This was a messy week. After my birthday, my husband started having sore throat, cough and all that, so I’ve mostly been waiting to get sick myself and it’s been hard to focus on doing my usual activities. This is definitely an effect of Covid – in the past I never worried about getting respiratory infections, although of course it was unpleasant when it happened. I was like this about stomach bugs but if my better half had a cold, I continued my usual business with no worry. Now – not so much. Perhaps I’ll get back to normal with it eventually.
However, I’m doing well so far and have been keeping up my fitness activities. I felt a bit like the father in an Irish funny postcard letter – who reads the death notices in the newspaper, and if his name is not there, he gets up and starts the day. 😀
I expected all the time that I would wake up the next morning with a sore throat, and when I didn’t, I started the day’s planned workouts. I’ve really fallen in love with starting the day with some sort of training. It gives me a boost of energy, motivation and good mood, and always helps my productivity.
It’s been a good week with both strength training, running, walking and some rowing. We also got this new tool last weekend:
I have only done a super short “test run” so far (during which I realised that even just holding on to it to stretch your body is not for the faint hearted, lol) but will use it more soon!
Here’s a summary of the week:
- Monday – 7,6 km walk
- Tuesday – Gym day
- Wednesday – Walking and running, 5,53 km? (should be a bit longer, perhaps I fiddled with my Fitbit)
- Thursday – Walking and some easy running, 7,17 km
- Friday – Gym day
- Saturday – Walking, 9-ish km (I fiddled with the Fitbit and interrupted too soon by mistake so I don’t have the exact distance)
- Sunday – Glute, ab & core strength
Monday – 7,6 km walk
I had a lot of work to do and also didn’t feel great with some nausea. But I was better and went out for a walk in the late afternoon. It was quite dull, but with a nice haze, and oh so mild and lovely! There was no wind and it felt seriously like spring. I went my not-the-beach hill walking route and absolutely loved it.
Tuesday – Gym day
I had mostly a good session but for some exercises I seemed to have less energy than usual, such as the chest presses and shoulder presses. Perhaps because I was a bit unwell and ate less than usual on the Monday? And the first three exercises are quite draining! At least I did my very best with the energy I had so I was still happy with the session.
- Sumo squats, barbell 30 kgs
- Romanian deadlifts, barbell, unknown weight
- Dumbbell row, 12,5 kg
- Chest press, 9 kg dumbbells
- Parachute on mat
- Seated shoulder press, 6 kg dumbbells
- Reverse flyes, standing, 5 kg dumbbells
Wednesday – walking & running, 5,53 km
This was a glorious day with sunshine and about 10C. My energy was back and my legs felt great, so as I had planned I went out for a good run & walk. I’ve realised the route down to the sea is a good one for my return to running, because there is only one certain distance along the way that is appropriate for running at the level I do it right now, it’s maybe 2-3 km in total so I should risk overdoing it. I’ll do most of my walk/run intervals there for a while.
I felt really good running this morning, with no pains, aches, or discomfort whatsoever. And the weather! Amazing.
Thursday – walking and some running,
Still doing well! I started the day with rowing, still while listening to a Gillian Welch concert and rowing through three songs.
Thursday offered a lot more dull and cloudy weather, with some drizzle, but 13C/55F, folks!! I went out for a walk in the afternoon, the other hill route around the farms. On the small lanes I did a few short distances of running too. For now, I need to be careful running two days in a row “just to see what it feels like”. I’ll be more organised next week, with pre-planned days for running, and the rest walking.
Friday
Today’s strength training session was really good, with some increased weights. I was happy with my performance but can’t help thinking afterwards that maybe I could have done another rep of chest press. I have my trainer after all, to take the bar from me. I felt I went until failure but still… maybe I could have attempted another one? I’ll see on Tuesday. I normally ALWAYS get chest presses in my program.
- Lunges, barbell, I think 20 kgs
- Deadlifts, barbell 30 kgs
- Chest press, barbell 22,5 kgs
- Pec dec with resistance band
- Upright row, barbell 17,5 kgs
- Barbell row, 20 kgs
- Good mornings with 10 kgs sandbag (I haven’t used them for ages!)
- Tricep press from bench
Saturday – walking, 9,5-ish km
Another very nice day with 12C/53F. My husband was recovered enough to come with me for a nice long walk. We took a route we haven’t done in a while, it’s 9+ km and I’m looking forward to walking and running there when spring has come a bit further. The smaller part of the road is lined by hedges of different types. Much of it is in bloom now because it’s gorse – a lovely shrub that grows everywhere here and it blooms in winter and early spring. It gives a nice splash of colour before anything else starts blooming. Colours are good for the soul!
Sunday
Like the last few weeks, I started my Sunday morning (after coffee and breakfast) with a good glute, ab & core workout at home. Today I started with step-ups to warm up, then lunges, squats, Bulgarian squats, reverse leg lifts, and single-leg glute bridges. Then my usual alternate planks, side plank with a twist, leg raises, push-ups, Russian twist attempts (I’m slowly making progress), standard plank and finishing with my rotator cuff mobility exercise.
In addition to the pull-up bar, my husband found this nice box at Lidl. It’s meant for all kinds of things that I probably won’t do, but for me it’s a perfect tool for step-ups, Bulgarian squats and more.
What I call the side plank with a twist is what this girl is doing here. It’s a powerful exercise and in the beginning I felt much weaker on the right side but now it seems it’s caught up and I managed to do 3 x 10-12 reps on each side which was very encouraging. Overall I had a very good workout and I’ll be disappointed if I’m not sore tomorrow!
For the coming week I hope to continue feeling well, and the plan is to run on Monday and Thursday. I also have a lot of work to do, and desperately need to do some house cleaning and start another round of decluttering.
Other things to mention
I’ve had this feeling of being mentally tired recently and I’m not sure why. Perhaps because of the winter that has seemed so long, and in combination with my near-meltdown because of the foot injury, pressure to get my business started, and that we’ve been away almost all evenings for music sessions that I don’t even feel well prepared for (because I haven’t been able to get started with a music practice routine). After Christmas, I haven’t been good at letting myself have time off, and seeing the total untidiness in the house makes everything worse – someone I talked to described it as “wherever you look, you see work that needs to be done” and that’s really spot on.
We took way too much stuff with us from Sweden, stuff we didn’t even know if it would suit our new home but was “convenient to keep”, and our house is a mish-mash of things that don’t fit together. Adding to that, our house is too small for the things we have, and we need smarter storage solutions. Actually after having a half-meltdown over it this afternoon, my husband and I started talking, and we now have a plan. So – the spring will be all about prettying up our home, and I’ll start tomorrow.
I hope you are doing well, and that you had a good week! What was your highlight of the week? What’s the weather like where you are?
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