Tag Archives: workout

Going into this past week of workouts, I knew it would likely be a tough week for me. I’m grateful that I can plan for pain and nausea, but that doesn’t necessarily make it easier for me to tolerate. And even though I can anticipate when it’s likely to happen, I never know exactly when it might kick in and how bad it will be. And the intensity can vary so much not only from day to day but from hour to hour. I can leave my house in the morning for my workout feeling okay, but a few minutes later, I feel like I’m being ripped apart from the inside.

I’ve been dealing with this for a while, but it’s always a struggle for me. And I just have to suck it up and deal with it at times. That’s what I try to do during my workout, but I know that sometimes I’m barely able to do anything. I always try to remind myself that doing something is better than staying home and doing nothing, but even though I know that’s the truth it’s not always easy to remember that.

I was worried about how I would do this past week since I’ve been doing pretty good at increasing my efforts during my workouts. I didn’t want my pain and nausea to make me feel like I hadn’t made any improvements. I tried to remind myself every morning that at least I was going in, and I really needed to think about that a lot this past week. I was aware that I would likely have a hard week all week because my pain and nausea kicked in over the weekend, so I was expecting every day to be hard. Some days were a little better or worse than others, but they all were difficult for me to get through at times.

On the bike, I’m glad I spent some time working on longer push paces because that little extra endurance helped me a lot this past week. There were a few days I was able to push myself a bit more than normal for some of the push paces, but those usually were the short ones. For the longer push paces, I was still using my normal resistance levels, but I was pedaling very slowly. I had a really tough time on Thursday when I felt like I was taking a break to let the nausea pass every minute or two. I also had a moment when I thought I was going to get sick in the middle of the class, so I was prepared to get off the bike quickly. I’m glad that didn’t happen, but the fear of getting sick in class affected things too.

The rower is also usually really hard for me when I’m dealing with pain and nausea. I don’t know if it’s the rowing motion or the way I’m seated, but I usually feel like things intensify for me when I sit on the rower. There are also times when I feel fine on the bike and everything hits me on the rower. This time, I was already feeling awful when I was getting to the rower, so I just dealt with things getting a bit worse. I didn’t want to modify things too much, but there were some rowing blocks that had us getting on and off the rower to do exercises between each row, and for 2 of the 4 workouts this past week, I made the decision to not do that and to just row for the entire block as much as I could. I don’t love having to modify things that much, but I also knew it was for the best for me. For most of the week, I just rowed at something similar to a base row as long as I could and then rested when I needed to. It wasn’t my best week of rowing, but it’s something.

Unfortunately, things were hard for me on the floor too. It wasn’t exactly due to the pain and nausea, but I was experiencing a lot of weakness. This is something I know I’ve had some months, but I never know how much weaker I’ll feel. I tried to not go lighter with the weights if possible, and I managed to almost always use my normal weights for exercises. There are a few weighted exercises that I know I always have to go lighter when I’m weak, such as hip bridges, but I at least tried to use my normal weights first and then went lighter only if necessary. It was a similar idea to what I’ve been doing with trying to use heavier weights first and then going back to my normal ones if necessary.

Even though this past week was really hard for me and I don’t feel like I did a great job, I know that it went better than most of my bad weeks. I think that I was a lot more prepared for things because I had been doing better recently. My decrease in my workouts was much closer to my normal since my new normal is a bit more powerful. I know that might not always be the case and this past week might have been a bit of a lucky week that way, but I’m so glad it worked out for me the way it did. I still don’t feel like I worked that hard, but I don’t feel as disappointed as I know I have in the past.

I’m hoping feeling like I’ve been doing better than my past bad weeks continues through this week because it’s very possible that this week will be another tough week for me. I’m not expecting my pain and nausea to go away before the end of the week, but maybe it will surprise me and the entire week won’t be as bad. I’m also grateful that it’s happening now because in a few weeks, we have Hell Week again! I should be feeling like myself for at least most of Hell Week, and I’d rather be feeling good that week versus a normal week. And feeling like the workouts are extra tough right now due to my physical issues is just another way to prepare for how hard the Hell Week classes are going to be!

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Last week, my workout recap was about the goals and improvements I was hoping to be able to accomplish soon in my workouts. I know that it’s okay not to always have huge improvements, but I also want to make sure that I’m doing things to challenge myself because I do want to get stronger. I do remind myself that no matter what, a workout is better than doing nothing. But I also want to make sure I’m not stagnant for too long.

Sometimes, there are opportunities to challenge myself more in the workouts, and sometimes I don’t get that chance. And this past week, the workouts actually worked out well for me and what I wanted to improve on.

For cardio, a lot of the workouts had long push paces. Doing a long push pace is the perfect way to test my endurance and see if I can maybe consider something harder for my push pace going forward. It wasn’t always easy doing a 3-minute push pace at my current resistance level, but as I did more of those throughout the week, it felt a bit more normal. I didn’t change the resistance level for any of my workouts, but I would like to start testing things by doing the shorter push paces one level higher. And I feel really confident in trying that because not only did we have long push paces throughout the week, we had a lot of workouts that had 1-minute all-outs. I’m much more used to doing 30-second all-outs, so 1-minute ones feel really long. But I was able to get through them so I feel like doing a 1-minute push pace at a level between my current push pace and all-out is doable. My only big concern is feeling okay doing a base pace after a push pace at that level since after an all-out we usually have a walking recovery.

I also had some good opportunities to work on improving my rowing. When we had short rowing intervals, mainly ones that lasted under a minute, I was shocked when I saw what the wattage was as I was rowing. I am very used to seeing my wattage on the rower pretty low, which can be frustrating since that represents how much power is behind each stroke. I don’t know what changed or why I was able to do more, but my wattage was double at times from what I’m used to. I wasn’t able to maintain this for all the rowing intervals for the entire week, but it happened often enough that I really noticed. I did continue to struggle with my endurance on the rower, but I noticed that this past week it was also a struggle because of the pain I’m feeling in my foot. I think that sometimes, I can get on the rower and it doesn’t trigger the pain in my foot, and other times I just seem to do things exactly right or wrong and it makes my foot hurt so much. Hopefully, when I see the specialist I’ll have more answers about what is happening with my foot so I can make sure that pain doesn’t continue to affect my workouts that way. But I feel like overall, my rowing was an improvement compared to what I’m used to so I’m not that let down by the struggles I had.

Unfortunately, on the floor there weren’t really opportunities for me to do a lot of work with increasing the weights I use. I continued to try to use heavier weights to test out how they felt and then went back to my normal weights if I couldn’t manage the heavier ones. But I never really was able to go heavier for various reasons. The biggest struggle is seeing how using weights that are just a bit too heavy affects my form. Sloppy form with weights can lead to injuries, which is something I know I don’t need to add to my current health issues. I also had some issues with my foot and some of the exercises on the floor. I couldn’t do things on my toes such as push-ups because bending my foot that way hurts. That’s not too odd for me, but what was weird was that I couldn’t even rest my foot on the ground when I did those exercises on my knees. I normally do that because it adds some stability to the exercises. But this past week, I was keeping my feet up which made me very unstable for several exercises and I had to go a lot slower.

I am so happy that the workouts matched up pretty well with allowing me to work on the things I really wanted to try to do. Obviously, it won’t always be that way and I will have to challenge myself on my own when I can. I don’t know if I’ll have a lot of opportunities to do that this week since I’m expecting my pain and nausea to kick in at some point this week. But I’m hopeful that maybe that won’t kick in until toward the end of the week so I will be able to have at least some good workouts this week. But even if they are all struggle workouts, I’ll get them done just like I always do.

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This past week of workouts wasn’t a great one for me. I was hoping it wouldn’t be too bad, but my nausea kicked in throughout the entire week when I thought I might have a week without nausea. I know this is a recurring issue for me, but it’s always a little extra frustrating when it’s not when I expect it to happen. And this issue with nausea is why I’ve been hesitant to sign up for the Dri-Tri. That’s happening this coming weekend, but I don’t want to do it if I’m feeling horrible. And I’m even more unsure about signing up after how this past week went.

Monday was slightly different than normal for me since I had the day off work and I was able to take a later class. And the later class was a 2 group class instead of a 3 group class like I usually take. But because of the format, I still got some rowing in. This workout had a lot of blocks, and every block was 3 1/2 minutes long.

For cardio, we had 5 blocks. Blocks 1, 3, and 5 were the same and blocks 2 and 4 were the same. The odd number blocks had a 1-minute push pace, a 2-minute base pace, and a 30-second all-out. And the even blocks had intervals of a 30-second all-out and 1-minute recovery. Even though I was dealing with nausea that morning, the blocks were short so they weren’t affected too much. But toward the end of cardio, I was feeling it more since it was a longer time on the bike than I normally do.

On the floor, we alternated between the floor and rower. So the odd number blocks were on the floor and the even number blocks were on the rower. Each floor block had 2 exercises back to back. We had goblet squats and calf raises, reverse grip low rows and hammer curls, and double crunches and torso rotations. I went a little lighter with the weights because of how I was feeling, but I got a lot of reps in even with the limited amount of time in each block. And on the rower, we matched cardio with the rounds of all-outs and recovery.

I was hopeful on Tuesday that the nausea I felt on Monday was a fluke, but unfortunately, it continued and I started to accept the fact that this might be how my week goes. So I just had to try my best for the workout and hope things didn’t get too bad.

For cardio, we had one long block. We started with a 4-minute base to push pace. I used a resistance level between my base and push for this since that matched what we were supposed to do. Then we had a 1-minute base before a 3-minute base to push pace. Then it was another 1-minute base before a 2-minute push pace, 1-minute base pace, 1-minute push pace, 1-minute all-out. It was a long block and the base paces didn’t seem to really allow us to recover. But I was happy with how I did and I thought it was one of my better cardio workouts when I have to deal with nausea.

On the rower, we had 2 blocks. Each block had a row distance with an exercise in between. The first block had 500-meter rows with lateral hops and the second block had 300-meter rows with quick feet. Both of the exercises that we had between the rows were ones that I can’t really do when I’m dealing with nausea. So I had to modify them a bit. I basically did side-to-side steps or front and back steps. But those also take longer to get done so I didn’t get as many rows in as I might have been able to do.

And on the floor, we had one block. We started with deadlifts, reverse crunches, deadlifts, crunches with cross punches, deadlifts, and back extensions. Then we repeated this pattern but instead of deadlifts, we had squats to high rows. And the last time through the exercises had tricep extensions instead of deadlifts. I switched up how I did these quite a bit because I knew getting up and down was going to take up a lot of time. So I did all the reps for the repeating exercise first and then did all the core exercises after. I know that wasn’t really the point of the workout, but it made it work for me.

Wednesday’s workout was a switch class, so we moved around the room 3 times. Switch classes can be really fun or they can be extra challenging because you feel like you have to rush. I think that feeling nauseous helped me not rush too much, but I still felt like I needed to be faster than I wanted to.

For cardio, the first block had a 2-minute push pace, 30-second base pace, 1-minute push pace, and 30-second all-out. The second block shortened the first push pace but increased the second one. And the last block shortened the first push pace again and increased the second one so the last block was the opposite of the first one. These weren’t very long blocks, so that helped me a lot with getting through them. And I probably would have done worse without the switch format since I didn’t stay on the bike for the entire thing at once.

On the rower, each block had a stroke drill and a medicine ball exercise. The first block was 20 strokes on the rower and front presses with the medicine ball. The second block had 15 strokes on the rower and bicep curls with the medicine ball. And the last block had 10 strokes on the rower and tricep extensions with the medicine ball. I usually really enjoy stroke drills since I do really well with those and make sure I go slowly enough on the rower. But my nausea was making it harder to pause on the rower like I normally do. I didn’t do too badly with the rows, but they weren’t as good as I like them to be.

And on the floor, each block had 2 exercises. The first block had front squats and plank kick-throughs. I did a little modifying on the plank kick-throughs and made them a bit more like mountain climbers. The second block had shoulder presses and bicep curls. And the last block had woodchoppers and plank pull-throughs. With the second and third blocks, I surprised myself with how well I did because I didn’t have to modify much for either.

Thursday’s workout was an interesting one. We had a specific amount of time to get the work done and if we had any extra time after, we could rest. It did make it seem a bit like a race, but I was able to have a good amount of time to recover which helped a lot.

For cardio, we had 2 blocks but each block had 3 of the timed challenges. In the first block, we started with 90 seconds to complete the distance. Then we had 2 1/4 minutes to get to the distance with some incline. And the block finished with 3 minutes to get to the distance with more incline. The second block had the same challenges, but we started with the longest one and ended with the shortest one. I really liked these and the distance wasn’t too hard for me to get to each time. The hardest one was the shortest time but I still had about 15 seconds when I was done to be back at base pace.

On the rower, it was very similar to cardio. We had 90 seconds to do a 150-meter row and then quick feet, 2 1/4 minutes to do a 200-meter row and then quick feet, and finished with 3 minutes to do a 250-meter row and then quick feet. For the quick feet, I had to modify it to be steps so that added to how long it took me to do everything. But I still finished in time. And just like with cardio, we did the same thing again in the reverse order for the second block.

On the floor, only the first block was timed. They were still 90 seconds, 2 1/4 minutes, and 3 minutes long. Each of those was split up into 3 exercises. We had cleans with weights, bicycle crunches, and knee tucks. First, we had 30 seconds for 8 reps of each exercise. Then we had 45 seconds for 10 reps of each exercise. And finally, we had 1 minute for 12 reps of each exercise. I didn’t get any rest for the 30 seconds of each exercise because that moved so quickly. But I got a little rest for the others. The second block was just timed on our own. We had bridge hold pullovers, tricep extensions, and goblet squats. I liked not having to rush as much to finish out the workout since I was getting really nauseous by the end.

I wasn’t planning to have this bad of a week, but I survived. And I’m going to keep seeing how I feel this week about maybe going for the Dri-Tri. I really do want to do it, but if I’m feeling really horrible I know I won’t enjoy it and will be frustrated with how I do. But maybe if somehow my pain and nausea subside toward the end of the week, there will be space for me to sign up at the last minute!

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This past week of workouts was an odd one for me. Fortunately, my pain and nausea were getting better throughout the week for me. I was still affected quite a bit at the beginning of the week, but I also didn’t have a workout on Monday. I was scheduled to take a class and was ready to go, but classes that morning were canceled because of the tropical storm. I totally understand why they did that and it’s more important to keep people safe. I thought about maybe trying to do a workout after work, which I did for years, but I just didn’t feel like doing a later workout. Also, when I used to work out after work, I was done with work much earlier in the day. If I did an after-work workout now, it would be at 7pm instead of 4pm. So I just skipped the day and that was ok.

Tuesday’s workout was a bit tough because of how I was feeling, but it was much better than the week before. I also think I was a little less prepared for the workout since I had an extra day off. I can feel it in my body when I take an extra day away from my workouts. It’s not like I am suddenly out of shape, but it just seems like some things are a bit tougher for me and I just don’t feel as strong as normal.

For cardio, we had a mystery road challenge. This meant that things were a bit random for cardio. Normally, there is a bit of a pattern we follow during a workout or we know that we will have a recovery after an all-out. But for the mystery road, we jumped around with whether we were doing a base, push, or all-out and the intervals were ranging from 15 seconds to a minute. This is probably more like what doing cardio outside is like because you can randomly go faster or slower and don’t always have nice intervals unless you are timing yourself. I did my best with all the efforts, but I know I was pedaling a bit slowly throughout the entire thing.

On the rower, we started with a 250-meter row. After the row, we had quick feet. Then we did another 250-meter row followed by switch feet. And then another 250-meter row followed by high knees. Then the row went down by 50 meters and we repeated each distance 3 times doing one of the 3 exercises between each row. The goal was to have the same wattage or time for each row of the same distance. I wasn’t really able to get the same time for each row because of the breaks I had to take, but I was very close to the same wattage each time so that was something I was proud of.

On the floor, we had one long block. We had our regular exercises, but when cardio was in their all-out, we stopped those exercises and did lunges or squat jumps. The regular exercises were walkouts to push-ups, step-ups, single-arm high rows, and plank dips. Because of my nausea, I used the bench to do my walkouts and push-ups. I also split those exercises up so I did just the walkouts first followed by just the push-ups. I had the bench on the lower setting for my step-ups so I could do those too. Even with the modifications I had to do, I think the floor block was the best part of my workout for me.

I was feeling much more like myself on Wednesday. I still had some nausea, but I could tell it was from medication and not my cycle, so it affects me differently. I don’t know how to explain the different types of nausea I experience, but I can tell when I have one or the other (or when I have them both at the same time). I treat both types the same way, but I know that medication nausea can sometimes be easier to deal with during workouts for whatever reason.

For cardio, we had 2 blocks that focused on push paces and base paces. We started with a 2-minute push pace and a 45-second base pace. We alternated between push and base paces. But the push paces got shorter and increased in incline/resistance level each time. The base paces stayed at 45 seconds each. And we ended with a 30-second all-out at an incline at the end of each block. I did the resistance levels that I should have been doing for each of the push paces, which made them a lot more challenging. But when we have challenges like these, I try to focus on that challenge instead of how fast I pedal to keep the variety in my workouts.

On the rower, we also had 2 blocks. Each block had the same pattern. We started with a 400-meter row and then had an exercise. Then it was a 300-meter row followed by an exercise. That pattern continued through the block. In the first block, we were supposed to do lunges with rotations using a medicine ball, but I just did regular lunges. And in the second block, we had halos using a medicine ball, which I was able to do.

And on the floor, we had 2 blocks that each had 3 exercises. The first block had split stance deadlifts, rows on the straps, and tricep extensions using weights. The second block had squat reach to rotations on the straps, squats to presses, and bear plank low rows. I had to modify the bear planks to be regular planks, but that’s not bad for me with all the modifications I feel like I usually have to do.

I was feeling even better on Thursday. I was glad to be over feeling nauseous and back to normal. And I was ready to push myself a bit more than I did earlier in the week to make up for how I was feeling and also only getting in 3 workouts for the week.

For cardio, we had 2 blocks. The first block was 2 rounds of a 2-minute push pace followed by a 1-minute base pace with a 1-minute all-out at the end. The second block was the same pattern except the push paces were 90 seconds and the base paces were 45-seconds. The longer push paces were a good challenge for me to work with the slightly higher resistance level I use for those and try to get more used to them. I know that it won’t be long before I should increase the resistance levels I use on the bike, and making my push pace level feel easier is a big part of doing that.

The rowing was one long block. We started with a 600-meter row followed by high knees. Then we did that again with a 400-meter row and a 200-meter row with high knees. After completing those 3 rows, you went through all 3 rows again but did butt kicks instead of high knees. I was a lot slower on the rower than I thought I could be, so I was just getting ready to do the second 400-meter row when the block was over. I wasn’t paying attention to the time since it was a single block, but I think that getting on and off the rower took up a lot of my time so I didn’t have as much rowing time.

And on the floor, the exercises we had were done as back-to-back sets. We had 2 exercises that we were supposed to do without resting in between them. And we were supposed to do each set of exercises twice before moving on to the next set. We had chest presses and split squats (which I modify to be lunges), hammer curls and single-arm hip hinge swings, and chest flys and speed skaters. The chest presses, hammer curls, and chest flys were done on the bench that was set on an incline which makes those exercises feel different than when you do them on a flat bench. I especially felt the difference when doing the hammer curls and it made those a lot harder even though I wasn’t using a heavier weight than normal. But just like everything else, it was a good challenge and I allowed myself to take my time to keep my form looking good.

I usually feel frustrated when my workout week isn’t what I expected, like when I don’t get in the 4 workouts I planned to do. But I think that this time it worked out well for me. I didn’t work out on the day that I was feeling my worst this week and just got to have minimal pain and nausea issues. And that missing workout motivated me to really push myself at the end of the week and try a lot harder, which I think I needed. Hopefully, this week will be a bit more normal for me with no missed classes and feeling like myself. And maybe I’ll be able to challenge myself even more.

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I’ve been so lucky recently with having so many good workout weeks. Even when I was expecting things to be tough with pain and nausea, it hasn’t been as bad as it normally is so the bad weeks are more like not good weeks. This has spoiled me and I think I also got a bit lazy with tracking when my bad weeks could be popping up. And unfortunately, this past week was a bad week for me. I should have expected it, but it really did surprise me a bit when it happened and I wasn’t as prepared as I usually am.

Monday wasn’t too bad, but I was starting to feel a bit off. I wasn’t having too much pain, but I was feeling a little uneasy and queasy, which is usually a sign that some bad nausea is coming. I didn’t let that feeling hold me back too much since I knew that this could mean this would be my only decent workout of the week.

For cardio, we had 2 blocks. In the first block, which was the longer block, we had rounds of a 1-minute push pace, 30-second all-out, and 1-minute recovery. And in the second block, we had rounds of a 30-second all-out and a 1-minute recovery. I really enjoyed both cardio blocks and they weren’t too bad for me since they were shorter efforts. And I got to work on trying to pedal faster for my all-outs with the resistance level I’ve been using.

On the rower, we had one long block. We started with a 600-meter row followed by step-out squats. We did that once. Then we had a 400-meter row followed by side-to-side hops and step-out squats, and did that twice. Then we had a 200-meter row with good mornings, side-to-side hops, and step-out squats. We were supposed to do that last thing 4 times, but I only made it through one before the block was done. It wasn’t my best rowing block, but far from my worst.

And on the floor, we had 2 blocks. The first block was the longer one and we had 6 exercises total for the block. But we started by just doing the first 2 exercises and then starting over again and doing 3 of the exercises. We kept building upon the exercises each round. We had goblet squats, kneeling shoulder presses, bridge hold pullovers, side plank hip dips, and hyper extensions. Some of the exercises were supposed to be on the BOSU, but I modified a few of them to be on the floor so I could do the exercise. But I was happy with how I did. The second block was a core blast, but I had to modify the exercises so I could do them. So for the last few minutes, I alternated between sit-ups and bicycle crunches. That was tough enough for my core to be on fire at the end of the workout.

On Tuesday, I was starting to feel a lot worse. I wasn’t in a lot of pain, but I was extremely nauseous. And I realized that morning I was out of my anti-nausea meds and had to request a refill because I was out of refills. That put me in a bit of a bad mood because I knew those meds would help me feel better and I didn’t have that option. So I just had to do what I could.

For cardio, we had 2 blocks. In the first block, we had specific distances to get to, and when we got to the distance we were supposed to increase our incline/resistance level. I was pedaling really slowly, so I didn’t get that far and didn’t increase the resistance level that much. I was actually a bit surprised at how badly I was doing with the bike because even on my bad days it’s not usually that bad. In the second block, we were doing a similar thing, but we started at the top incline/resistance level we got to in the first block and decreased it each time we got to the distance. I did do a bit better in the second block and had more time at my base resistance level at the end.

On the rower, the first block started with 2 rounds of lunges and then tricep extensions with a medicine ball. After those 2 rounds, then we got on the rower and rowed until the block was done. My rowing was slow, but I think I was doing better on the rower than on the bike. The second block started with rowing the distance we got in the first block and then getting off the rower to do 2 rounds of squats to reach and bicep curls with the medicine ball. After those exercises, we got back on the rower and rowed until the block was done. I did get my distance and exercises done with a little time left to do a bit more rowing.

On the floor, we also had 2 blocks. The first block was a mini-band block. We had lateral walks, hammer curls, and knee tucks. I did pretty decent with this first block. Even with the knee tucks, which are usually a huge struggle for me, I managed to do them with some rest in the middle of the reps. The second block was a timed block with 45 seconds of active time and 20 seconds of rest. We had deadlifts, chest presses, step-ups, and v-ups. I had to do lunges for the step-ups, but that was the only real modification I had to make. I was happy with how this workout ended considering how horrible I felt going into it.

I was really feeling horrible on Wednesday. And I felt even worse when I found out it was a partner workout. I don’t mind partner workouts, but when I’m feeling bad I don’t like them because I feel bad for the person I’m paired up with. I usually ask to be the odd man out if we have an uneven number of people in the class, but that wasn’t the case for this workout. But I was lucky because the person I was partnered with was ok with us kind of doing things on our own because she wasn’t feeling great either. And this partner workout didn’t really depend on us tagging each other out, so it worked out for us. Also, for this partner workout, we were always working in the same section of the room, so we were side-by-side instead of depending on each other to rotate around the room. So we had blocks like a normal workout, but we were supposed to work together.

For cardio, the way it was supposed to work was the active partner was doing a specific distance as a push pace and the other partner was in a base pace. And they just switched back and forth. In the second block, there was the added challenge of working with inclines too. My partner and I kind of did this as it was supposed to be, but since I was on the bike and she was on the treadmill, we weren’t the best at tagging each other so we just did the distance and did our own little base pace breaks.

On the rower, the first partner block had the active partner doing a 250-meter row and the other partner doing a base row. The second block was the same idea but it was a stroke drill instead of a distance. And we had an all-out a the very end. This time, my partner and I just did our own things and didn’t worry about the partner aspect of it. I just tried to row as much as I could, but I took a lot of breaks for my nausea to pass.

And on the floor, the blocks had exercises for the active partner and one exercise for the other partner to do. But again, my partner and I just did our own things so we each just worked through all the exercises on our own. I was really grateful we were in agreement with doing the workout this way so neither of us was feeling pressured to go faster than we could. The first block had squats, hip hinge swings, and cross back lunges. The second block had reciprocating rows and bicycle presses. And the last block had clean to front squats and side plank rotations. I did my best with all the exercises, but I was moving pretty slowly and had to go lighter with the weights than I would have liked to. But I did it.

Thursday was probably my roughest day, and it wasn’t great that I was doing so poorly this morning because it was also a benchmark class. It was supposed to be the 1-mile benchmark (or 4 miles on the bike). I usually love challenging myself with benchmarks, and I’ve had some really nice improvements with this one. But I knew this would not be the day to be even close to a PR. I just had to get through the workout the best I could.

For cardio, we were just focused on the benchmark. I set the resistance level on the bike to be just below my normal base pace level to try to pedal as fast as I could. I knew I was not going to go as fast as I did the last few times, but I was hoping I would get at least a bit close to some of my past times. But this benchmark did not go well for me. I really struggled to keep going and my pedaling was slower than what I normally do in a regular class. I knew I wasn’t going to be close to the time I was hoping for. And when I was done, I was over 2 minutes slower than my worst attempt in the past. Because I knew this wasn’t really a great benchmark and I was dealing with other circumstances, I didn’t track it in the Orangetheory tracker. I didn’t need to have this to try to do better in the future. I normally wouldn’t skip tracking, even if I did poorly, but this was so much worse than I expected and it didn’t even feel like I was doing a benchmark.

On the rower, we were supposed to start with a 600-meter row followed by crisscross jacks and butt kicks. Then repeat the pattern and decrease the row by 100 meters each time. I knew I couldn’t really do the exercises, so I spent those 14 minutes just rowing as much as I could and taking breaks when I needed to. I really don’t like modifying the workout as much as this, but I knew that’s how I needed to manage this workout with how I was feeling. I wasn’t rowing that fast, but I tried to be consistent with my efforts when I was rowing and managed to keep the wattage pretty steady.

On the floor, we had one block and we were supposed to focus on going slowly and taking our time with each exercise, so I liked that. We had single-arm reverse flys, chest flys, step-downs, and single-leg deadlifts to knee raises. I had to do lunges instead of the step-downs and hold on to the wall for the deadlifts to knee raises, but those are normal modifications for me. And because we were supposed to take our time with the exercises, I didn’t feel too bad about how slowly I did each one and just focused on making sure I wasn’t doing anything that would aggravate my nausea. It wasn’t the best way to end the week, but I was glad I made it through.

Even with how poorly I did in several of the workouts this past week, I still am proud of myself with how I did. I listened to my body and made sure I didn’t do things that made the situation worse for me. This week might be another tough week for me, but I’ll just have to see how I feel each day going into class. Hopefully, but the end of the week I’m feeling a bit more normal, but if not, then the week after should be better. It’s an annoying part of my life that these bad weeks affect things so much, but I always make it through and it makes the good weeks even better.

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Surviving My Workout Week (or I Knew It Would Be Bad, But Not This Bad) This Is The Workout Week I Expected (or I Knew It Would Be A Bad Week) A Bad Workout Week For A Different Reason (or I Guess I Was Too Optimistic) Back To My Regular Schedule (I’m Glad My Bad Week Didn’t Start Until This Week) My Normal Bad Workout Week (or At Least This Is What I’m Used To) A Short Workout Week (or I Guess I’m Glad This Happened On A Bad Week)