This past week of workouts was a real struggle for me. I already knew it might be a weird week because of my schedule, but things just were not going my way. I made it to my 4 workouts, but I’ll be honest and say that I really didn’t want to do them all. But I didn’t have a good enough excuse to miss the ones I wanted to miss so I went.
Because I was in Catalina, I missed my usual Monday workout. But a few hours after getting back on Tuesday I made it to an afternoon class to make up for it. I knew it would be a tough class for me for a few reasons. First, this was going to be my first workout since the previous Friday, which is a much longer gap than I usually have between workouts. I was also dealing with my normal hormonal nausea. But I also had the added weirdness of feeling the room swaying from being on the boat earlier. I was not expecting that feeling because I didn’t have it on the boat going to Catalina. For some reason I was more affected on the ride back even though it was a very smooth ride.
The workout was Go Row, which is one of the signature workouts. It did feel a bit funny that I was going to have a big rowing workout while the room felt like it was moving. It was a 2 group class, but the cardio part of class was split between rowing and the treadmill/bike. The first block was a 4 minute row, the second block was a 2 minute row, and the last block was a 1 minute row. I did ok with my row distances, but nothing was super amazing. And the treadmill/bike work was push to all out paces. Because of how I was feeling, I didn’t really do much on the bike. I kept it at my base pace resistance level for the entire time I was on the bike. I knew I had to take it easy and just make sure I was moving.
The floor work was a lot of abs and upper body. The first block was single arm snatches, Spiderman planks, and crunches. The second block was running men, triceps with weights, and alligators on the straps. And the last block was lateral raises with weights and back extensions. I was able to do the plank work normally and not using the bench which was a surprise to me. And I did try to go heavier on the weights to make up for going easier on the cardio work.
Even though I had a Tuesday afternoon workout, I still did my Wednesday morning workout. It’s not easy to have that small of a break between classes, but it’s a good challenge for me. And I was feeling much better and didn’t have the swaying room sensation so the class went much better for me than Tuesday’s did.
The cardio was one long block but it was timed out by us. We started with a 30 second all out pace and a 30 second recovery before completing a distance. After getting to the distance, we had another recovery and continued the pattern. I wasn’t keeping the best track of my distance but I was trying to do my best to do the workout as we were supposed to. But since I was probably only going over the distance before the recovery and not under, I figured that was ok.
The row block was also one long block. We started with 10 strokes for distance and then 15 seconds to recover. Then we rowed until we got to 200 meters. After the row, we had lunges with tricep work using the medicine ball. Every time we went back to the rower we did the same beginning but the row increased by 50 meters. And the lunges/tricep work increased by 2 reps each time. I wasn’t too worried about my row times and I just focused on form. None of my rows were that slow, so it’s good to know that when I’m not focusing on rushing I’m still doing good work.
And the floor was split into 3 short blocks. Every block started with power sit-ups. Then we moved on to the rounds of the different exercises. We had neutral full thrusters and lunges for the first block, strap roll outs and plank jacks for the second block, and squats and calf raises for the last block. Some of the exercises were making me feel a bit more nauseous, but it was manageable with just taking breaks and letting it pass.
Friday’s workout was an endurance day and it was a pretty great endurance day. I was ready to work hard and see what I could do again after having a few odd days earlier in the week. We had two blocks at each station, one long block and one short one, and they were back to back.
For cardio, the first block started with a 3 minute push pace with a base pace after. We then had a 2 minute push pace and a 1 minute push pace before ending with an all out pace. I was using my new resistance levels on the bike and it was hard to do it for the longer push paces. But it felt great to know I could do it and I was able to recover with a base pace after instead of needing a break. The second block was just a 3 minute push pace to an all out and I continued to use the new resistance levels. I was starting to have some nausea issues during that block, but I managed to finish the work before needing to take a break.
The first block on the rower started with a 90 second distance challenge. Then we had medicine ball squat twists before rowing for half the distance we got on the 90 second challenge. We repeated that pattern until that block was done and I made it through 2 rounds of 90 second challenges and 2 rounds of the half distance challenge. The second block was just one more 90 second distance challenge with the squats before rowing for distance until we were done on the rower.
The floor work required a few modifications for me, but I felt really good about what I did. The beginning of the first block was all work using the bench to step on and I can’t do those with my hip. We were supposed to do different types of step down work and I usually do lunges. But I didn’t want to just do 3 rounds of regular lunges. So I did regular lunges, single leg squats using the straps for support, and step back lunges to replace the bench work. We also had bicycle crunches and arm raises with the mini-bands in that first block. The second block was lunge twists using the mini-bands on our wrists and plank work using the mini-bands to step our hands in and out. I did use the bench for my hands for the planks to help with my nausea, but it was still as tough to do the planks that way as I feel like it is on the floor.
I thought everything was going better on Friday, until Friday night. I had been feeling off for a few days but I thought it was just my nausea affecting me a different way. Friday night, I figured out that I caught a cold. When I start feeling sick, it’s usually a few days after I caught it, so I knew that I couldn’t stop it. But I took as many measures as I could on Friday night to keep the cold from getting really bad.
I thought about skipping my workout on Saturday, but my rule is that if I don’t have a fever and my cold is from my neck up (no body aches or anything like that), I should go and try to do what I could. I know that some people might think that it was bad for me to go because I could have gotten someone sick, but the timing of my body showing symptoms is usually a day or so after I stop being contagious. Also, we use antibacterial wipes at Orangetheory and I was careful not to high five anyone or do anything else that might spread germs if there was any chance I was still contagious.
The workout was an endurance, strength, and power day; but for me it was all about just getting through the workout however I could. For the cardio, the first half was incline work and I did work on increasing my resistance on the bike even if that meant my speed and cadence went down. And the second block was just all out paces and recoveries and I used my old resistance levels for that.
On the rower, we had one long block. It started with an 800 meter row and then lunges with twists. The row went down to 400 meters and then more lunges. We were supposed to do 200 meters, lunges, 100 meters, lunges, and then row for distance. But the lunges were making things tough for me so after the second set of them I just stuck with rowing until we were done and moving on the floor.
On the floor, we had two blocks. The first block was push-ups, single arm rows with weights, and crunches with leg lifts. The second block was push-ups to plank jacks, single arm rows on the straps, and side to side crunches. For the exercises that had 2 parts, I had to split them up and do each part separately. I also was taking a lot of breaks just because I was feeling congested. But I made it through the workout and didn’t give up which was all I wanted to do.
I’m hoping that this week will be a bit better. I’m not completely over my cold just yet, but I’m hoping it won’t last through the entire week. I do know how to do workouts when I’m not feeling my best, but I really want to stop having that as an excuse. I feel like I’m in a rut and stuck in my progress because of all my recent struggles and challenges. I just want to have another week where I feel amazing to help me remember how hard I’ve worked so far.
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