I’m happy to share that I actually had a pretty amazing workout week! I’m actually surprised that I feel so great about my workout week because I had a setback on the treadmill and that’s how I’ve been measuring my success for a while now.
I’m not doing horribly on the treadmill, but I’m back to 3.4 miles an hour. I can do some moments of 3.5 miles an hour, but it’s starting to hurt again. But I’m starting to not stress about that as much as I was before. At 3.4 miles an hour, I’m about 30 seconds slower than my 5K PR time. And I know that I have a tendency to be faster on race days and my treadmill training is at 4% incline (at least) and my race day is pretty much a flat road. So knowing that, there is still a decent chance that I will PR at my race in a few weeks even if all my treadmill training until then is at 3.4 miles an hour (although I’m not going to stop pushing myself to go faster).
While I had a small setback on the treadmill, I had jumps forward in everything else. My strength work was much more fluid and less jerky than it was in the past. I also finally conquered my fear of using the next set of weights when I was doing arm work. I finally did some of my upper body weights with the 20 pound weights! I’m not going to do that for everything, but it’s nice to prove to myself that I can do it and that it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.
I also had to use fewer modifications this past week. Some of that was because of what the workout programs were during the week, but there are some things (like certain types of planks) that I was able to do the normal way instead of the way I’ve been doing them. I still had to do a modification on one move on the Bosu (where you do a sit up and then stand), but that’s something that I’m aware will likely always be very difficult or impossible to do. And I did burpees much cleaner than I think I ever have!
But my biggest success of the week was my rowing. Yes, it shocked me as well that I have good rowing news to share. We had a ton of rowing to do this past week. And while most of my rowing kind of kicked serious butt (including getting a higher wattage than I can ever remember), I mainly want to share about my rowing victory on Wednesday.
Part of the workout routine on Wednesday was a 1,000 meter row. Those intimidate me so much. I know that if I want to do a Dri-Tri that I’ll have to do a 2,000 meter row, but for some reason that doesn’t scare me as much as the 1,000 meter row.
Whenever rowing is part of the workout plan, there is a guideline for how long it should take you to complete it. Beginners should average 100 meters every 30 seconds. For the shorter rows, I can do that pretty much all the time. But when I have to do the longer rows, it normally doesn’t happen.
So going into the 1,000 meter row, I just wanted to be under 5 minutes. I knew that I could maintain that pace for at least the first half of the row, but the second half would be a struggle. So I set up my rower so it would count down the meters and stop when I got to 1,000 (instead of just continuing to go as long as I don’t reset it). With the rower set up that way, I could focus on other things in the room and not really pay attention to the countdown. I also knew that with it set that way I would see exactly how long it took me to complete it versus making a guess.
When I started, I just counted each stroke in my head. It doesn’t really mean anything to me, but it’s a good distraction. The first time I checked the monitor I was about a quarter of the way done. I just kept going and trying to not slow down. It was so hard. I was sweating like crazy (and not stopping to wipe off the sweat) and my heart rate got a bit higher than I like it to be. But I managed to complete the 1,000 meters with pretty much no breaks.
And when I looked at the monitor (and I regret not having a picture of this), it said 4:58.9. I was just over a second under my 5 minute goal!
Of course, the rest of the workout was a struggle for me because I was exhausted from the row, but I was also on such a high from accomplishing something that I wasn’t sure would be possible.
Of course, I had to take a post-workout selfie to celebrate this accomplishment!
I’m excited to see what this week of workouts will bring. I have to start doing very early workouts on Mondays for a while (more on that tomorrow), so hopefully I won’t have too many issues with that.
