Working Through A Rough Week (or Just Keep Moving)

I knew this week of workouts would be a rough one for me. I am glad that I can plan for these weeks so they don’t take me by surprise, but it doesn’t necessarily make them easier to deal with. But I just have to continue trying new things that might help my workouts (and my life) not as hard and hope for the best. And that’s the attitude I really tried to go into these workouts with.

Monday’s workout was a strength day and I knew that while I couldn’t pedal as hard on the bike as normal that didn’t mean I couldn’t try to work hard. Since there was incline/resistance work for the cardio, I went with increasing my resistance levels on the bike as the incline work was happening on the treadmill. I didn’t get quite as high on the resistance levels as I have before, but I was still doing more than my normal levels.

We had 3 blocks on cardio and the first block was 1 minute intervals between incline/resistance work and a base pace. Each incline went lower as we went through the blocks, so I started the resistance level at close to the highest that I have done to represent hill work. I went down 1 level each time but I was still above my normal resistance levels the entire block. The second block was 1 minute intervals with incline/resistance work and push paces. During this block, I was getting closer to my normal resistance levels but decided to not go below my all out resistance level for hill work. And the last block was 1 minute intervals with push and base paces and I used my normal resistance levels for these.

On the floor, every block had 2 exercises plus a row challenge. The exercises included lunges, shoulder presses, single leg squats, hip hinge reverse fly, uppercuts, and bicep curls. Each block had 1 exercise that was 6 reps and the other exercises we could choose between 6-10 reps. The idea was to be able to try heavier weights and have the option to do fewer reps. Because of how I was feeling, I did heavy weights but nothing I hadn’t done before. And the row challenge each block was to do 15 stokes slowly on the rower and see how far you could get. It’s not easy to row slowly and that’s the point of this challenge. We were supposed to get at least 150 meters each time, and I managed to do over 200 meters each time. So I guess my nausea was good for something.

Wednesday’s workout was a power class and even though it’s normally not a 3 group class it was this time. So I was at each section of the room for about 15 minutes. On the bike, we had short push to all out challenges and then we had squats right after. We did 5 rounds of push to all outs that got shorter throughout the block and the squats started at 12 reps and went down 1 each time. I wasn’t pedaling as fast as I could on the bike, but I tried my best and tried to work harder during the all outs than I was working during the push paces.

On the rower, we started with a 500 meter row and each round it went down 100 meters. And between the rows we had more squats plus squats to front presses with a medicine ball. We kept working down for the number of reps we did for the regular squats, so I started at 8 squats after my 500 meter row. My rowing time was slow, but it was steady and consistent so I tried to look at that as a good thing.

And on the floor, we had 1 long block that had 4 exercises plus continuing to work down on the number of reps for the squats. We had sumo squats with weights, dumbbell swings, weighted hip bridges, and crunches. The goal by the end of class was to be at the round of doing 1 squat (so you worked from 12 down to 1), but I didn’t quite make it. I did my round of 2 squats and was working on the other exercises by the time class was done. But considering how awful I was feeling in class, getting within a few exercises of making it to the goal is a big accomplishment.

Friday’s workout was a strength day and I was cautiously optimistic that my nausea was over. I was feeling pretty good when I woke up and went to the workout, but when I got on the bike it was only a few minutes before I was feeling nauseous again. But since I had planned for this week to be like this, it did make things a bit easier. Plus, as I’ve mentioned before I do like using the bike for strength days because I can add resistance on the bike much more than I can do incline work on the treadmill.

The cardio blocks were all pretty short and they combined having push work without hills and push work with hills. I was using my normal resistance levels on the bike when it wasn’t hill work but I went to the new higher resistance levels I’ve been using for the hill work. I didn’t get as high up there as I have in past workouts, but the hill work wasn’t as high as it has been in other workouts so that seemed reasonable to me.

On the rower, we had an interesting workout where we got to determine how many reps of exercises we would do by how we did with the rowing. We had different distances to row and we had to count the number of strokes it took us to get to that distance (very similarly to us having to count the strokes in Monday’s class and see the distance we could get). I know that I can do long and slow rowing and that helps to keep my stroke count down. After the first row we had calf raises, after the second row we had squats, and after the third row we had squat presses. I know that my number of reps was much lower than our coach was expecting us to do since I focused on rowing as slowly as possible. But I still had a lot of reps of everything.

And on the floor we had 2 blocks. The first block had deadlifts, double crunches, and bench sit-up to stands. I couldn’t do the sit-up to stands because of the nausea so I just did regular full sit-ups. And the second block had hip hinge high rows, hammer curls, sit-ups, and lunges. Fortunately the majority of the floor exercises that we had were things that weren’t an issue with my nausea, so by the end of the workout I was feeling almost back to how I was feeling before the workout.

Saturday’s workout was a benchmark day. We had the 2000 meter row which is the longest benchmark row that we have. It’s not an easy distance to do, but I’ve done it enough to have a good idea of goals I’d like to accomplish. My PR is significantly faster than I’ve been able to do any other time (I have no idea how I did the row so quickly that one time), so I don’t go into that row expecting to get a new PR. But I still try to do better than other rows so I can feel accomplished.

I started out on the bike where we had a short cardio block with a push pace and ending with an all out. Then we went to the floor to do some skater lunges, woodchoppers with the medicine ball, and lunges with tricep extensions with the medicine ball. I was trying to go easy on the floor work since I knew I’d have the 2000 meter row right after that, but I was going harder than I thought so toward the end of the block I took a break so I could catch my breath.

When I got to the rower, my goal was to see if I could do the row in under 9 minutes. It’s not easy to do that, and I was still feeling a bit off, but I was determined to do my best. What we are told to do with long rows like this is to start with 5 really hard pulls on the rower to get the water moving, then work on finding a steady pace we can maintain for the entire time. I knew if I wanted to be under 9 minutes that my 500 meter split time needed to stay under 2:15. I was able to do that in the beginning, but I was tiring out quickly. So instead of going at that pace as long as I could and then slowing down a lot, I found a pace I could stick with and just had to be ok with not making my goal. I ended up finishing about 15 seconds slower than I wanted to, but I was able to do the entire row without stopping.

After the row was done, we had blocks where we had short cardio bursts with lunges between each burst. I was on the bike and only made it through 2 rounds. I had to take time to recover after my row and that cut into my cardio time. And the last short block on the floor was lunges and superman work, which was easy enough to do even though I was so tired.

While this past week of workouts weren’t record breaking or amazing, I did try to stay in the mindset that I was doing something good. I think I found a small victory in all of my workouts even if that victory was a part of not reaching a goal I had earlier. I should hopefully be back to my normal workout for the next 2 weeks, so I should be finishing my 2018 workouts with some awesome workout days!

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