Tag Archives: pr

Building Upon Another Good Week (or PR Weeks Are So Much Fun)

Posted on February 12, 2024 | Comments Off on Building Upon Another Good Week (or PR Weeks Are So Much Fun)

I really got lucky this past week with having another good week. I didn’t have the pain and nausea I deal with each month and my weekly injection didn’t make me feel sick. I don’t know if I’m getting used to the new dosage or if I lucked out with injected it in the right spot. I did have some extra hip pain this past week due to the weather, but that is minor compared to what I am normally used to. I know that I will be having another bad week either this week or the week after with pain and nausea, but I was just so happy to have a good week this past week and I really took advantage of that.

I think because we have the Transformation Challenge going on right now, we are getting a lot of benchmarks and specialty workouts. And I know I can’t always get a PR or have an incredible workout, but I was still on a bit of a high from my PR the week before and wanted to continue my streak. This past week, we had Catch Me If You Can. This challenge has been a tough one for me in the past. I was always getting caught at the same checkpoint each time. I knew it wasn’t impossible to get past, but I was always shy of the distance I needed to be on the bike to continue going.

But the last time we had this challenge, I somehow made it to the distance I had to get to so I could continue going. I felt so proud that I finally made it and I got past another checkpoint after that. I wasn’t able to get to the end, but very few people make it to that point so I was ok with not completing it. I was just so happy that I finally got past the point that I was always caught at and felt so accomplished. When I knew we were going to do this challenge again this past week, I reviewed what I did in the past. I wasn’t sure if I’d get a PR again this time, but I was really hoping I would beat the past checkpoint that I was always getting stuck at.

When we had the challenge, we had a little paper in front of us that showed what the various checkpoints were. But I noticed that the one I had for the bike wasn’t accurate (there are 2 types of bikes at Orangetheory and the paper was the distances for the other type of bike). I was able to get my coach to give me the one that had the distances for the treadmill and I just had to do the math and multiply those by 4 to get the bike distance. Yes, doing a little bit of math at 6am isn’t fun, but it was fine.

I kept the resistance level on the bike at my normal base pace level because I knew I needed to pedal really quickly to get past the checkpoints I wanted to beat. I felt like I was cutting things close to the checkpoint where I’ve gotten caught in the past, but I managed to get to that distance right before the time cutoff. And just like the last time I got past that one, the checkpoint after that was a lot easier for me, and the one after that was another close call. But I was at the spot where I was the last time and I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to make it to the distance for the next checkpoint. Even though I was certain I was going to get caught at the same checkpoint as my last PR, I was hoping I would be able to at least get a little bit further than I did the last time. It’s not as easy to do that on the bike since the distance tracker isn’t as precise as the treadmills. But when we got to that checkpoint and I was caught, I managed to squeak by with an extra .1 miles compared to my last PR.

It wasn’t easy to get that done and I was exhausted for the rest of the workout, but I was still so happy that I got another PR. I wasn’t expecting the one I got the week before and I wasn’t certain I would be able to do this one. But to get PRs on back-to-back weeks was so incredible. I know that not every week or every challenge can be like this, so I celebrate them when they happen.

We have another challenge coming up this week, but I’m not expecting another PR. It is a team challenge and I usually do them solo so I don’t track how I do. And I’m not sure how I’ll be feeling so I don’t want to set myself up to be disappointed if it doesn’t go well. I’ll see how I feel when that day happens and maybe I’ll surprise myself again. But no matter what happens, I will still be so happy with how the past 2 weeks went with my workouts and I’ll continue to celebrate those wins!

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Default ThumbnailFeeling Ok When It Counted (or Ending My Workout Week On A Great Note) Default ThumbnailA Normal Week With A PR (or The Break Between Holiday Week Workouts) Default ThumbnailA Fun And Unique Workout Week (or Not Letting Setbacks Set Me Back) Default ThumbnailA Very Good Workout Week (or I Love When My Good Weeks Match With Good Workouts) Default ThumbnailA Better Workout Week Than Expected (or I Like When Things Aren’t As Bad As I Thought) Default ThumbnailHaving Some Improvements In My Week (or Realizing I Need To Work On Building Things Back Up)

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A Normal Week With A PR (or The Break Between Holiday Week Workouts)

Posted on November 20, 2023 | Comments Off on A Normal Week With A PR (or The Break Between Holiday Week Workouts)

This past week of workouts was a normal workout week for me. The week before was a bit different because of my family workout. Next week will be almost a normal workout week but slightly different because of the holiday. So having a regular workout week was a nice break, especially since I know I’ll also have a few odd weeks in December.

And not only was it a normal workout week, but I was feeling pretty good throughout the week. I did have some issues with being lightheaded a few times, which is something I experience from time to time and usually is because I don’t eat enough the day before or I eat my dinner too early. But because I’m used to it, I know that I just need to sit down and catch my breath. It’s the same thing I do when I get lightheaded at any other time of day (sometimes I experience that when I’m just sitting and working).

I really have been trying to increase the weights that I use on the floor, but I’m still struggling with it. I did have a bit of success, but most of the time I couldn’t use the heavier weights. I know that just trying to use something heavier and then going back to what I normally use is still a bit of a success, but I don’t know what it’s going to take for me to be able to use the heavier weights for all my reps. Maybe it’s just continuing to do trial and error with the heavier ones? I was able to use slightly heavier weights once for an upper body exercise, which made me really happy. And having that feeling when using the heavier weights just convinced me more that this is the right thing to focus on. I think I felt almost more accomplished by using those heavier weights than I do when I get most of my PRs.

But speaking of PRs, I got a new one this past week! We had the 12-minute distance challenge on Thursday. This benchmark is tough because it will always last 12 minutes no matter how fast or slow you go. When it’s a distance challenge, you can be done sooner if you go faster. But you have to pace yourself for 12 minutes for this one and that’s not a short time. I have had attempts in the past where I went too hard at first and burned out and really couldn’t do much for the second half. But I’ve been doing better at pacing myself and making sure I don’t go too hard in the beginning.

I knew that I PRed the last time I did this and that was hard enough to do. And it can be harder to PR on the bike than on the treadmill because the treadmill tracks smaller distances than the bike. So while on the treadmill you can see a new distance every few seconds or less, on the bike I see a new distance every 15 seconds or so. So that means I might have gone just a tiny bit further, but the distance on the bike computer would be the same as the last time. I am crazy competitive with myself, but I also know that when I’m doing bike challenges and tying my PR, sometimes it doesn’t mean that. It’s not an excuse, but something to help me not be too frustrated.

My plan this time for the challenge was to keep the resistance level at my normal base pace level so it wouldn’t be too heavy. I wanted to pedal really fast, but not so fast that I would feel out of control. And I wanted to maintain about the same speed for at least the first half. Then, after the 6-minute mark, my plan was to do little sprints every minute. I alternated between a 20-second and 30-second sprint every minute and when I wasn’t sprinting, I was trying to keep my speed the same as I did for the first half. And I was able to pretty much do my exact plan.

At the last minute, I knew that I was going to at least tie my last PR. It just came down to whether I could get the computer distance to change in time or if I would just appear to be at the same distance as the last time. And by some miracle, at 11:59, the distance went up by .1 and I was able to get a new PR!

The rest of my workout on Thursday suffered a bit from how exhausted I was from the challenge, but it was worth it to get the new PR!

I know not every week can be a winning week like this past one was, but I am so happy I had such an incredible week. I know it’s just a matter of time before I have another tough workout week, but I feel like those weeks aren’t getting that much worse than they normally are but my good weeks are getting better than they have been! So things are balancing out more in my favor than they have done before and that’s something to celebrate!

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Default ThumbnailKeeping Things Normal For A Holiday Week (or Steady With My Workouts) Default ThumbnailSome Holiday Workouts (or Back On The Treadmill This Week) Default ThumbnailBack To My Normal Workouts (or Another Challenge Switch) Default ThumbnailWorking Hard (or Some Normal But Tough Workouts) Default ThumbnailJust A Normal And Good Workout Week (or Using My Workouts To Get Out My Stress) Default ThumbnailA Very Weird Workout Week (or Food Poisoning And Holiday Workouts)

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PRs and Pain (or A Very Up And Down Week)

Posted on October 4, 2021 | Comments Off on PRs and Pain (or A Very Up And Down Week)

This past week of workouts really was a mixed bag for me. I had some great moments and some not great moments. But fortunately for me, I was expecting the not-great moments so they didn’t surprise me too much. But the great moments were a surprise and that made things even better!

Monday’s workout was a benchmark workout. I have done a few benchmarks since returning to OTF, and they haven’t been the best for me. But I also have known that I’m not back to where I was before, so I’m not too upset when I don’t get close to my PR.

This time, the benchmark was the 1-mile run. I used to do this on the treadmill, but now it’s on the bike and that means I go for 4 miles. I didn’t look at my past benchmarks before class because I just wanted to do my best and not judge myself against my past self. I kept the resistance level between my base and push pace levels and tried to let my focus be on anything other than the clock. I checked my distance every so often, and I didn’t pay too much attention to the time until I was almost done so I could make sure I knew what my final time was.

I finished in 8:19 and that seemed pretty great to me. But it wasn’t until class was done that I could check my past benchmarks and I discovered that I PRed on my mile challenge on the bike! I know it’s not a huge difference from my old PR, but 3 seconds faster is 3 seconds faster!

The second block on cardio was a bit easier with rounds of 45-seconds of an all-out and 1-minute to recover between.

On the floor, the first block was a bit easier than normal because the people who started on the floor had to do it before the benchmark. We had some warmups with high knees, front and back steps, and skips. Then we had bird dog low rows with weights, chest presses, and plank work. And the second floor block had lateral step-ups (I did lateral lunges), heel touch crunches, and v-ups.

Wednesday’s workout was a strength day, and I was feeling really off. I wasn’t sure if this was my usual pain and nausea kicking in earlier than expected or if I had a bit of food poisoning or something like that. I was just feeling nauseous and had to try to push through.

For cardio, we started with a rowing block with 1-minute intervals between push pace and base pace and ending with an all-out. I know my rowing wasn’t that great, but I did manage to do it with very few breaks. Then we had 2 more blocks on the treadmill/bike. We had 2 rounds of 90-second push paces at an incline with 1-minute flat road bases between. Then we ended with a 90-second flat road push pace and a 1-minute all-out. The first of the 2 blocks had higher inclines than the second block.

On the floor, the first block was a mini-band block with hip bridges, knee tucks, and crunches. The second block had goblet squats, lateral raises, and shoulder taps. And the last block had sumo squats, front raises, and side plank rotations.

Friday’s workout was an interesting one. I was feeling pretty bad that day, so I did have to go easy. But the cardio workout was a bit like the Everest challenge.

We had 3 cardio blocks that all had similar patterns. The first 2 blocks had a push pace, a base pace, a 3-minute hill, a base pace, and an all-out. In the first block, we went up the hill and in the second block, we went down the hill. The last block skipped the push pace and base pace in the beginning and went straight to the 3-minute hill. And we could choose to start at the top or bottom. I decided to start at the top and work my way down. I’ve done this workout before and that’s the way I like to do it because it’s nice to feel like it’s getting easier.

And on the floor, we had 3 blocks that all started with a 200-meter row. Then, within each block, we worked the same muscles to perfect our form. The first block had chest presses on the straps, chest presses with weights, and push-ups. The second block had low rows on the straps, hip hinge low rows, and seated low rows. And the last block had crunches, weighted crunches, and sit-ups. I did struggle quite a bit on the floor and had to take a lot of breaks, but I didn’t have to modify much for my nausea.

I was really feeling bad by Saturday’s workout. And this one would have been a challenge for me even if I was feeling great. This was The Nonstop, which is one of the signature workouts that I’ve taken before. And it’s always a tough one. This class was also a 3 group class, so in some ways that made it easier, and in other ways it was harder.

The idea for this workout is to just not stop during the blocks. The cardio and rower were the same, with a 14 1/2-minute block with no recovery. It was a 3-minute push, 90-second base, 2 1/2-minute push, 75-second base, 2-minute push, 1-minute base, 90-second push, 45-second base, and 30-second all-out. That’s a lot of work and it was really tough for me. I took a lot of breaks, but I did my best to try to do them in the base time. But for the rower, I struggled to do much so I didn’t have a lot of difference between my base and push. There is a goal distance for the rower, and I wasn’t anywhere close to it. But I did my best considering how I was feeling.

On the floor, there were 2 groups of exercises and within each group, you weren’t supposed to stop. The first group had squats, bicep curls, front squats, uppercuts, deadlifts, and hip hinge low rows. Every exercise was 5 reps and I used a weight that I knew I could do for all the exercises. So the weight was lower than I normally would use for some of the exercises, but I was able to do the entire set of exercises without stopping. The second group was all core work with static crunch over unders, heel taps, and bicycle crunches. I did modify the bicycle crunches to be regular crunches to each side, but I didn’t have to modify beyond that.

Even though I ended my week on a slightly down note with feeling awful, having the PR at the beginning of the week really did motivate me through the entire week! I was feeling so powerful even when I knew I was struggling and not doing my best. And I hope that I can keep that feeling going this week as I know it’s going to be another tough one. I’m going to try some different timing with the medications I take to see if it helps, but I also know that I probably will just have to push through like I normally do and see what happens.

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Default ThumbnailA Week Of Bike Work (or Working Through Nausea and Pain) Default ThumbnailWorking Out With New Pain (or I Just Never Make It Easy On Myself) Default ThumbnailGoing Big During Peak Performance Week (or A Week Of PRs) Default ThumbnailWorking Through My Workout Week (or At Least I Knew This Was Coming) Default ThumbnailA Week Back On The Bike (or Focusing On The Good) Default ThumbnailThe First Part Of My Workout Week (or Getting Better From One Thing And Having A New Medical Thing Happen)

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Celebrating At Orangetheory (or 3 Years Down)

Posted on June 5, 2017 | 1 comment

I didn’t realize this going into this past week of workouts, but this week was my 3 year anniversary at Orangetheory! It’s so crazy to think how 3 years ago I had my first class that was so tough I could barely walk the next day. I’ve come so far in those 3 years and I’m just so grateful that I was given the opportunity 3 years ago to try a class. I never thought I could fall in love with a workout so much, but here I am 3 years later loving things more and more and wanting to push myself further and harder.

Monday’s workout was a 3G because it was a holiday. Holiday workouts are always like that, so I was prepared going into class that it would be a 3 group workout. I started on the treadmill and it essentially was a 15 minute run for distance. It really was more like run 1.5 miles, walk, and then run more; but I knew that I couldn’t do 1.5 miles in 15 minutes so I looked at it as 15 minutes for distance. I had never run for 15 minutes before, but I’ve done close to that so I figured I should go for it and see what happens.

I did the first 12 minutes at 4.5 mph and tried to kind of go into my head and just think about anything other than running. I went through my schedule in my head and did some blog post planning and just kept running. Then for the last 3 minutes I was bumping up the speed a little bit each minute just because I wanted to see how far I could get. I didn’t really have a real goal in my head for how far I wanted to go, but I figured 1.125 miles sounded nice to me. And of course because of how stubborn I am, I was able to do more than that and ran the entire 15 minutes without stopping! Sorry for the blurry picture, I was so out of breath at the end of the run!

Next, I went to the rower where we had a 2,000 meter row. We don’t have 2,000 meter rows that often, but I do have them when I do the Dri-Tri so I’ve done them a few times. I was not expecting to PR on the row since my PR was during the Dri-Tri when the rowing was first so I wasn’t tired. All I wanted to do was row the entire time without taking a break. And I wanted to see if I could be under 9 minutes. Those seemed like good goals considering I had just come off of a 15 minute run.

Again, I just tried to get into my head and think of anything other than the rower. I was daydreaming and just trying to keep a steady rhythm on the rower. It was tough not to go really hard at the beginning since I do that a lot on my sprint rowing. But I started slower than I’m used to and was able to stay pretty steady the entire time. I didn’t take a break, did it under 9 minutes, and I was only 12 seconds slower than my PR! That was totally unexpected!

The floor work that day was pretty varied and I focused more on form than anything else since I was so tired from the running and rowing. We had chest presses, deadlifts, pullovers, strap work, and plank work. By the time class was done, I was feeling on top of the world from all the awesome work I did!

Wednesday’s workout was a power day. Every block was 4.5 minutes long so I decided to challenge myself to run everything including my base paces. With the blocks being so short, I would only have to run for 4.5 minutes at a time before having a walking recovery. It would be more running than I’m used to, but the length of each run wouldn’t be too bad. I used my normal push pace speed to be my base pace and only increased the speed about .2 mph to be my push pace. That’s not as much of a difference as you are supposed to have, but I didn’t think I could do much more and still come back down to a run. It wasn’t easy to not have the walks that I’m used to, but this was a good test for me with intervals for 5K training. Maybe I can do 4 minutes running/1 minute walking next time?

The floor was also 4.5 minute blocks and each block had 2 moves in it so it went pretty quickly. We had lots of chest and plank work in those mini-blocks and we had rowing in the last block. It was a 100 meter row and I wanted to see if I could PR. I had thought that my PR at the time was 17.4 seconds so I wanted to beat that. I did the rows in 17.6 and 17.5 seconds and was a bit upset about that. But then when I looked at my rowing record tracking, it looks like my old PR was 17.6 seconds so it looks like I did PR after all! I’m not as good at tracking my rowing records as I am with my treadmill ones (mainly because I don’t always have my phone with me to take photos on the rower) but I’m working on getting better at that so I can focus on those records now too.

Friday’s workout was an endurance day where we didn’t switch between blocks. I didn’t try to do anything too crazy with my running since I had 2 very run heavy days already. The entire workout on the treadmill was basically 90 second pushes with bases in-between. The bases were between 30 seconds and 2 minutes and I did walk then for each one. I kept my pushes at my normal speed but worked really hard to sprint for the all out paces that we had (I got up to 6.7 mph). In the 29 minutes we were on the treadmill I got 1.95 miles done. So I was pretty much at my 2 miles in class target.

The floor work was in 2 blocks and the first block had chest presses and squats which I was able to do with 2 20 pound weights. We also had Spiderman planks and rowing. The rowing was 300 meters and all I wanted to do was be under a minute. My first attempt was 59.7 seconds and my second attempt was 59.2 seconds which was a new PR for me! I’m only able to take a few tenths of a second off of my rowing PRs which is tough for me since I’m used to huge PRs on  the treadmill. But any improvement is a good thing and I’m starting to get used to seeing only minor improvements. The second block was mainly strap work and abs which was a nice break and I was able to slow down my heart rate a bit and just focus on my form.

Saturday’s workout was a strength day and a 3G class. I had decided even before knowing it was a strength day that I would be walking. But it’s always easier for me to walk on strength days. It’s funny how I’m thinking of a day where I only walk as a recovery day compared to even a year ago where my recovery days were on the bike. It’s funny to me how much I’ve changed when I was so sure that I wouldn’t be able to do it.

The treadmill was pretty normal for a strength day. Lots of incline work and I just tried to increase my inclines a bit more than I’m used to. I was doing a lot of my work at 8-12% incline and kept my speed steady at 3.5 mph. I didn’t get my heart rate up as much as I would have liked, but again this was a recovery day and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do as much as I normally do.

After the treadmill my group went to the rower where we had increasing rows with bicep curls on the rower and lunges off of the rower. The first row was 300 meters and I had no goals in my head. I wasn’t even worried about getting it done in under a minute. It ended up being around 1:06 (I’m not totally sure) but that was fine with me. The bicep curls on the rower were a nice recovery and I was able to go really deep with my lunges because I could steady myself on the water tank of the rower. My next row was 350 meters and I don’t really remember what time I did that in. My last row was 400 meters and I had an idea in my head that I want to be able to do this in 1:30. That’s really fast considering not long ago I was doing 300 meters in 1:30. But since it was my last row I went all out and ended up being pretty close to my goal! Now I’ve got something to work toward and I’m excited to see how long it takes me to get those last few seconds off.

On the floor, we had a longer block that had a lot of things that I was able to do with 20 pounds weights (lunges, deadlifts, single arm thrusters) and we also had a bit of plank work. And on the floor we ended with a 3 minute core blast where we had regular crunches, static crunches, toe reaches, leg lifts, and a 1 minute plank hold. That 1 minute plank hold wasn’t too bad, but I think that’s because I’m used to the super long planks from my last monthly challenge. I’m so happy that I’m seeing the results from that challenge in my workouts.

Overall, another amazing 4 workout week for me. I didn’t know it was my OTF anniversary until Thursday, so I think it’s awesome that I was able to accomplish some great challenges and PRs not even knowing that I was celebrating my time at OTF. I’ve accomplished so much in the past 3 years, and even more in just the past year. And I can’t wait to see what my fitness journey will look like in the next 3 years!

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Friends and Milestones (or Another Amazing Workout Week)

Posted on March 20, 2017 | Comments Off on Friends and Milestones (or Another Amazing Workout Week)

I feel like I’ve been killing it in my workouts week after week lately! I think that I really just want to do as much as I can in the next month (only 1 month to go until surgery!) and I know that the stronger I am the easier my recovery will be. I also want to see what limits I can push my body to now so I know what I will have to work toward when I’m recovering. I know that recovery will take time, but I think having strong goals to focus on will help me a lot.

Monday’s workout was a strength day and we switched between blocks. Knowing that it was a strength day and there would be inclines, I decided to walk all my inclines. Most of the time, I was walking at 8-10% incline instead of running at 5-7% incline. But I did run one of the 5% push pace to all out pace segments. And of course, I ran all of the flat road pushes and all outs. Inclines will probably be a struggle for me with running for a while, but I’m testing myself with it bit by bit.

On the floor, it was really an arm focused day. The first block was all tricep work and it was really tough. We did tricep chest presses, tricep push ups, and tricep kick backs with weights. My arms were so tired after that block. I wished they had mixed up the arm work and not had all the tricep stuff in one block, but I also know that it was that way to be tough and getting through it is an accomplishment. On the second block, we had strap work with low rows and pull ups. There were also hop overs on the benches which are always tough for me because of my hips. But I was able to almost do them as hops instead of steps which is a big deal for me. And the last block was a row focused one. I had a 200 meter row and really wanted to break the 40 second barrier, but it was done in 40.7 seconds which is so close but it feels like it’s taunting me.

Wednesday’s workout was a power day without switching between blocks. But it worked out pretty well for me even without getting to switch. On the treadmill, blocks 1 and 3 were the same and blocks 2 and 4 were the same. On blocks 1 and 3, I ran everything except for a 1 minute base pace that was in the middle. I probably could have run it, but I was scared of overdoing things and getting too tired. And on blocks 2 and 4 it was almost all 30 second intervals (with walking recoveries) so I was able to run everything. And I ended with a 30 second all out pace at 7.5 mph. That’s super fast and I don’t think I could do it longer than 30 seconds, but it was nice to know I could do a little sprint that quickly.

On the floor, we had a lot of ab focused work. My body wasn’t feeling 100% that day, but I was doing the best I could. Each block started with a sit up exercise, and sometimes I just had to modify it to just be a regular sit up instead of a fancy one. But I was still doing full sit ups and not crunches. Most of the other work on the floor was body weight stuff that was core focused (so more ab work), but we did have a quick rowing block at the very end. It was 30 second intervals like the treadmill was, so I wasn’t too focused on my distances.

Friday was a super awesome day! It was a special workout for St. Patrick’s Day and I had a friend taking her first class then! Grace works for the podcast that I work for and she wanted to test out Orangetheory to see if that could help her get back into a good workout routine. And the special workout that day was a partner workout, so I think it was pretty ideal for Grace to have as her first class. She and I were partnered up the entire time so I was able to help her out the few times that she wasn’t quite sure what we were doing next (but she got a hang of it super quickly and killed it in her workout!).

The partner workout had 3 blocks, but blocks 1 and 3 were the same. And since it was St. Patrick’s Day, a lot of things had 17 in them. For blocks 1 and 3, the treadmill controlled the switched between the partners. The treadmill ran .17 miles and the rower was rowing for distance. I was able to run every time I was on the treadmill and we did some pretty great distances on the rower. I forgot to take photos of our distance, but I do know that we did more in the last block than we did in the first.

And the 2nd block was the big one that lasted 30 minutes. This time, the floor/rower controlled the switching. You had to row for 170 meters and then do 17 reps of various floor exercises. And while the rower/floor person was going, the treadmill person was running until tagged out. I was running the entire time at the beginning because the switching was happening pretty quickly. I was on the treadmill for maybe 2 minutes. But as the block went on, the switching was taking longer and I had to switch things over to doing run/walk intervals. I felt most comfortable doing 1 minute intervals because that is something I’m so used to doing.

Like I said, Grace was so amazing in class especially since this was her first workout at Orangetheory! She was making me want to work harder to keep up with her and to try to be a good example. And I’ll be getting to do more workouts with Grace in the future because after she took that class she decided that Orangetheory is awesome and she got a membership! I’m excited to have another friend at my workouts with me. I love having people in class with me that are so encouraging and it helps me stay accountable since I don’t want to let my friends down.

Saturday’s workout was an endurance day and it was a 3G class so we were only at each section of the room for about 15 minutes. I was able to start on the treadmill and it was a 14 minute run for distance challenge. The longest I’ve run has been 10.5 minutes, but when I did that the longest I had run before was maybe 4 minutes. So I figured I might as well try to run the entire time. Plus, I had a goal in mind that I wanted to be able to run for a mile without stopping before surgery. I haven’t done that since middle school (20 years ago) and it’s a milestone that I’ve wanted to try.

It wasn’t easy to run that long. I was actually pretty tired much faster than expected. But I think that was because I worked so hard earlier in the week. Maybe if this was the first workout of the week I wouldn’t have struggled, but this was at the end. I kept the speed at 4.5 mph almost the entire time and didn’t focus on anything except not stopping. I got my mile done in under 13 1/2 minutes (not a PR but I don’t care since it’s the first mile with no walking breaks) and after 14 minutes I was pretty darn happy with myself and what I was able to do!

Next I was on the floor but I was taking a lot of breaks because I was pretty tired from the run. There was a couple of little blocks on the floor with the first one being leg and shoulder work. Then we had a very short block (maybe 4 minutes) of different types of squats. And we ended with a short core blast with sit ups, back extensions, and planks. And finally I had the rower which was rowing followed by half squats (which were so tough because my legs were done by that point). It was a tough endurance day, but I was so proud of myself for what I did!

With 1 month left before surgery, I’m really working on maximizing all my workouts. I’ll be doing the Dri-Tri again soon and I’m really excited about that. I’m also going to try to do 4 workouts every week leading up to surgery with the exception of the week I have my 5K race. There is another challenge coming at Orangetheory that I’m debating about doing. It’s during April, so I won’t have the full month to accomplish it. But I’m going to try really hard to do what I can. I want to keep having epic workout weeks each week, and it seems like that will be the trend for the next month!

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Going Big During Peak Performance Week (or A Week Of PRs)

Posted on January 16, 2017 | 5 comments

This past week was Peak Performance Week at Orangetheory and it went really well for me! Peak Performance Week is something that I do look forward to each time it happens. It’s a great way to prove to myself that I’m making progress and since I’m so competitive with myself I can get some of that energy out. My original plan was to only do 3 workouts, but I decided to go for it and do 4 workouts during the week (which meant doing 3 workouts in a row) because I really wanted to see what I could do.

Monday’s challenge was the 500 meter row challenge. I don’t have as crazy of goals with the rower as I do with the treadmill, but I still set goals for myself and want to do better than I’ve ever done. So with 500 meters, I set a goal of being able to do it in under 2 minutes. I started on the treadmill but we only warmed up while the first group was on the rowers. When they were done, it was our turn to row (this way, we weren’t too tired before doing the row). Even though 500 meters isn’t really a sprint for me, I knew that I could just go really hard and hopefully it would only be about 2 minutes of effort. So I did just that, and when I got to 500 meters, I was pretty excited to see my time!

1:55.9! Totally under my goal time and that’s all that I could have asked for! After doing the challenge, we had the rest of the workout. On the treadmill, I ended up walking for it all because I went so hard on the rower. For the longer push paces, I did my inclines between 6-8% and the shorter push paces at 10-12%. But walking was fine with me since I was tired and I knew I’d have more running during the week. And when I was on the floor, I stuck with slightly lighter weights for my lunges. We also had some strap work and ab work plus some short rows (which I took easy).

Tuesday’s workout was the one I wasn’t sure I’d be doing, but when the challenge for that workout was announced I knew I had to go. It was the 24 minute run for distance. I hadn’t done that one since I started running, so I wanted to see what I could do. I had a goal in mind to go .5 miles further this time than I did the last time but I mainly just wanted to do my intervals as long as I could. I was doing 2 minutes of running and 1 minute of walking. I mainly ran at 5 mph and walked at 3.5 mph and was doing pretty good with that speed with my intervals. At the end, I did a few rounds of 1 minute of running/1 minute of walking and tried to bump my speed up. I really wanted to make it to the distance goal I had (which would have been 1.896 miles), and I was close but just missed it.

Even though I didn’t make that distance goal, I’m so happy that I went as far as I did and that I did so well with my intervals. I hadn’t done the 2 minutes of running intervals for that length of time before so it was really great to realize that I could do it!

After the 24 minute distance run, I had 2 blocks on the floor. Each of those block started with a 300 meter row and we did some arms and squats after that. And then after those blocks, we had a 3 minute core blast on the floor that ended with a one minute plank hold and I was able to hold it for about 45 seconds. That’s not my best plank hold, but considering all the other work that I did that day I’m very happy with it.

Wednesday’s workout was a floor rep challenge day. Since it was my 3rd workout in a row, I knew it would need to be a bit of a recovery day. I tried to run at the beginning of the workout and realized that my legs were pretty dead so it ended up being a walk day for me. We did switch between blocks and there were 4 blocks on the treadmill and 4 blocks on the floor. The treadmill was nothing spectacular for me since I was so tired, plus I knew I would be working really hard on the floor.

For the floor rep challenge, we got to do it twice and add up the reps from both attempts. We had 4 minutes and did 1 move each minute. We were doing squats, push ups, pull ups on the straps, and sit ups). I tried so hard to go each minute without stopping, but it wasn’t easy. I think for me, the easiest ones were the push ups and sit ups but none of them were too horrible for me. On my first attempt, I did 124 reps between all the moves and on the second attempt I did 110 reps. I think that that’s not too shabby considering how hard those 4 minutes were without a break. I would have loved to have done more reps the second try, but that wasn’t in the cards for me.

And Friday was the day I was stressing out about all week: the mile challenge. I think that I judge myself by the mile challenge more than I do with any other treadmill challenge. And since I recently had a major PR with my mile, I was worried that I couldn’t beat that. I know that I don’t need to PR every time I do the mile challenge, but that’s what I want to do. I knew that I went really hard with that last PR and I spent time this past week trying to figure out what I would need to do in order to PR again.

This time, I tried to stick with 2 minutes running/1 minute walking intervals. I had it figured out that I would only need to do that 4 times to get my mile done so it helped with getting my head in the right space. I started with doing as long as I could at 6 mph for my running time. I averaged going that for just over a minute and then I ran at 5.8 mph to finish out the 2 minutes. I did my walking at 3.8 mph, which is faster than I would have liked, but I knew I needed to keep my speed up. That plan worked fine for the first 3 rounds and then my stomach started to cramp up. I went back to 1 minute intervals and increased my speed even more. When I knew I had .1 miles left on my mile, I sprinted and kept increasing my speed. I knew it was going to be close to 11:48 (my previous PR) and I just wanted to get at least 1 second off of my time. And it made me feel so amazing that I did that.

It wasn’t a pretty mile for me. It was so difficult and I’ve realized that I need to figure out a new game plan for the next time I do a mile challenge since I can’t just keep increasing my speed. Hopefully I’ll have some time to figure it out before the next challenge, but for now I’m just happy that I got another PR.

We had a pretty low-key floor block while the other half of class did their mile challenge and then we all joined together to do a partner workout for the rest of class. One of us was on the floor and the other was on the rower. The rower person set the pace and had to do a 900, 600, or 300 meter row. While the partner was on the rower, the person on the floor had lunges, mountain climbers, ab work, and roll outs. We would repeat the floor work until our partner tagged us out.

I was pretty happy that we didn’t have to go back onto the treadmill. My right hip was really sore after my mile. It wasn’t my normal type of pain which is sharp and feels like an electric shock. This was more of a dull annoying pain and I didn’t want to push myself too much. I did take it easy on the floor since I wasn’t controlling the pace, but when I was on the rower I did my best to go as quickly as I could so I could tag out my partner. We each ended up doing 2 rounds on the rower so at least we were pretty equal with our work.

This Peak Performance Week was totally a win for me. While I didn’t meet every goal that I set for myself, I had a PR with everything. And those goals I set were pretty ambitious and I didn’t know if I could do every single one I set for myself. So to do 3 out of 4 isn’t too bad. Plus, I did 4 workouts in a week and 3 workouts in a row so that makes the week even more difficult! All of those things combined helped to make this week more amazing than I could have imagined!

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Continuing To Impress Myself (or A New PR)

Posted on September 5, 2016 | 1 comment

This past week of workouts were pretty amazing for me. I had 3 workouts which was fine (especially since I did a “workout” at Disneyland by walking almost 8 miles there). I wasn’t expecting to have anything awesome happen since I had such a wonderful PR with my mile the week before, but I’m glad that I surprised myself!

Monday’s workout was an early one for me. I usually go in the morning, but I went an hour earlier than normal so I could have more time at Disneyland after (and I’m aware that I’m crazy for going to Disneyland after a workout). Getting up earlier than I’m used to was a bit tough, but fortunately my workout didn’t feel that much harder than my usual morning one.

This time, we had an endurance day. On endurance days we have really long push paces and I usually can’t run for the entire thing. Usually I try to run as much as I can, but since I didn’t want to overdo it before Disneyland I decided to run for 1 minute of each push. I’m sure I could have done more, but considering how bad my hips were feeling that night, I’m glad I didn’t push myself more. We also had a row block as part of our cardio where we were doing 90 second sprints. Those were pretty short sprints so I was able to do them without too much trouble.

On the floor that day, we did some more rowing with 300 meter sprints (which takes me about 90 seconds so all the rows were about the same). We also had a lot of variety with the floor work with using the Bosu, straps for rollouts, weights with the squats, and body weight with plank jacks. I was definitely feeling exhausted after the workout, but I’m glad I didn’t skip a Monday because of Disneyland.

Wednesday was a bit of a sad day. My Wednesday coach, JZ, has been my Wednesday coach since my first full week at Orangetheory. I’ve loved having her as my coach each week and she’s been not only a great coach but has become an awesome friend too. There have been very few weeks where she wasn’t my coach on Wednesdays and I love having that consistency in my life. But JZ has her own company and that is starting to take up more time so she cannot teach classes on a regular basis at Orangetheory anymore. She’s still going to be on the sub list (so hopefully I’ll get her from time to time) and she’s going to work out there too so this workout wasn’t a goodbye, but it still was a bit of a downer.

JZ

Even though I was sad about this being JZ’s last regular class, I still wanted to kick some butt in the workout. It was a power day so I was excited to have shorter push paces so I could do more running. The push paces were between 2 minutes and 1 minute and I’m happy that even thought the 2 minute ones were tough, I still ran for the entire time! The second half of the cardio workout was a run/row (usually a run/row is the entire cardio workout) and it was a combination of push paces to all out paces. The longest time on the treadmill was 2 1/2 minutes, and I did manage to run for that entire one. I was really exhausted on the rower after that, but I’m just happy that I’m doing slightly longer running times more often now.

On the floor that day, we had 4 short blocks and each block started with holding a plank. The first time (which was 30 seconds) was easy and I felt pretty confident that I wouldn’t have a problem with any of them. But each time they got longer and it was harder and harder for me to hold the plank. When we had to do it for 2 minutes, I was taking a couple of breaks because my core just couldn’t stay up. I used to be amazing at planks (when I had a personal trainer 10 years ago, my PR was over 3 minutes in a steady plank) and I really do want to get back to being able to do that.

Friday’s workout was another endurance one, but this one had a challenge in it as well. In the beginning of the workout for cardio, we had a 6 minute challenge for distance. I’ve done 5 minute challenges and 7 minute challenges, but never a 6 minute one so I wasn’t sure what distance I was going to hope for. But I figured if I could be at a similar distance to my 7 minute challenge one, I’d be happy.

I did the 6 minutes as a run/walk with running for the first minute, walking for the second, repeating that for the third and fourth minutes, and then running the last two minutes without a break. It wasn’t easy and I was tired because I was pushing my speeds to be a lot faster than I’m used to. But I was so happy to see that I not only matched my best 7 minute challenge, but I beat it!

6 Minute

After the challenge, we had another 7 minutes on the treadmill doing regular endurance work. I tried to run a bit more, but I was pretty tired from the challenge so I stuck with walking until we had the all out at the end of that block.

Then we switched the floor so the other half of class could do their first 6 minute challenge. On the floor, it was a long block filled with squats, rowing, burpees, hamstring work, and abs. After we got through that, we had a 500 meter row. My time on the rower wasn’t great, but between the challenge and all the floor work I was ok with that. I only made it over to the rower once during the floor block and then it was time to switch again to be on the treadmill.

We repeated the 6 minute challenge and I figured I could bump my speeds up more since I knew this was the last 6 minutes on the treadmill for class. I was going a bit too fast in the beginning so I had to bring my speed down a few times, but I was able to keep the same pattern I used the first time. And when we had the last 30 seconds, I got my speed up to 6.0 miles an hour and sprinted to the end. And since I worked so much harder the second time, I managed to PR on the challenge compared to the first attempt.

6 Minute #2

That’s almost 1/2 mile in 6 minutes! I remember when I started at Orangetheory that it would take me about 5 minutes to go 1/4 mile! I did wonder if I should have tried a bit harder because I might have actually been able to make it to that 1/2 mile mark, but this just gives me something to strive for next time so I can have another PR.

After the second challenge, we headed back to the floor where we did a lot of work on the Bosu (which mean I could sit down for a lot of it). I’m glad I had that time to catch my breath and decompress from the workout because it still boggles my mind sometimes that I’m not just running but running at speeds I never imagined I could do!

This workout continued to prove to me that I am making major progress even if I doubt it at times. When I don’t have things like treadmill challenges or rowing challenges to compare myself to, I can feel like I’m stuck even if I’m not. I’m trying to get that stuck feeling out of my head because I don’t think it’s going to help me improve on my endurance, and that’s my big focus now. I know I can run/walk for a mile, but I need to be able to do that for 3.1 miles in about 2 months. I know that I can always just walk it if I get too tired, but my goal is really do to the entire thing as a run/walk and that’s only going to happen if I get my endurance up a lot in the next 2 months.

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