This past week of workouts was almost like a breakthrough for me. I wrote about how last week I finally got above 3.4 miles an hour on the treadmill. That was so huge for me. For so long I felt stuck there (even though I wasn’t at that speed for a very long time) and 3.5 miles an hour seemed so out of my reach.
After doing it on the treadmill the week before, I decided to try to continue my progress. And I was able to almost always be at 3.5 miles an hour on the treadmill (except for when we were supposed to walk after an all-out pace). Not only did I do that, I was occasionally going to 3.6 miles an hour.
My issue in the past was getting to the orange zone during the push paces. I was usually at 10% incline because if I wasn’t that steep my heart rate wouldn’t get high enough. Now that I can play around with the speed on the treadmill a bit more, I’m able to get into the orange zone at 8 or 9% incline (usually at the beginning of the workout I have to do 10% just to get my heart rate to get up at first).
3.5 or 3.6 miles an hour on the treadmill isn’t easy, but it’s definitely doable. I don’t know why I was so worried about it in the past. I honestly think I could have gone to 3.5 miles an hour at least a month ago. But there was something about that number that terrified me. And now that I’ve proven to myself that I am able to do it, I feel much more comfortable increasing my speed throughout my workout. I’d love to eventually be at 4.0 miles an hour so I would feel comfortable doing a race at Disneyland (they have pretty strict time restrictions on their races), so with the progress I’ve made so far, I’m almost half way to that goal!
I also did another thing that scared me in my workouts last week. With all my hip issues, I have a lot of balance issues as well. So for core strength work that involves balance, I usually get a modification to do instead. There are several things that I still can’t do (step ups on the bench are almost impossible because my hips don’t want to bend that much), but I’m trying to do more things that feel a bit safer to me.
On Friday’s workout, one of the strength movements was doing squats on the BOSU (flat side down). I’ve done those in the past, but only before my hip surgery when my balance was a bit more normal. Since then, I’ve avoided most balance things on the BOSU because there is a lot of risk for me to fall off and hurt myself. But I was at the strength station near the wall so I moved my BOSU close to the wall so I could steady myself on that.
It took me awhile once I got on the BOSU to get my balance, but after about 15 seconds or so, I was able to take my hand off the wall and do a couple of squats while standing on the BOSU. We were supposed to do 20 and I broke it up into smaller segments. After about 5 I would put my hand on the wall again to balance myself before moving on.
But even though I had to do the 20 squats in smaller chunks, I still did all of my squats on the BOSU that day. My hips were killing me afterwards, but it was worth it!
Beyond my workout victories, I also had some fun moments in my workout week. About a week ago, I decided to order a cute Orangetheory shirt that I saw online. I ordered it in the largest size that they had and it arrived this week.
It’s a little small for me, but not so small that it’s discouraging. So hopefully I can wear this for a workout soon (maybe for the workout closest to my birthday!).
The other super fun part of my workout week was having two of my favorite trainers, Bruce and Lal, participate in JZ’s class on Wednesday. Sadly, they couldn’t be on treadmills next to me (since they have to wait until the class starts to see if there will be room for them in the class), but it’s still nice to have them there supporting and encouraging me.
Of course, I made them take a post-workout photo with me.
Now that I appear to have broken the 3.4 miles an hour boundary that was in my head, I’m really getting excited to see what new things I can accomplish on the treadmill. I’ve got a 5K coming up in November and I’m looking at some speed training schedules online to see if there is one that would work well with my Orangetheory workouts. If I can keep this all up, there’s no doubt in my mind that in November I will be blogging about yet another PR!
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