Instead of focusing on my week of workouts at Orangetheory, I want to focus on what happened on Monday.
As I mentioned last week, there are now Monday challenges every Monday. And it’s my plan to do the challenge each week (I will be doing one today).
I missed the very first challenge because the trainer forgot to do the challenge in my class (it was a new thing so I’m not too upset). The second week I did the rowing challenge. And I walked in this past week with every intention of doing whatever challenge happened.
Then I found out what the challenge was.
It turns out that the challenge this past week was a treadmill challenge. You had to be at 15% incline (which is what I do when I do the “all out” segments on the treadmill) and you had to be at 6 miles per hour for the speed. And the goal was to be on the treadmill at that speed and incline as long as possible.
That’s not a reality for me.
I’ve been doing 3.1 or 3.2 miles per hour most of the time. Sometimes I can push myself to 3.3 or 3.4, but it’s tough. And as soon as I hear what the challenge was, I felt defeated. There’s no way that I can run at 6 miles an hour.
In class on Monday, we had a unique treadmill workout. The first and last segment were each 7 minutes long and we had to be at a push pace (which for walkers mean about 6% incline). For those 7 minutes, we were supposed to go as far as we could go.
The first 7 minutes I made it to .392 miles. I thought that was pretty awesome. Between the segments there was some regular interval work on the treadmill and then it was time for the next (and last) 7 minute treadmill segment.
I started at 3.1 miles an hour. I like that speed because it means if I maintain that for an hour, I can do a 5K. And my goal is to get my 5K time to an hour or less.
Then I decided to see if I could make it to .4 miles in those 7 minutes. So I decided to increase my speed every minute. I was fine up until 3.6 miles an hour. That was tough, but I felt like I was cutting it close to my goal of .4 miles.
So I decided to increase my speed every 30 seconds for the last 2 minutes. And shockingly, those last 30 seconds I was going 4 miles an hour! I can’t maintain that for very long, but I did it!
Those second 7 minutes I made it .408 miles.
I finished up the workout and while I was so proud of what I had done on the treadmill earlier, the challenge was still making me feel defeated. I joked to everyone that I will go 1 second on the challenge.
Finally, it was time for the challenge. I started to bug the trainer that it was completely unfair that there wasn’t a walking option for the challenge. After bugging him and the owner, they decided that my challenge would be 15% incline and 4 miles an hour.
The fact that I had just done 4 miles an hour on the treadmill for the first time in forever seemed to be fate.
I got it in my head that maybe I could make it a minute. So I decided that unless I fell off the treadmill, I was going to stay on there for that minute no matter what.
The first 15 seconds seemed easy. Then my legs started to feel like lead. But I was so damned determined not to quit until that one minute mark had passed.
As soon as the clock passed one minute, I thought for a moment about going more and then my hip popped out (it happens quite a bit and pretty regularly during workouts). It was clearly a sign that I had done all that I could do for that challenge.
I ended up making it 1:02. That’s passed my minute goal.
The next day, the results were posted. I didn’t make the top 5 for women, but I was only 30 seconds away. And shockingly the men did not do as well as the women. On the men’s top 5, I was tied with #5!
I tried to see the lesson in this. Obviously, I shouldn’t feel defeated until I try something. But I feel like there’s something more.
I’ve been looking at these challenges as something to do for me and not to be competitive. But both weeks I have not been that far away from making the top 5 list. If I really tried to push myself and not just do it to do it, I might actually make the list soon!
So that is my intention for the challenge today. I’m going into it with the mindset of a competitor. I want to see myself closer and closer to making it onto the top 5 list. And I know that sometime soon, I will be there.
