In my last workout recap, I mentioned how I was writing it in a different style than I normally do because it was a really hard week for me. I was cautiously optimistic at the end of the post because I know that sometimes when the week before my period is really hard for me the week of my period is a little easier. So I was hoping that would be the case for me this time. But my body decided to mess with me a bit this time and gave me an extra week of nausea before I got my period. So instead of 2 weeks of nausea and pain this month, I got 3 weeks. As I’m writing this recap (the night before it goes up), I’m finally starting to feel a bit better. But all last week was just as bad if not worse than the week before. And that made my workouts suffer again like they did the week before.
I really wasn’t able to do much during all 4 of my workouts this week. For the cardio on all the days, I kept the bike at my base pace level and just worked from there. I did try to pedal faster and slower depending on if we were in a base, push, or all out; but I didn’t adjust the resistance once the entire week. Part of that was due to not having much strength to work harder, but also leaning over to adjust the levels made my nausea really bad. That was a feeling I’m not used to so I didn’t want to push it too much. So cardio became time to just try to keep going and not think too much about it.
On the rower, for most of the workouts had squats between the rowing segments so at least that wasn’t too bad for me. I did modify the squats when they were types of squats I couldn’t do (like jump squats) so I often did froggers or regular squats between my rowing. Most of the days we had short rows which were nice, but one day we did have long rows and I just had to take breaks when I needed them. I don’t like stopping in the middle of a row, but I also know that when I have to do that I just need to or it’s going to get worse. I think it was just extra frustrating because I was expecting this week to be a bit better and it felt like 2 weeks back to back of half-ass workouts for me.
On the floor, I kept my standard modifications for when I’m nauseous with using the bench a lot to help me with plank work. I tried doing heavier weights when I could to make up for what I wasn’t able to do on the bike or the rower, but sometimes even lifting weights would make me nauseous. I was also dealing with much more severe cramps than I usually do and I didn’t want to accidentally drop a weight if a cramp hit me too hard, so I had to be careful. I also tried to add in some stretching between exercises on the floor when I needed them to help with the pain a bit and it at least made me think I was feeling a bit better.
I don’t want to just dwell on all negatives with my workouts because there were some good things too. First of all, I went to my workouts. This past week was one of the more miserable weeks for me with the nausea that I’ve had. And it wasn’t that the nausea was that much worse, it was that I had been dealing with it at this level for so long. People started to think I was sick because my voice was sounding funny, but it was because of how long I had been getting sick and I’m guessing the stomach acid was starting to irritate my throat (it hasn’t done that before). It would have been easy to stay home and sleep in or try to take things easy, but I didn’t do that. I went and kept my normal routine and just tried.
I also continued to work with my new base pace resistance level on the bike. Although I should probably stop calling it new since I’ve been using it for a while now and it seems normal to me at this point. But I still kept using it even with how I was feeling this past week and I didn’t even consider once going down to the level I was using before.
Finally, this past week we also had a benchmark challenge. In Monday’s class we had the 500-meter row. I knew that I wasn’t going to PR on my benchmark, or even come close. I didn’t have any thoughts in my head that I would do that. My main goal was that I wanted to row the entire thing without taking a break. My other goal was that I wanted to see if I could do it in under 2 1/2 minutes. That’s not fast, but it’s under the time we are supposed to be able to do it under. I really didn’t know if I could do that, but I wanted to try. And when it was my group’s turn to do the benchmark, I took a little extra time to take some deep breaths before starting and went for it. I was able to finish just under 2 1/2 minutes and I was thrilled. It wasn’t anywhere near my PR or any times I had done for the benchmark in the past, but it was what I had hoped for considering how I was feeling.
Just like I ended the post last week, I’m hopeful that this week might be a bit easier on me. My nausea is a little better now, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t come back during the week. But I finally know that the end of the nausea for this cycle is coming up and I’m so relieved. I just want to get back to my normal workouts. Although, I have to say these different workout recaps are a bit fun to write so I may start switching up the blog posts a bit.
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