This past week of workouts was another one of my good weeks. But just like the week before, I didn’t push myself too much. I wasn’t planning on going easy for both of my good weeks and worry that this will cause me to struggle a bit more with my bad week, but that’s how things turned out this past week. I had to go a little easier due to some hip pain associated with the weather, which is something out of my control. And then I chose to go easier on Thursday for another reason.
Thursday was a benchmark workout, which I usually push myself for. This time, it was the 12-minute run/bike. This is one of the harder benchmarks since it will always take 12 minutes to complete it. With the other benchmarks, you can tell yourself if you go faster it will be done faster. That won’t work for this one. I’ve been very lucky to be able to improve on my distance on the bike the last few times, but this time I knew that pushing myself wasn’t the right choice. I was going to be at a work event that evening and I would be standing around in heels for several hours. So I needed my legs to not be exhausted after my workout. It was a little annoying to not push myself when I would have loved to see if I could beat my past distance, but I didn’t want to be miserable later that day. So I took it easy for those 12 minutes. I set the bike resistance level for between my base and push pace levels and just tried to bike as long as I could without take a break. I did still have to take a few breaks, but they weren’t that frequent. I also tried to ignore the distance I got since I knew it wouldn’t be great, but I did look at the end and it was so much worse than almost all my past benchmarks. But I just reminded myself that I wasn’t trying so I can’t compare my distance from when I was trying.
A lot of the rest of the week had a lot of endurance work, so I spent my workouts being focused on keeping things steady and not having too many hills and valleys with how I was feeling. I’m probably a lot better at power or sprints for cardio than I am for endurance, so it’s not the worst thing for me to slow down a bit more than I would like. It’s not easy for me to do since I do like to push myself, but I’m trying to understand more and more that I can have more well-rounded workouts that aren’t always pushing me to the limit.
I know that my bad week is likely to start this week, but I’m trying to stay hopeful that either it won’t happen or won’t be as bad as it can be. I don’t know if I’ll be able to push myself much this week, but I really want to try as long as other factors allow me to. I do worry that I will feel worse about my bad week, but I also know that if that happens it’s only a minor setback and I’ll be feeling more like myself again soon. But even if I know that, it can still mess with my mind when I feel like I’m not able to do what I know I can do. I hate that I get down on myself like that, but it’s just how my brain works. Maybe having an easier week when I’m feeling good will make an easy week not as emotional and tied to a bad week and that can help me feel better about it. I guess I’ll find out after the next week or two when I’m over my bad week.
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The Week Before The Dri-Tri (or I Hope I’m Going To Be Ready)
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