This past week of workouts completed the 12 Days of Fitness challenge. I did my normal workout days for this challenge, so I wasn’t going to complete it until the last day. But that was fine with me because I knew I would get it done and I didn’t want to stress too much about trying to change up my schedule. I have to change up my workout schedule for the end of the year, so doing it then is enough for me. I’m really a fan of keeping my routine, so I finished the challenge and earned the blanket on Tuesday.
I didn’t need a blanket, but I like having something as a reward for completing a challenge. I will always do Hell Week to earn my shirt even though I don’t normally wear them. I have done other challenges where I have earned hats and socks even though I don’t use those. If the prize is something I know I won’t use or enjoy, I don’t always sign up since we have to pay for these challenges. But normally, I will do it just to have the bragging rights. And that’s how I feel about earning this blanket!
The workouts for this challenge weren’t extra hard, they were just the top workouts of the year. So it wasn’t as bad as Hell Week is. But I had some extra challenges this past week because of my reaction to the Covid booster shot. I always have strong reactions to vaccines, and this one was no different. I tried to time things out so it wouldn’t affect my workouts as much, so I got my vaccine on Thursday when I would have the most amount of rest days before my next workout. And it was good that I did that because I was feeling pretty awful on Friday and Saturday. But what I didn’t expect was having extremely swollen lymph nodes for a long time.
I’ve had swollen lymph nodes after different vaccines, but this was the worst I’ve ever experienced. For the first few days, I couldn’t fully put my arm down. I actually kept a pillow under that arm over the weekend because it was starting to hurt my shoulder. I didn’t think too much about how this would affect my workouts, but I learned very quickly that having swollen lymph nodes meant that I couldn’t row properly. I had to keep my arms bent in an awkward position to be able to bring the row handle back. I made it work and I’m glad that each day over the week got a bit better and I was a little less swollen. I also had some other side effects I had to deal with in my workouts, like being very fatigued and feeling weak. But those are things that I am more used to dealing with so they were easier to work around.
With all the random issues I had to work with for this past week’s workouts, I just had to go a bit easier on myself than I would have liked to. I have been trying to push myself extra hard when I’m having a good week and this past week should have been one of those good weeks. Unfortunately, it ended up being a bit of a bad week instead, but at least the issues that I had were things that I was able to work with and they didn’t affect me as intensely as the pain and nausea that I work through every month.
Next week should be a normal workout week for me, even if it might be a bit of a bad week toward the end of the week. But at least I should be going in for my workouts on my normal days. Then for the end of the month and year, things will be a little different since I have to work around the holidays. But I’m expecting that I will hit my workout goal for this year by the end of the year and I will be finding a way to work in my traditional holiday workouts so I can end this year and start next year the way that I have for a while.
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