This week the first evil breath of winter came, with temperatures taking a nosedive into below zero numbers during the night. There was snow further north, and I’m so grateful to live on the southern coast! Still, I haven’t been out for walks. I can’t make myself go out in these temperatures unless I have to, but I probably need to adjust and just do it, because getting outdoors is good for the soul.
Generally this was an exhausting week, but with a lot of highlights. I feel much better than some week ago, but still not quite like myself. I’m suspecting something stress-related rather than a virus of sorts, because of the similarity to my burnout in 2017 (which was part of my decision to leave my nursing career).
Lately outside of the gym I’ve been taking it very easy, and I’m learning to take time off and that it’s ok to just BE sometimes and that everything I do doesn’t have to be perfect. Hey, it’s actually ok to do things just for the enjoyment… who knew.
Now recently I ran into a very interesting work project that might change everything, so for the moment I focus completely on that, which I think is very beneficial. I need to take time off from my other half-baked projects that I’m stuck with (and that will make very little money anyway) and get back to them later with a fresh brain.
Some might suggest that I should take time away from the gym to rest (remember that training also causes stress to the body), but training has always helped me clear my head, and even now on days when I experience the brain fog of my life, when I get home from the gym I feel energised and just… normal. Perhaps I should try some indoor cycling again, it might have the same effect.
And we have this new gadget in the house waiting for me:
My husband has used his old race bike here connected to a Wahoo Kickr gadget, and it didn’t work for me to use it. In addition, during the better weather months I want to prioritise going out for walks, but we bought this in October for the winter, and I’m getting curious to start using it.
This post is linked with the Weekly rundown link-up, hosted by Deborah and Kim. It’s where fitness bloggers get together to share their ups and downs with fitness and training, whether it’s about strength, running, cycling or something else. It’s great for accountability as well as inspiring and supporting each other. Let’s get into it!
Monday
After spending last week not feeling so good (but still doing ok in the gym) I wasn’t confident going to the gym today, but I had said I wanted to get back to the strength program as planned, and had no obvious reason to back out from that.
4 sets x 6 reps
- Romanian deadlifts, barbell 40 kgs
- Split squats, barbell 45 kgs
- Sumo squats, barbell 50 kgs
- Bent-over lateral raise, 8 kg dumbbells
- Shoulder press, 8 kg dumbbells
- Lateral raise, 8 kg dumbbells
I did quite ok after all! I finished quite early which indicates I should have taken longer breaks, but also felt everything went quite well and I didn’t know what I could have done differently even with longer breaks between sets. I chickened out a bit with depth on the split squats (just like with the lunges last week) but otherwise felt good.
Last week I asked my husband to help me buy ink cartridges for my photo printer on Amazon, since some of them were sold out on the Canon shop. I really dislike Amazon, I don’t want to give Jeff Bezos any money if there’s a more local alternative where all the money actually goes to the business owner, but sometimes I have to if I can’t get what I need anywhere else or the sellers don’t have a shop on their own website. I once tried looking into selling on Amazon, and for unknown reasons my account was immediately blocked and when I was asked to upload my ID card to verify my existence, I refused (no thanks, not giving away more data), so now I have to ask my husband to get me whatever I need to get from Amazon.
Today I was expecting ink, but instead got something else he had bought without me knowing.
A weighted blanket!
My sleep has been all over the place lately, and there’s plenty of research that shows that a heavy blanket promotes stress-relief and better sleep. They are used a lot in palliative care and where I worked we talked about getting one to try, but I haven’t looked into it any further after I left my nursing career. My husband bought one of these for himself a few months back, and I tried it once (for like 10 mins) and found it very comfortable.
Tuesday
So how did I sleep with that weighted blanket? Actually not great, but it was still comfortable! I was feeling quite good today but took it easy for the day to keep prioritising rest and recovery.
Wednesday
I had a good night’s sleep and was happy to get back to the gym! It was the first morning in a week I woke up feeling rested, and I felt good! Despite this, it was a stressful day. My husband was going for surgery in the afternoon to remove a troubling wisdom tooth. Even after having seen what you see as a palliative care nurse I’m so grossed out by those things. I was much more stressed about it than he was, mostly about how bad it could potentially be afterwards. I tried to ignore it during the day and just enjoy my gym session.
I had rearranged the gym session to lunchtime, and I’m so not used to train before I’ve had a proper meal, but I did ok! Today it was chest and back day.
4 sets x 6 reps
- Straight arm pullovers, one 17,5 kg dumbbell
- Good mornings, barbell 40 kgs
- Bilateral dumbbell row, 15 kg dumbbells
- Chest press, 15 kg dumbbells
- Inclined flyes, 9 kg dumbbells
- Chest press, barbell 47,5 kgs
I didn’t do well with the crazy barbell chest presses today either, but for the first time ever I did all my 15 kg dumbbell chest presses without any assistance, and didn’t rep out either. I was surprised myself when I just got them up into the starting position without thinking of it. “Oh look, this is actually working!”! This made my day. All the other exercises were straightforward, although I did feel my right arm a little bit with the flyes, which made me a bit careful with going to the end range of motion.
In the late afternoon while I waited for my husband to come home I took some time to figure out custom white balance on my new camera to focus on something nice.
Thursday
Mr Marathon Runner is ok, just feeling meh. We both slept quite poorly. Remember that he was still recovering from a tough marathon! I’m impressed he was in such good shape after all.
I planned to go for a walk, but since yesterday it’s winter here. It came on very quickly with a sudden drop from some decent 10 degrees down to 0 to 2 degrees (32-36F), and freezing temperatures during the night. With some wind as well, it’s absolutely not pleasant to go out, not even with a beautiful sunshine. But a friend came over for coffee and a good chat, and I had some work to do.
Friday
Today I got a lighter-weights-more-reps program again, and although I mostly enjoy those heavier weights, it feels good to get this kind of program in between, especially now when I haven’t been feeling my best.
3 sets x 12 reps
- Back squats, barbell 45 kgs
- Split squats, barbell 35 kgs
- Straight arm pullovers, 7 kg dumbbells
- Barbell row, 30 kgs
- Chest press, barbell 37,5 kgs
- Flyes, 7 kg dumbbells
- Lateral raise, 6 kg dumbbells
- Upright row, barbell 20 kgs
After the latest adventures with the bar, these chest presses felt so easy! I worked on my range of motion and felt quite good with it. The squats were a bit increased in weight for this rep range, and the flyes worked fine today again without any problems with my right arm. It was a very good session altogether!
A creative weekend
This weekend was all about resting my brain. And believe it or not, building something tech-y can do that for me. Sometimes I’ve built new WordPress themes or modifying the existing, just because it’s relaxing. Even writing code can be relaxing! The requirement is that I do it solely for the sake of the enjoyment of creating something and testing what works.
So this weekend I started playing with an AI coding tool my husband has been talking about. I’m not a developer, just a creative geek with some HTML/CSS skills and I like to play with code but can’t do anything too advanced. And while I really, deeply dislike generative AI for so many reasons, as a tool to build something I need but nobody wants to build… I’m interested.
I spent this weekend using that AI tool to build a blogging app that is built on text files. Small, fast, secure and easy to back up (remember our server crash?), and at the time of writing there are features for posts, pages, comments, e-mail replies, search, categories, everything I need and a few more. WordPress has become very good in recent years and is (almost) a joy to use now, but something more lightweight that still has all important features for a blog would be great.
There’s plenty of testing, problem-solving and refining to do, and deploying it to a live site for testing feels like a mountain to climb over, but I’m excited. To be continued!
With this project I allowed myself to get into the flow and completely ignore what I “should” be doing other than obvious things like eating, sleeping and washing the dishes, and it’s been exactly what I needed.
Next week I hope to continue feeling better, get on that new Zwift bike, and it looks like the weather will be good for some walking too.
How are you? How was your week? What do you do when you need to relax your brain?
Thanks to Kim and Deborah for hosting the Weekly rundown link-up!
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