This past week of workouts consisted of 3 regular workouts and the Dri-Tri. My experience of the Dri-Tri is going to be in a different post (I feel like it always deserves its own post), so this is just about my first 3 workouts of the week.
Monday’s workout was a weird one for me. I got to the workout feeling really good and doing my warm-up on the treadmill since I wasn’t feeling nauseous anymore. I was fine during the warm-up but as soon as I added incline to do the first push pace, the nausea returned. I was really disappointed in this because this workout was a power day and it was going to be a great day to work on running (which I wanted to do to prepare for the Dri-Tri), but I couldn’t keep going on the treadmill feeling like that and switched to the bike.
With the exception of the first push pace in the first block, all of the blocks on the cardio side were about doing all out paces and walking recoveries. Each block had the same pattern with the all out pace being the same amount of time and the walking recovery increasing by 15 seconds each time. Each block had 4 all out paces and 3 recoveries and the all out paces were 1 minute, 45 seconds, and 30 seconds. Since I was feeling frustrated on the bike, I decided to push myself more than normal. I did my normal all out resistance for the 1 minute block. For the 45 second block I did 2 levels higher which I rarely use. And for the 30 second block I went another 2 levels higher which I usually only use if there is supposed to be a high incline on the treadmill for hill work. It wasn’t easy, but it made me feel better about being on the bike.
On the floor, we ended each block with an all out on the rower to go along with the last all out that the people on the treadmill were doing. But before that row, we had regular exercises to do. The first block was clean to press with weights and goblet squats. I went really heavy with my weight for the goblet squats and my legs were really feeling that the next day (probably the work with high resistance on the bike also made my legs sore). The second block was squats to high rows with weights and running man. And the last block was plank leg raises and double crunches. And with all the rowing all outs, I tried to get my rowing to be the best form possible while going quickly and with a lot of strength coming from my legs. Our rowers were set to MPH instead of wattage and I was able to get the MPH higher each time I was on the rower.
Wednesday’s workout was an endurance based run/row and I was a bit nervous about it. My legs were still feeling a bit sore from Monday’s workout (clearly I overdid it a lot) and I didn’t know how I would feel on the treadmill. But somehow, it really felt like we weren’t on the treadmill much at all.
We had 3 blocks of the run/row and it was kind of like we created our own plan. In the first block, we had a 2 1/2 minute row for distance. We had to remember what the distance was and after that we had a recovery row for about a minute. Then we were in the next block. For the second block, we had to row the same distance we got in our 2 1/2 minute row, but the goal was to complete it faster. I managed to take a few seconds off of my row which made me happy. When the row was done, we went to the treadmill and went until the block ended (which was about 4 1/2 minutes for me). I was power walking slightly slower than I normally do because my legs were sore. But it also felt good to be on the treadmill to try to stretch them out a bit. When that block ended, we had to remember the distance on the treadmill. And for the last block, we had to do the distance we got on the treadmill again and then go to the rower to do the distance we did in the first block. And if there was any time left after that, we had to hold a static squat. I finished with about 15 seconds left so I got to do a little bit of squat work before switching to the floor.
The floor also had 3 blocks and in all 3 blocks we had blast-off push-ups. These are push-ups that start with you leaning back like you are getting ready to spring and them push forward to be in a plank to do a push-up. They were not easy to do and they were actually making me feel a bit queasy. It was a different feeling than my hormonal nausea which was interesting to experience in a workout. So I had to be careful with where I was focusing my eyes during these push-ups. In the first block we also had skier swings with weights. The second block we also had uppercuts with weights and triceps with weights. And in the last block we also had weighted squat swings and bicycle crunches. I wasn’t going too heavy on my weights, especially on the squat work because I was sore. But I think because I was sore it felt like I was working harder than I really was, but that’s ok. I also was feeling a bit less sore after the workout than I was when I started.
Friday was my last workout before the Dri-Tri. I was debating if I should go a bit easier on myself so I didn’t get too sore or feel tired the next day, but when I saw it was a power workout I decided not to do that. I was still being a bit cautious and not going too hard, but I also wanted to test myself. I haven’t had a lot of time on the treadmill lately and I haven’t been able to do a lot of running. But with the Dri-Tri I really wanted to try to do some running intervals. So this workout was my last chance to test them out.
It was a 3 group workout so I was on the treadmill for about 15 minutes. We had 3 blocks and they all had a push pace, a base pace, a push pace, and an all out pace. Some of the push paces were a bit longer and over a minute and normally I would try to run those. But since I hadn’t been doing much running at all I decided to limit my running to 30 seconds at a time with the exception of the all out paces which were 45 seconds. While I would love my running intervals to be better and to know at the Dri-Tri I could do better than my last 5K, I’m not there yet. I was already thinking my run intervals for the next day would probably only be able to be 30 or 45 seconds, so limiting my running during the workout was a good prep day for what it would feel like. It wasn’t easy, but I felt a bit more optimistic that it would be possible to do intervals for the Dri-Tri as long as the rowing and floor work don’t burn me out.
Next I was on the rower where we had sprint row intervals. In between the rowing in the first and last block we had squats and in between the rowing in the second block we had lunges. The rowing was all short so a lot of people were pushing themselves to see how fast they could go. I decided to use that time to work on making sure my form is good and that I can stay steady with a pace. I still went a bit faster than I would have liked to, but all my rowing times were under the goal time which is always good. And on the floor we also had 3 blocks. We had lunges, push-ups, single arm chest presses, single arm reverse flys, hopovers, and bicep curls. I wasn’t using the heaviest weights for the weighted work because I didn’t want to be too sore on Saturday. But I still worked hard.
After those 3 workouts, I was cautiously optimistic about my Dri-Tri. I knew that I had done the best I could to be ready for it, but I also knew that there was so much more that I would have liked to do. I would have liked to have more long rowing challenges to test my endurance. I would have liked to be better with my running so I could feel confident that I could do run/walk intervals on the treadmill. And I would have liked to have just felt better about things going into it. There was still a bit of uncertainty on how well I would do, but I had to just keep telling myself that even if I am significantly slower than I ever have been, I will still be able to finish it.
And tomorrow I’ll share about how it went and whether or not I was able to reach any of the goals I had in my head.
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