Tag Archives: treadmill

A Full Workout Week (or Sticking With My Plan)

Posted on February 1, 2016 | 2 comments

I had a 4 workout week this past week and I feel really great about what I did in my classes! This was my second workout week after making the decision to use the bike on the 4th workout of the week and I’m glad that I made that choice. This week was tough, but I don’t feel totally exhausted from it.

Monday was a bit of an odd day. After the warmup (which was about 5 minutes) we all gathered on the floor and did a core blast for our abs. It was partnered work and used regular sit-ups and some with the medicine ball. It was tough and my abs were so tired after it was done, but that was only the beginning of the workout. After the core blast, we all stood around while our coach Brendon counted us off and split up the group. I almost always do my cardio work first, but this time I didn’t have a choice and I had to do my floor work first. I wasn’t too happy about that, but it is what it is and I got through it the best way that I could.

Once I did get to the treadmill, we had some speed training blocks. Normally during speed training the power walkers just work on incline training. But since I’m still struggling to get past 8 or 10% incline, I didn’t want to push the incline work too much. So I decided to try the speed training with the runners. For the runners, they were supposed to increase their speed by .3 or .5 miles an hour each time, but I knew that it would be too much for me. So I did my increases by .1 miles an hour and got pretty fast (at least pretty fast for me). I know that I can’t do the really fast speeds for more than a minute at a time, but just proving to myself that I can do little sprints made me feel awesome!

On Wednesday, the treadmill block was a solid 30 minutes without floor work in between the blocks. Each block was 5 minutes long (which felt long when we were in the blocks) and I kept all my push paces at 3.6 miles per hour because they weren’t too long. That’s still feeling almost too fast for me, but I know that the more that I do them in short bursts the more normal they will feel. So I’m glad that I was able to push myself a little bit more this time. And I felt even better about my work because I was exhausted that day! I know that going to the Pantages the night before didn’t let me sleep as much as I’m used to. But those Tuesday night shows are a rare thing for me so I’m not too worried about them.

Friday was another 30 minute treadmill block day (I really don’t love those but I’m working on tolerating them more). We had a bunch of pushes that were 3 minutes long which are a big challenge for me. I kept my speed at 3.5 miles an hour for those. And while I did have to take some breaks during the pushes, I tried to go as long as I could before taking a break. 3 minutes is a long time to do a push and having multiple pushes like that really tested my limits. I think I was pretty tired from the workout by the time that I got to the floor. I think I could have used 20 pound weights for a lot of my work, but I just couldn’t lift them so I stuck with 15 pound weights. I regret not trying the 20 pound weights more, but at the time it just didn’t seem possible.

And finally on Saturday I did my cardio on the bike. My heart rate really can’t get that high on the bike (I’m not sure if it’s because of the bike or because my heart rate monitor doesn’t work as well when I’m hunched over on the handlebars), so I don’t stress about what the heart rate screen shows (unlike how I am on the treadmill). Our blocks were about 6 minutes each and we switched between cardio and the floor between the blocks. My legs did get tired on the bike because I was pushing it with the resistance, but I know that my legs and hips were grateful for the break from the treadmill. And getting that break helped my floor work because I was doing a lot of work with the 20 pound weights this time! Those 20 pound weights felt like 100 pounds weights at times, but I pushed through and am so glad that my body doesn’t hurt as much as I would expect after working so hard.

I’ve got another 4 workout week coming up this week and I’m really happy about the plan that I’ve made for myself for that 4th workout of the week. I’m still pushing my limits, but I’m pushing them safely and not hurting my hips as much as I have been in the past. And that’s good because my hip pain has been increasing lately. I have no idea if it’s random or if I have done some additional damage lately (which is expected and I’m almost waiting to have happen before my next surgery), so I want to be cautious. But I think with the mixture of the bike and the treadmill I’m protecting my body while pushing myself at the same time. And that’s exactly what I need to do right now.

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Peak Performance Week (or Getting Closer To Some PRs)

Posted on January 25, 2016 | Comments Off on Peak Performance Week (or Getting Closer To Some PRs)

It was another Peak Performance Week at Orangetheory! The last Peak Performance Week was back in November and it was a bit tough for me. I had really wanted to beat what I had done in the previous Peak Performance Week, but since I had my calf tear I’ve been trying to work my way back to where I had been before. It’s tough to know that I had been doing things better/faster/stronger before, but I’m trying to thing of my pre-injury time and post-injury time as two different things (I also have separated my life into pre-hip surgery and post-hip surgery).

So this time, I wasn’t necessarily trying to beat my best time, but just beat what I had done last time. Also, some of the challenges I would be doing were different from last time, so it made it easier not to compare myself to my former self.

Peak Performance

Monday was the 500 meter row. This was going to be a lot easier than the 2000 meter row I did last time (I was going to be missing the 2000 meter row day this time), but just because it was going to be easier didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to push myself like crazy to do something awesome.

It was a 3G day, so we didn’t really have a lot of time at each station. We rotated around a bunch and when it was time for me to do my 500 meter row, I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted my goal time to be. You are supposed to do at least 100 meters every 30 seconds, so if I followed that I would do it in 2:30. As much as I wanted to see if I could do it under 2 minutes, I knew that wasn’t realistic for me right now. So after I had done about 250 meters, I decided I wanted to come in under 2:15.

500 Meters

It was close, but not quite there. I know I could have done it if the straps around my feet hadn’t loosened so much that I had to stop to tighten them, but I can’t let that get to me. It’s still a good time for me and I know that the next time I have to do 500 meters that I’ve got a good benchmark to try to beat.

Wednesday’s class got off to a bit of a tough start for me. There were so many accidents on the road while I was trying to get to class that I ended up being a few minutes late. Normally, I start my workout on the treadmill because that seems to be easier on my hips. But because I was late, I had to start on the rower first. Fortunately, we switched between blocks so I didn’t have to do 30 minutes on the treadmill at the end of class.

This day’s challenge was 1 minute of burpees. I definitely have a love/hate relationship with burpees, but they are getting easier for me to do. In my 1 minute, I was able to do 10 of them (and we had to go all the way down to the ground each time so it was like having to do a pushup with each one). I didn’t have a goal in mind for this challenge, so to me 10 sounds pretty awesome!

Besides the rough start to my Wednesday workout, the rest of the day went pretty well. My treadmill work was feeling easier than it had in a long time and I was using only 15 pound weights for my floor work (I’m working my way to using those 20 pound weights, but it’s a big jump).

Friday was the day that I had been waiting for. The 1 mile challenge. I think those of you who read this blog regularly know that this challenge is a big deal for me. I do use it as a benchmark for my progress. I’ve had mile times in the past that were over 20 minutes. My ultimate goal is to get down to a 15 minute mile. I know that my mile times on the treadmill versus on a race day aren’t always the same, but I still compare them against each other all the time. Sometimes I’m faster on the treadmill because it forces me to walk faster and sometimes I’m faster at a race because it’s a real flat road and I’ve got adrenaline going. So in my mind, they can be interchangeable.

I’ve had one 1 mile challenge since my calf injury. And while it was slower than my past 1 mile challenge, it was progress compared to my 5K mile time. So I was pretty happy. This time, I knew that it would be close to impossible to beat my 1 mile PR so I didn’t go into this with that mindset. I wanted to beat my last 1 mile challenge time (which was 17:08) and ideally be under 17 minutes.

Technically, at Orangetheory power walkers only have to do half the distance for any treadmill things. So I only had to do half a mile. But I wanted to do a mile no matter what, and I’m glad that my coach Bruce put all the treadmill blocks back to back so I would have enough time to complete it (otherwise, there would only be 14 minutes for me to finish).

When I started my mile, I was off to a great start. I was at 3.5 miles an hour for the first minute or so and then bumped it up to 3.6 miles an hour right after that. I hit the .25 mile mark and was going strong. But then, my shin splints came back. I slowed back down to 3.5 miles an hour hoping that maybe that would help make them feel a bit better. They didn’t and I started to hurt quite a bit.

At the half mile mark, I debated ending my treadmill challenge and just being ok with doing that half mile. But I knew that I would be regretting it later so I kept pushing on. It wasn’t an easy mile and I’m sure it didn’t look pretty. But I did it. And in the end I reached my goal.

1 Mile

My official time was 16:57, which is 11 seconds faster than what I did back in November. It’s 27 seconds slower than my PR, so I’m getting closer to being back there.

I’m so glad that I didn’t give up at the half mile. While I wished that the shin splints hadn’t come back during the challenge, they did and I did the best that I could in the circumstances. I’m sure that if my mile was pain free, I would have been maybe 15 seconds faster. But I met my goal and I’m proud of myself for that.

Since all the treadmill blocks were back to back and I took longer than everyone else to finish their mile (I’ve realized that I might have had the slowest mile of everyone at Orangetheory, but I’m ok with that), by the time that I had walked and recovered it was time to move from the treadmill to the floor work. I missed the run/row that everyone else got to do, but I was glad that the treadmill time was done because I didn’t know how much longer I was going to be able to stand the shin splint pain. I know that pushing through the pain isn’t always the right choice, but I knew it was right for me then.

Overall, I’m very happy with how I did during Peak Performance Week. I always tried my best no matter how I felt and I think that the results show that. I’m happy with all 3 of my challenges and I love that I have new challenges that I can track in the future.

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Balancing My Workouts (or Doing Some Planning)

Posted on January 18, 2016 | 4 comments

It was another week of highs and lows in my workouts. I had to do some real thinking about how I can continue this lifestyle long-term and I think I’ve found some great ideas to help me.

Monday was a bit of an odd day for me. I went to an afternoon workout instead of a morning one because of filming my friend’s project. I do afternoon workouts most days, so it wasn’t too bad. But it seemed to throw my day off a bit and I had trouble with figuring out when I should eat because I ate breakfast so early and didn’t want to eat lunch too late and get sick in my workout. But I managed to figure out something that almost worked for me (I didn’t eat enough before my workout so I was getting a bit light-headed).

Monday was a run/row day (those really are my favorites) and because the run segments were short enough, I was able to do my push paces at 3.6 miles per hour for the entire class. I’m hoping that I can get my base pace up to 3.5 miles an hour, but that’s still a struggle for me. But I’m ok with getting my push paces up. And as I mentioned before, I’m focusing on my speed on the treadmill instead of increasing the incline. I feel like that is making things a bit easier on my hips and calf so I’m happy to continue doing that.

Wednesday was a bit of a tough day for me. I’m not sure if I was getting shin splints again, but my legs didn’t feel right. It wasn’t the same as the usual shin splint pain. It was more toward my ankles and didn’t start until the end of the treadmill segment, so I didn’t stress out about it too much. As soon as I got off the treadmill I focuses on my weight works and was successful in only using 15 pound weights (no 12 pound weights at all that day!). We also ended the day with a 3 minute row and I felt like my form was a bit straighter than it has been in a long time (when I bend my legs on the rower, they go more out like a butterfly than bending like a squat). I did take care of my legs after class, so I didn’t have any pain on Thursday like I have in the past with shin splints.

Friday was a crazy day for me. I wasn’t thinking that it was the start of a holiday weekend and I was late for class for the first time ever! Fortunately, my friend Dani was there and saved me a treadmill. I was only 3 minutes late, but it did throw me off. It was another run/row day, so I was pretty happy about that. I was mainly doing 3.6 miles an hour, but I tried to increase it to 3.7 for the last 30 seconds of each treadmill block. My legs were feeling fine, so that was a relief. And Friday marked the start of the Orangetheory weight loss challenge so I’m glad I got the challenge off to a good start with a great workout.

I also added in a 4th workout on Saturday. And this is where I’ve made a decision that I think will help me out. While I don’t love using the bike instead of the treadmill, I’m terrified of overdoing it on the treadmill. So I’ve decided that on weeks that I do 4 workouts, I’m going to do that 4th workout on the bike (or the 1st workout of the week on the bike if that’s on a Sunday). It’s hopefully going to help my hips take a bit of a break without having to take a break completely with the workout. So on Saturday this past week, I was on the bike. I wasn’t able to get my heart rate up as high as I’d like, but I’m wondering if that may be because of how I’m hunched over on the bike and how the heart rate monitor fits in that position. But I was pedaling a lot faster than I have in the past and that made me very happy.

My weight work on Saturday was great. I was doing deadlifts with 25 pound weights and my bicep work with 15 pound weights (although I’m thinking now that I could have done 20 pounds weights). I also had some great improvement on my form on the work on the TRX straps. I don’t know what clicked for me this week with form, but there was something that just made everything easier to do so I could push myself even more than I was before.

I’m not sure when my next week of 4 workouts will be (maybe in 2 weeks), but I’m liking the idea of taking a bit of a break with that 4th workout being on the bike. Knowing that is my plan, I might start doing more 4 workout weeks if my schedule allows. I’m hoping that one day, that will be what my normal weeks will be like. But for now, I’m happy with only sometimes doing that 4th workout.

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Pushing Myself Enough (or Listening To My Body)

Posted on January 11, 2016 | Comments Off on Pushing Myself Enough (or Listening To My Body)

I had some really great highs in my workout week and one kind of low. But the positives outweigh the negatives and I’m really excited about that.

The biggest thing that I accomplished this past week was continuing to increase my treadmill speed. I’m still sticking with 3.4 miles an hour for my base pace and when I’m starting out. As much as I’d love to increase that to 3.5 miles an hour (where I was before my calf tear), my body is not having it. I’m trying really hard to be ok with that, but I feel like I’ve been stuck at the same speed for a long time and I should be able to increase it. But I’m not going to push myself so hard that I hurt myself again.

But even though my base speed is the same, I’m been testing myself more and more with my push pace and all-out pace. For power walkers, you only have to increase the incline and not the speed. But I’ve been doing both for the past few weeks. I’m very comfortable with 3.5 miles an hour for both my push and all-out speeds so I’m going faster. I’m up to 3.7 miles an hour for my under a minute push and all-out paces (which is awesome!). If I’m in a push pace for over a minute, I’m at 3.6 miles an hour. For the really long pushes (like 3 minutes), I have to go back down to 3.5 miles an hour a bit. But those aren’t too common.

All 3 workouts I went to this week were 30 minutes on the treadmill straight. Those are the hardest for me and I made it through. And not only did I make it through, I pushed myself more and more on the treadmill and am getting closer to the speeds I want to be working at so I can PR on a 5K. So the progress I’m making, even if it seems minor, is really getting me close to where I’ve been wanting to be.

Besides my treadmill work, I was able to do some really great work on the floor. I was using 20 pound weights for a lot of my arm work and my chest presses. And I was using 25 pound weights for my squats (squats have always been a strong point for me). I had a bad day on Friday with my shoulder work and was only able to use 10 pound weights.

But I had a reason that Friday was bad. I had a horrible gallbladder attack on Thursday night/Friday morning. It kept me up most of the night and I was in incredible pain. I toyed with the idea of going to the hospital, but I’ve done that before and there isn’t much that they can do for me. They can give me painkillers (which I already have for my hip) and do an ultrasound to confirm that I’ve got gallstones (had that done before and I do have them). I know that the next step one day will be to have my gallbladder removed like most of the women in my family have, but I’m not close to being there yet. This was my first gallbladder attack in a long time. And when most people are close to having theirs taken out, they have attacks every month (sometimes every week). So this is just a minor inconvenience for me right now.

But this minor inconvenience did cause me to have a not-so-great workout on Friday due to being exhausted. I actually surprised myself by how well I did on the treadmill, but I had to take a bunch of breaks. But after pushing myself on the treadmill I was almost too tired to do the floor work. It really took a toll on me. And I had every intention of doing a workout on Saturday, but after feeling so tired on Friday I knew that the workout on Saturday wouldn’t be in my best interest. So I cancelled it and took that day to rest and recover from not sleeping Thursday night/Friday morning.

Like I said before, the positives really outweighed the negatives. I’m trying to keep focusing on what I did well and not what I wish I could have done better. I’m aware that it’s always baby steps to get to the goals I set for myself, but I’m so impatient! I just always reminding myself that when I started at Orangetheory I was at 3.0 miles an hour on the treadmill and was so excited to be at 3.1 miles an hour because that meant my 5K would be an hour and not over an hour. In about a year and a half I’m almost half a mile faster. So I just can imagine how much faster I’ll be in 4 months (when I have my next 5K), 10 months (when I’m thinking the 5K after my next 5K will be), or in year. It’s going to be great and I can’t try to rush my progress (no pun intended).

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Some Holiday Workouts (or Back On The Treadmill This Week)

Posted on December 28, 2015 | 1 comment

For Christmas week, my workout schedule was a bit funky. This was due to my work schedule being weird (we unexpectedly got Christmas Eve off when we were told before we had to work) and Orangetheory not being open on Christmas (which I totally get). But even with the weird schedules, I still managed to get my 3 workouts in this week.

After being on the bike all week the week before, I decided to try to the treadmill and see how it felt. Fortunately for me Monday was an easy treadmill day. The treadmill time was very short and I think the warmup was actually the longest I spent on the treadmill without a break. That was a great way to ease back into the treadmill and I was so happy to not have the shin splint issues I was having before.

My Wednesday workout was a bit tough. The class did do the treadmill blocks back to back so I was on the treadmill for about 30 minutes straight. While between blocks we got to cool down a bit (3 miles an hour instead of 3.4), it was still a long time on the treadmill. I was terrified that the shin splints would come back then, but they never reappeared. I did take things a bit easy, but I was still pushing myself a bit because I’m so close to my pre-calf injury speed. I really want to be back to where I was, but I don’t want to hurt myself.

Since Orangetheory was going to be closed on Friday, I did a workout on Thursday. Originally I scheduled it to be after work, but since my work day was cancelled I got to go in the morning! Bruce was the coach for that class and he wore the Santa hat that I got for him last year.

OTF Christmas

It was a run/row day so the time on the treadmill wasn’t as bad as the day before. That was good because I was so tired from the workout on Wednesday. With the shorter treadmill blocks I didn’t have any issues with my shin splints or calf, but my hips were starting to bug me after a few rounds because of the incline we were using. So I lowered the incline and things felt much better.

With all the focus on the treadmill this past week, it would have been easy to ignore working on my floor work. But I tried really hard to focus on the floor when I was there and forget about the work I had done on the treadmill.

I was able to use the 20 pound weights for a lot of things this week. I was using them for squats (which I’m used to doing), triceps work, and hammer curls. The 20 pound weights are still a bit tough for me, but I’m starting to notice that a lot of the time the 15 pound weights don’t cut it for me anymore. They are feeling light at times and I know that if they are feeling easy it’s really time to push myself more and if I need to move down to the 15 pound weights partway through the block, I can do so then. But I’m working on starting higher on the weights and going down if needed.

I was originally planning on working out this past Saturday, but there were some things that were potentially going to be conflicts. So I just stuck with my 3 workouts for the week and was happy with that.

The end of the year is almost here and I’m almost to my workout goal for the year. My next workout blog post will be after I’ve hit my 2015 goal and after I’ve announced my 2016 goal (and have gotten a workout or 2 done with the new goal)!

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Peak Performance Week (or Pushing Myself To The Max)

Posted on November 16, 2015 | 1 comment

It’s been a crazy few weeks at Orangetheory lately! First there was Hell Week. Then there was Recovery Week (which didn’t feel like a recovery but more like a normal week). And this past week was Peak Performance Week.

We had a Peak Performance Week back at the beginning of the summer, and I had a pretty great time with it. I got some PRs, challenged myself, and felt like I had set some good benchmarks to try to beat. Not all of the challenges were the same as the beginning of the summer, but it’s nice to have something to compare to. Especially when that last time it was right before I tore my calf muscle. I was able to see how close to fully recovered I am.

Monday’s challenge was a 10 minute run/walk for distance. The goal for all the runners was to get at least a mile done in 10 minutes. So technically the goal for me as a power walker was to get half a mile done. I know I can do half a mile in 10 minutes, so I set my own goal of trying to get to .6 miles in 10 minutes.

I did most of the work at 6% incline and as much as I wanted to increase my speed, my hips and calf weren’t having it. So while I didn’t get to my personal goal, I think I did pretty great.

10 minute distance

Wednesday’s challenge was something that I was really looking forward to. It was the 1 mile challenge. When I did this over the summer, I had a PR with my mile. While that was amazing, it was very disappointing for me how I wasn’t able to translate that mile time into my 5K (and yes, I know that the PR was pre-injury and the race was post-injury). I knew that my mile time wasn’t going to be a PR. But I really wanted to prove to myself that I could do better than I did at my race.

I spent most of my mile alternating between 3.4 and 3.5 miles and hour. In the last minute, I bumped up the speed as much as I could. And when I was done, I was so happy with myself.

1 mile time

This is about 30 seconds slower than my mile PR (which isn’t that much) and about 50 seconds faster than my mile time from race day. I needed this boost because I had still been feeling a bit low from my race. I know that somehow I could have done better, but I’m not sure what I would have had to do. So showing myself on the treadmill that I’m not as far back from fully recovered as I thought really made me feel great.

Friday was a pretty exciting day for me. First of all, it was my 150th workout of 2015! That’s amazing to me! Also, Friday’s challenge was the 2000 meter row. I’ve had so much rowing lately that I knew I could do some great work on this challenge. My PR for my 1000 meter row is 4:58.9, so my goal for my 2000 meter row was anything under 10 minutes.

Since I knew the row would totally take it out of me, I chose to do that first instead of the treadmill like I usually do. I set my rower to count down from 2000 meters (it would also stop the clock once I reached that distance) and tried to not look at the screen. I counted the strokes in my head as a distraction and once people next to me were finishing I knew I must be getting close. I rowed as hard and fast as I ever had for those last 100 meters and when the clock stopped, I almost couldn’t believe my time.

2000 meter row

I was a little more than 16 seconds faster than my goal time! And since distance rows are a weakness of mine, to be able to do this was amazing! The only downside was that after the row we had to go on the treadmill and my hip gave me one of the electric shocks I get from time to time and my calf muscle was feeling like it was pulling and tearing. So I got off the treadmill and did the rest of my cardio on the bike. I wasn’t happy to be on the bike, but I needed to do that to keep my body from being in pain and damaging itself.

Overall, I would consider this Peak Performance Week a huge victory for me. While not everything was a PR, I proved to myself that while I’m still recovering I’m getting closer and closer to where I was pre-injury.

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Recovery and Preparation (or Back To A 3 Workout Week)

Posted on November 9, 2015 | 1 comment

After surviving 4 days of Hell Week last week, I was happy to have a bit of a calmer workout week this past week. While this was considered a recovery week from Hell Week, this was also going to be my last workouts before the Hard Rock Cafe 5K. So I wanted to make sure that I got myself in the best position as I could to have a great race.

I knew going into the week that it was going to be a 3 workout week. And because there was a potential conflict on Thursday (plus having 2 rest days before the race sounded good to me), I did my workouts 3 days in a row. Doing 3 days in a row is tough and doing them the week after Hell Week is even tougher. But it was the best option for me so I was going to do it.

The workouts were a bit easier this past week when compared to Hell Week, but they weren’t easy. Each day was challenging for me and I had a couple of days where I was feeling a bit sore. But I’m glad I pushed myself.

One day this past week had 10 all-outs on the treadmill! That’s insane! Each all-out was a minute or less, but we would only have a minute or less between all-outs to walk and recover. I did my all-outs at 8% incline and either 3.5 or 3.6 miles an hour. That was really pushing myself and I was exhausted after it was done. But I got it done and continued to prove to myself that I’m getting closer and closer to increasing my speed on the treadmill again. It’s still difficult for me, but doing these little sprints are helping to get me ready to upping my speed again.

I had a pretty bad day on the treadmill on Wednesday (my third day in a row), but I’m thinking that it was more due to being tired from so many workouts in a row and not my actual ability. I had to keep taking breaks on the treadmill and the incline got very difficult for me to do. When I was supposed to be at 10% or higher, I was only able to be at 6% without pain. I’m trying to not let that get me down and focusing on my success on the treadmill, but it’s tough not to view that as a setback.

As far as my floor work this past week, I’ll admit that I took things a bit easy. I tried to be tough with the weights that I used, but for some of the arm work I went down a weight because I was feeling some odd soreness. But again, a recovery week is not the worst thing in the world.

I’m back to crazy work schedules for the 2 weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, but I’m hoping that at least one of those weeks will calm down enough to do 4 workouts in a week. And I’m doing another Thanksgiving workout down in San Diego this year! My dad and Aunt Cindy will be joining me again and my Aunt Nancy will be trying Orangetheory for the first time! That week will be a 3 workout week because of being out-of-town for so many days, but I’m ok with that since spending time with my family is more important than getting in a bunch of workouts.

Tomorrow, I’ll do my recap post of my 5K and let you know how my Orangetheory training paid off!

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Default ThumbnailAn Easier Workout Week (or Ignoring My Head And Listening To My Body) Default ThumbnailGetting Back To Normal (or Finishing Hell Week and Race Prep) Default ThumbnailShort and Sweet Workout Week (or Taking It A Bit Easy) Default ThumbnailA Full Workout Week (or Sticking With My Plan) Default ThumbnailWorkout Celebrations (or A Week Of Awesomeness) Default ThumbnailBack To Back Workouts (or It’s Hell Week)

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Workout Struggles and Wins (or My First Early Workout In A While)

Posted on September 28, 2015 | 1 comment

I’m still on the path of recovery for my calf injury (I laugh now when I think back at how I thought before it would only take 2 or 3 weeks to recover). I’m in a weird balance point of trying to push myself more and more and trying not to re-injury myself. I’m so terrified of another tear but I know that I do need to get myself stronger. It’s a weird thing for me to really want to hold back and push forward at the same time, but I think I’m finally understanding my body more and figuring out things I can do to both protect my muscle and build it at the same time.

I’m learning that if we are going to be on the treadmill for the first half of class uninterrupted (instead of either having a run/row day or switching between blocks), I’ve got to take it easy. Taking it easy is still at 3.4 miles an hour, but I’m not really pushing it any more than that. I’m feeling twinges in my calf when I go faster after being on the treadmill for an extended period of time, so I’m taking that as a sign that I’m not ready for that yet.

But when we are switching between blocks or doing a run/row day (we did both of these in workouts this past week), I’m able to do almost all my treadmill time at 3.5 miles an hour. I’m still keeping the incline on the lower end of things, but I’m testing the waters there a bit too. On Friday, we had very short treadmill segments on the run/row (1 minute or 45 seconds each), so I was able to try slightly higher inclines. But I’m not sure if I’m going to keep pushing myself on the inclines as much because I really want to focus on speed.

Besides the treadmill improvement, I’m still working on my form and other things like that on the rower and on the weights. The rower is tough because of both my hip and calf, but it’s getting better (and less painful). For weights I still have to be careful with some lower body things (I did something on Monday that made my legs hurt through Thursday) but I’m testing my limits there too.

The biggest struggle of my workout week was Friday. Because of my crazy schedule, I had to do a 7:30am workout. I don’t do those that often (I sometimes do 8:30am but that feels so much later than 7:30am), but it was the only way I could get in 3 workouts this week. I’m not sure if it was the early wakeup time or the fact that my heart rate monitor wasn’t registering correctly for the class, but I had the worst time in class. I was constantly dizzy and when I would look at the heart rate monitor for guidance if my heart rate is too high, it was showing false low heart rates. I tried to take my heart rate by feeling my pulse, and my heart was racing higher than it probably should be. I had to take it easy a lot during the rowing and weights segment, but I stuck it out through the entire class.

This week will bring another potential struggle for me. I’m going to be doing 3 workout days in a row. It won’t be the first time I’m doing this, but it will be the first time in a while. It’s not ideal for me to be doing this, but if I don’t I won’t be able to get 3 workouts in for the week and I haven’t done fewer than 3 workouts in a week since starting at Orangetheory. I’m going to try my very best in those 3 classes and I know that even a half-ass workout is better than no workout at all.

And I’ve got the new parking validation stamp from Orangetheory to remind me of that fact.

OTF Validation

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Default ThumbnailA Full Workout Week (or Sticking With My Plan) Default ThumbnailA Week On The Bike (or Ending My Year By Taking It A Bit Easy) Default ThumbnailBalancing My Workouts (or Doing Some Planning) Default ThumbnailA Week Of Workout Wins (Or 3 Days Of Awesomeness) Default ThumbnailI Hate Not Having As Much Motivation (or A Week Of Workout Struggles) Default ThumbnailContinuing To Get Better (or Still Finding Wins In My Workouts)

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Being Ok At A Beginner Speed (or Not Trying To Impress My Friends)

Posted on August 3, 2015 | Comments Off on Being Ok At A Beginner Speed (or Not Trying To Impress My Friends)

I had a pretty great week at Orangetheory, even though I was worried it would be tough. I’m still adjusting to my new medication levels (it’s affecting my heart rate more than I expected). But I also hurt my toe over the weekend. I’m not sure what happen, but I looked down and my big toe was black and blue and a chunk of my toenail is missing. I don’t remember hurting it, but obviously I did. I was still able to walk with the injured toe, but it was pretty painful so I knew that I would have to take it a bit easy.

But the problem is, I don’t want to take it easy. I’m finally feeling like I’m making regular progress in my workouts and not trying to stay comfortable at the levels I’m working out at for a long time. I don’t want to go backwards in my progress, but I also know that if I go too hard, it can make an injury worse.

So this week, I tried to focus on making my form as good as I could and not focus on doing things heavier, stronger, faster.

On our Wednesday workout, we had distance rowing to do. One was 500 meters and the other was 1000 meters. I hate long rows. I think that 200 or maybe 250 meters is the most idea distance for me to do. Whenever we have rowing for distance, there is always a guideline for how long it take you to complete it. I can’t remember what the speed is for intermediate or advanced rowers, but I know that for beginner rowers you are supposed to do 100 meters every 30 seconds. I still consider myself a beginning rower because I’m not able to push back with my legs as much as I’d like because of my hip issues. So while I may be fast, my force when I push back on the rower isn’t as much as I’d like.

So for the 1000 meter row, the goal was to do it in under 5 minutes (I think the range was 2:30-5:00, but I can’t be too sure of the lower number). When the distance is shorter, I never really have an issue maintaining an average of 100 meters every 30 seconds. But for the long rows, I always overdo it in the beginning and then tire out and have to take a break at some point. So that screws up my timing. But this time, I decided to focus on maintaining a good speed and not rush and see what I’m able to do.

Those 1000 meters seemed to take forever. It wasn’t fun. I’ll admit that I really didn’t want to finish them. But I really want to do one of the Dri-Tris in the future and those have an even longer rowing distance. So I pushed myself and just told myself to keep going even if I felt like I was going at a snail’s pace.

Finally, I finished and I looked at my time. I managed to finish in 4:54.9! I was the last person in the group to finish the row, but I don’t care at all. I managed to do 1000 meters averaging a speed a bit faster than 100 meters every 30 seconds! That really was a nice positive boost for me.

On Friday, one of my friends came for her first class (she ended up getting a membership so I’m going to get to work out with her on a pretty regular basis!). I do act like a bit of a show-off around new friends coming to class, but since I was hurting I didn’t feel like doing that as much. I just made sure that my friend knew what was going on in the class (it can be a bit overwhelming when it’s your first class) and tried to encourage her as much as possible. She was much better than I am at many of the elements of the workout, but that’s ok. Everyone has their own beginning point and hers is a bit more advanced than mine is.

Instead of trying to be a show-off, I worked on my rowing (it was a run/row day) and seeing if I can keep getting my push pace on the treadmill to be faster. Our rowing distance was based on how long it took us to complete the treadmill segment, so I had extra motivation to go faster on the treadmill.

I usually do about 3.7 miles an hour on the treadmill for push and all out paces. I’ve been experimenting a little with 3.8 miles an hour. On Friday, I also tried doing 3.9 miles an hour. I’m able to do it for about a minute, but I don’t know if I can do it as a push pace for an entire workout (I’m thinking I can do 3.8 miles an hour for an entire workout’s push paces and plan on trying that when my toe is healed).

That workout on Friday was one of the toughest ones that I’ve experienced at Orangetheory. I’m so proud of my friend for kicking butt at it. Another friend who was there joked that my friend wouldn’t get a membership now because of how tough the workout was, but she did get one and is planning on coming with me this Friday for another workout!

I love having friends at my workouts. Some of my usual crew hasn’t been in a workout with me for a while because there are other locations that are closer to their homes (when the West LA location opens I’ll probably switch to there since that’s closer to where I live). But until I change locations, I’m going to keep trying to bring more and more people with me to keep pushing me and to help make my workout hour a friend hour too.

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Default ThumbnailNew Limits (or Having Friends To Push Me) Default ThumbnailTesting My Running (or Holidays and Friends) Default ThumbnailWorking With Friends (or Having Someone To Push Me) Default ThumbnailAnother Peak Performance Week (or Working Extra Hard) Default ThumbnailBack To 4 Workouts (or More Rowing!) Default ThumbnailPeak Performance Week (or Pushing Myself To The Max)

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Keep Pushing (or Why Was I So Scared Before?)

Posted on June 22, 2015 | Comments Off on Keep Pushing (or Why Was I So Scared Before?)

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.

Eat Sleep OTF

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.

Bruce and Lal

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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Default ThumbnailPushing Myself Enough (or Listening To My Body) Default ThumbnailGetting Closer To The Leaderboard (or I’m Almost In The Top 5) Default ThumbnailStill Taking This A Bit Easy (or Not Going To Push Too Hard) Default ThumbnailPeak Performance Week (or Pushing Myself To The Max) Default ThumbnailAlmost Back To Normal (or Making Progress) Default Thumbnail4 Workout Week (or Heavy Weights And Speedy Treadmills)

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