Working Out Into The New Year (or The End of My 2015 Workouts And Beginning of My 2016 Workouts)

I had a busy week of workouts this past week! I had my 2015 workout goal to reach by Thursday and I had to get 3 workouts in to complete that. And of course, I wanted to start off 2016 with a workout so I had 4 workouts for the week.

Even though I thought I had gotten over my shin splints the week before, they decided to come back this week. I started out on the treadmill on my Sunday workout and within a few minutes I was hurting. So I decided to jump off the treadmill and jump onto the bike for the rest of the cardio. I don’t know what I’ve been doing that caused the shin splints (being lazy on Christmas probably didn’t help), but I’m working on making sure that I do what I can to keep them from coming back again.

So since I’m worried about the shin splints returning for a long period of time, I also did the bike on Monday. It’s not my favorite cardio machine and I never feel like I’m working as tough as I can on the treadmill, but the bike is fine for when I need it. I try to get the resistance up higher each time I’m on the bike, but it’s never going to be the same as getting the speed and incline up on the treadmill. But I keep reminding myself that doing light cardio on the bike is better than doing no cardio at all.

Because I didn’t want to do too many workouts in a row and I knew I’d be working out on Thursday and Friday, I took Wednesday off. I worked on stretching and other things to help the shin splints on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I was feeling much better for my Thursday workout.

Fortunately, Thursday was a 3G class, so there was less treadmill time than usual. It was a good transition to go back onto the treadmill and the only pain I felt was my hip pain (it’s sad that having hip pain is my normal, but it is). I’m still very cautious about my inclines on the treadmill, but just being back on there makes me feel so much better and more like my usual self. I’m glad that the day was a shorter treadmill day because it was a great way to get back onto the treadmill. And of course, I was smiling because I made it to my workout goal for the year!

After going out for New Years Eve, I was back at Orangetheory in the morning for my first workout of 2016! It’s wasn’t too early, but it was still tough getting my butt in gear in the morning.

This class was also a 3G class so the treadmill was about 20 minutes of the workout, rowing another 20 minutes, and weights 20 minutes. This class really went the full 60 minutes (we actually went a bit over) and it was really tough. We were constantly moving and the time spent rotating between blocks was very limited. My heart rate stayed high for most of the class and I really felt it afterward.

But I did managed to be ok on the treadmill again. And not only was I ok, for the all-out portions of the block I chose to increase my speed instead of my incline and was able to get up to 3.8 miles per hour. It wasn’t easy going faster, but I really do want to focus on my speed training this year so upping the speed during the all-outs instead of the incline may be a more regular thing for me.

What was really nice about my New Years Day workout was that a bunch of my friends were in that class with me. My friend Polly used to be in the same class as me at least once a week or so, but her schedule doesn’t really work with that anymore. And my friend Erin is not a regular at Orangetheory (yet), so she went to this class just to join me. And my friend Dani is a regular with me, but it still made me happy to have her in class with me for New Years Day.

I think this was a great way to end my 2015 workouts and start my 2016 workouts. Even though I’m still working through various modifications, I think my persistence is showing off and will help me reach my 2016 workout goal!

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Some Holiday Workouts (or Back On The Treadmill This Week) Finishing The 12 Days Of Fitness (or Some PRs and Some Setbacks) A Week On The Bike (or Ending My Year By Taking It A Bit Easy) My 2016 Goals (or I’ve Got Some Big Ideas This Year) New Year’s Workouts (or Ending 2016 and Starting 2017 With Orangetheory) What I Plan To Do This Year (or 2015 Goals)