A Weird Workout Week (or Election Week Workouts)

I think everyone can agree that the past week was a weird one. There were so many moments of heightened emotions and many of us didn’t get a lot of sleep. I know at least I didn’t sleep much. And the week and the events going on definitely affected my workouts. Sometimes in a positive way and sometimes in a negative way.

The most normal workout this past week for me was on Monday. While I was already nervous about the election, there wasn’t much I could do about it. I had been making sure all my friends were going to vote and that was that. So my workout was pretty much what I expected. I still have struggled with trying to push myself a lot, but I’m getting better at it. I am starting to modify the workouts a bit more than normal and replacing exercises that I’m more excited to do. I still try to have lots of variety, but sometimes I need to switch it up so I’m not dreading an exercise. It’s not ideal, but it’s how I’m managing.

Wednesday’s workout was a bit of a sluggish one. I didn’t sleep much at all the night before. I was exhausted and emotional. I was also stressed and a little obsessed with checking the news. I tried to look at the workout as a break from the news because I needed it, but taking a break also was stressful because I wanted to see what was happening. I didn’t know if something would be actual breaking news (not just how cable news was calling races too close to call breaking news) and I didn’t want to not know. But I was able to keep my phone face down while working out and I didn’t check social media once during the workout. I know that I was still a bit distracted, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Friday was my Zoom workout. I think all of us were really tired that morning. So much had happened overnight and I didn’t get a lot of sleep because of being excited about what was going on. But when I have a Zoom workout, there’s no way I can be distracted. I know my coach would call me out if she saw me on my phone or if I disappeared and wasn’t working out anymore. It was a good break for me and the first real forced break I had from the news since Tuesday. And I know I needed the break and the hard workout. I could tell how much better I was feeling as soon as I was done. Also, as soon as the workout was done and we were stretching I did check social media and updated everyone on how the election was going. I think we all were feeling better knowing that things continued to look good for us and more likely that Joe Biden would be announced President-Elect.

And on Saturday, my workout happened after the announcement had been made. I actually worked out a little later than I planned to because of the news. I was just so excited that the election was finally called. We had been prepared for an Election Week instead of just an Election Day, but I was ready for it to be done. I was getting frustrated with the news not calling it because it seemed like they had called lots of other states that didn’t have as large of a margin. But I guess it was worth the wait because it was such amazing news!

But I didn’t want to miss watching the news and seeing all the celebrations around the country, so I decided to keep my tv on while I did the workout. I always have my workout going on my iPad, so it was easy enough to keep the news on my tv. And I just lowered the volume of the workout during the blocks (after the instructions) so the news ended up being my soundtrack.

It was a good choice for me to keep the news on because it was motivating me. But I know that normally I won’t do that because it also was a bit distracting. But I was ok being a little bit distracted that day because of how incredible it was to see history being made. And while I was trying to work hard, I also was just dealing with a lot of emotions because of the election. I was tired from not sleeping, happy that the results were the way I was hoping (at least with the President and Vice President), and relief that I think we are going to have amazing leaders running our country and hopefully getting things back under control.

This week, my workouts are going to be a bit different because of my schedule, but I’m still planning on getting my 4 workouts in. And hopefully now that the election is done, I can focus a bit more on them than I did this past week. I do know that this week is when I am expecting my nausea to come back, but I’m prepared to push through. I pushed through Election Week, so I can push through Nausea Week.

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