 rep) to plank jacks (1-6 reps) and then more burpees and bicep curls. And the last exercise was bench sit-ups (always 1 rep) to squats (1-6 reps). And then more burpees to bicep curls. It was a lot of work but it felt like it went really quickly because we were always switching what we were doing.
And on Saturday I was finally starting to feel a bit more like myself. I was done with antibiotics, but I noticed I was feeling a bit weak. I think that was due to having to take it easy for such a long time so pushing myself was harder than normal. But I tried and it was a good workout to be able to push myself on.
Cardio and rowing had the same pattern for both blocks. For the first block, we were coached with 1-minute intervals for push pace and base pace and ended with a 1-minute all out. Then we were supposed to look at our distance for cardio or rowing and the second block was a 6-minute distance challenge. The goal was to go further in the distance challenge. For both the bike and the rower, I tried to do my actual base and push pace during the coached block. And for the distance challenge, I tried to find a pace in the middle to stay at the entire time. I did have to take breaks during all the blocks, but I feel like the distance challenges went a bit better because I didn’t have any time where I was pushing myself super hard.
And on the floor, we had 2 blocks. The first block had to be modified a lot for me because it was a lot of lunges with exercises and I have a lot of issues with balance. We had swing lunges which I did holding on to the straps or the wall for balance. Then we were supposed to do lunges with hammer curls or with shoulder presses. I did the lunges and the exercises separately. And the last exercise for that block was side plank raises, which I modified to do on my knees. The last block was all work using the dumbells. We had tricep presses, reverse flys, hip raises, and bridge flys. For that block, I was able to do all the exercises normally.
I don’t want to say again that I’m hoping this week will go better than the past few weeks. But hopefully, I will get a bit of a break now from the pain and nausea. I know it will be kicking back in again soon, and I want to have some good workouts before that happens. But at least I know that I can get through those bad workouts weeks, no matter what the cause of the bad workout is.
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