Well, It Was Fun While It Lasted

My epic run of "16 workouts in 14 days with no days off" ended Thursday with CrossFit...and a cold.

Now, I'm certainly not blaming my overenthusiastic pursuit of skating and CrossFit the past two weeks for my illness.  I'm an elementary special education teacher and I spend my days with 700 little walking germ disseminators, so I consider getting a cold to be merely succumbing to the inevitable.  And actually the timing couldn't be better; I get to be sick on a weekend and during the start of my "recovery" five days, and thus not have to suffer through work or workouts with the runny nose and sinus headache that are currently plaguing me.

Anyway, it was a good run.  I don't know what my previous "most workouts in a row" stat is, but I'm sure it is nowhere near 16 in 14 days.  And while I certainly don't plan to go that many days in a row without a break from workouts on a regular basis--or, indeed, any time soon--it's fun to know that I have a lot more capability than I thought.

Especially at my age.

Encouraged by how well April has gone so far, I spent a good bit of time yesterday--when I wasn't blowing my nose--mapping out my May workouts.  Oh, and I also went for a horrifically windy nice six-mile recovery skate, during which I confirmed that I am, indeed, hot.

No, not that kind of "hot."

During my half-hour skate I encountered about eight cyclists and five other inliners, all clad--appropriately for the 55 degrees and 30 mile per hour wind--in long pants, long sleeved jerseys, and jackets.

I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

Not only was I completely comfortable during my skate, I was hot enough when I got done skating that I had to put the cold air vent on in the car on the way home.  This just confirms to me that my thyroid levels are a bit higher than they usually are, but so far not too high as long as I time the fast acting med appropriately (that is, not too much too close) for workouts.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh, yeah...May workouts.  May is going to get a bit hairy.

OK, not quite that hairy.  But this is likely how I'll feel when May is over.

May is the start of Oval inlining, and the end (more or less--we actually go into the second week of June) of school.  May doesn't have any more workouts than June or July or August, but it has the added stress of finishing up the school year coupled with simple lack of enough hours to accomplish everything I want to do.  September is similar, so expect to hear the same whine come about, oh, Labor Day.

My plan for May is to do three CrossFits (for those keeping track, that's one more CrossFit workout per week than I did throughout the ice season), three Oval skates, one recovery skate, and one day off per week.  Clearly this is a problem, since 3+3+1+1=8...and last time I checked there are only seven days in a week.  I'm not quite sure how I'll handle this.  I read some good stuff on periodizing workout schedules for masters (over 50) athletes in Joe Friel's blog and was thinking about doing his "two, nine day microcycles followed by one five day recovery cycle," and indeed that's how I'm laying out the hard weeks/recovery days--but I don't think the "hard-easy-easy" sequence within the nine day cycles will work.

First of all, I'm not sure which of my workouts are "hard" and which are "easy."  I suspect that the CrossFit will be the "easy" ones; this is not a statement about the relative difficulty of CrossFit versus skating, but merely a statement about my skill at each.  I remember one of the CrossFit coaches saying, during the Intro class, that the better you get at CrossFit the harder it is.  I totallyl understand this.  In skating I can completely wreck myself in a workout--200+ heart rate, wobbly legs, close to throwing up.  In CrossFit, I just can't get to that point in most workouts; I'm just not skilled enough at the lifts or the movements to do most of them to the full limit of my fitness.  So in theory I could try to do "skate-CrossFit-CrossFit," but that won't work logistically with the days of the week nor, most likely, with the weather.  I'm guessing there will be a lot of days when I leave for work with my CrossFit stuff and my skating gear both in the car, and I make the call of which workout to do based on the weather.  This could mean three hard skating workouts in a row, or having to substitute dryland or CrossFit for a rained-out skate.

The other problem, of course, is that "8 things to accomplish in 7 days" issue.  I think I could handle one "two-a-day" per week, and that's what I'll likely do during the summer, but logistically it's tough during the school year.  CrossFit would have to be the morning workout, and they do have super early classes--5:30 am-- but only during the first half of the week.  Starting the school week with a sleep deficit is probably not in my best interest.  I may have to try a 6:30 class at the Excelsior location, which is close to work, although timing will be tight when you throw in a shower before work. Friday seems like a good day for a two-a-day, but of course the skating wouldn't happen any day it rains.

At any rate, it's shaping up to be a good spring, and these are all good problems to have.  I'm so thankful, after so many rough years of battling thyroid issues and poor performance and fading enthusiasm, to finally be starting off a season full of optimism and energy.  Whatever May brings, I'm just incredibly happy to be heading into it feeling like this.

Minus the runny nose and sinus headache, of course.