What Was Your Work Out Today?

I need to get past the dithering at home until late afternoon before I get out on the bike, at least until the learn to row class is over. 🙄 Nonetheless, I fit in a bit of ride to the zoo/park and back, 15.59 miles moving at 11.4mph average.

Then just enough time for a quick bite to eat and a shower before learn-to-row. Tonight, I was coxswain to a quad of new rowers, first time they were sculling in a real boat out on the water. (Most of them did a little rowing on Saturday in the barge, which is more like rowing your living room than rowing a boat, and that was sweep (one oar per person) rather than tonight's sculling (two oars per person).) It was a big jump, but they did really well! (Not much workout for me, other than a bit of boat-carrying. Shouting doesn't count. No, the cox doesn't shout "stroke, stroke, stroke" - not ever. 🤣)

Not going in a good direction lately. Went to grab a closing door and ran a few steps to do it. Right quad/IT band seized up and down I went. Couldn't get up for a few minutes. Hurt like heck.

Looks like I'll need more focused rehab to get past this issue. Stepping up to the start line on July 9th is becoming unlikely at this point. Getting old can be challenging. Ugh.

I did a bridge today!!!! In pilates class. And it was easy! I am so happy.

For context: I started doing pilates for an hour a week last October, a month after restarting any exercise at all. I've always been pretty flexible, especially in my hips, but my core has been weak my whole adult life and my arms were too. A few months ago (maybe 6, maybe 4, maybe 2, who knows) we had to attempt a bridge for the first time and it was a disaster. There were a few people in the class who could do it but apparently this is a thing that's really easy and thoughtless to do when you're a kid and quite a hard challenge when you're an adult, with some exceptions.
We never really practiced it or even attempted it since then until now. I was quite curious where I'd be at but once I was on my head and feet it felt really natural so I tried lifting. Turns out I am suddenly very good at bridges. I think it's because finally my core and arm strength are at an appropriate level. Still not at the level of my legs, especially my quads (I have an insane front squat 1RM for my weight, gender and experience level), but decent. Acceptable.
That was the highlight of the pilates class. We did some other stuff but it's just regular stuff. So an hour of pilates.

Before that I did a wod that was 2 rounds of 30 toes to bars, 60 pistol squats and 90 russian kb swings with a 5 min pause between the sets. Some people at our gym are actually capable of pistol squats. Very cool to watch. I also watched a guy do 17 toes to bars in a row. I was mesmerised but he was doing it during my 5 min rest so I could just get distracted.
I slept awfully and not nearly enough most nights this week so I've been exhausted and almost cancelled today's class, also because my hands are still a blistered mess, but I went anyway and decided to just take it easy (which I must've forgotten all about during pilates class...). I really wasn't feeling multiple shoulder and grip things in one workout tonight so instead of toes to bars I did alternating v-ups. It was easy to decide this because I really like kb swings. But I also took it easy on the kb swings since we did a ton of air squats yesterday and a ton of scaled down pistol squats today and those tend to hurt my back when the volume is too high. So I stuck to a 16kg kb, which is the max weight for women but the 20kg is my comfort zone for big volume american kb swings so it was very minimal effort on my part. And instead of pistol squats I did curtsey(???) squats. I have no idea how you spell that, English is a stupid language. But yeah, those were easy with my right leg forward and twice as slow with my left leg forward as I was super cautious with my ankle.
It took me 25:15 to do this, not a great time but well within the 30 min time cap. It was also very low-medium impact and my heartbeat stayed quite low (based on my breathing and how it felt, since I don't have a fancy gadget to tell me and I don't really care that much). I recovered very quickly afterwards and had loads of energy left for pilates class.

This is a break from my usual format that tells you chronologically what I did but this is pure happiness hormone talking (I never remember which one it is) so it's extra chaotic.

Bike day, and I got a slightly earlier start, so more relaxed ride: 18.5 miles, 10.5 mph moving average. I stopped and did a couple of exercises at the fitness court I posted a photo of on 5/19 - nothing major, just a few inclined push ups, tri dips, back extensions, and probably some stuff I forgot. This is the basic exercises it offers:



Also took off my bike gloves and lost them, but went back a couple hours later on the way to learn to row class, and they were still there!

At the class, I took one of the new learners out in my double: She made huge progress, and learned 'river turns', a coordination-complicated thing, quicker than anyone else I've ever coached. I did row a bit, getting us back semi into traffic pattern and avoiding hitting banks and stuff (novices don't go very straight at first, and that's OK). This was our course (!!):



Don't worry, I was looking out for boat traffic and obstacles!

Today was full-body Friday, featuring the deadlift to start the day (since I can never figure if it's a leg exercise or a back exercise, by putting it on full-body Friday I don't have to choose lol).

Deadlift 5x5
Hack Squat 5x5
DB Bench 3x10 <superset with> DB Row 3x10
DB Shoulder Triset 3x10 (Front Raise, Lateral Raise, Rear Lateral Raise)
DB Curl 3x10 <superset with> Lying DB Skullcrusher 3x10

AnnPT77 wrote: »

mtaratoot wrote: »

Helped with an on-river litter pick-up today. The river was up, so the normal places that have camps were underwater. We did collect quite a few tents that were tangled up in the brush along the banks and some other weird stuff. I found another *kitten*. Yep. I found one on the last trip, too. Very weird. My friend found a nice bicycle multi-tool in good condition and a bag of cheap rope in decent condition. Also a "Pack and Play" crib, some tires, a bunch of empty pop bottles and beer cans, a couple butane bottles, some polystyrene, and some old, waterlogged errant float toys, one of which was full-up with ants.

I took a shower when I got home.

River clean-ups can be interesting. My rowing coach once found a prosthetic leg.

This is the second one in a row I found a sex toy.

I got a plea yesterday for more folks to come help. I said sure. I found another person so I could take the tandem canoe; it's a really good tool for this kind of work. There was one other canoe who also came last-minute. Otherwise it would have just been staff from an agency and a non-profit on one raft....

Last time was last fall. The folks at the non-profit still joke at what I found. There's an awesome picture that will never be shared with general members.

So I called a friend last night to see if they wanted to maybe join me. They did. But when I called and told them there was a river clean-up I was going on, they asked if I was taking bets as to how many sex toys I would find. I didn't plan to find any, but there ya go. Very odd indeed.

It was eye-opening for my friend. They had never done a river clean-up. It's so sad to see what gets "lost" in the river. It's so sad to realize how many people don't have a home and don't actually want to live in other people's squalor. Paddling up a side channel and under a bike bridge, a cyclist yelled down "Thank you." That was nice. Also, when the raft got out to clean up a BIG pile of stuff, someone camped there asked if we had any garbage bags, and they started help clean the place up. Most of the people in these camps don't necessarily want to be there. Some do. Some are anti-social. That's who we clean up after. Others are just in an awful circumstance in life.

Feeling better today than last 3 days and hoping to feel even better tomorrow. Elliptical 210 minutes for 16.3 miles. Thought I would get another session in today but I had to cut the grass. I have a unit employee picnic tomorrow and made a big bowl of broccoli salad to take. And all that pretty much filled my day.