"But the bed is more comfortable than pain!"

You are warm in your bed, with your body limp and heart beating at 39 beats per minute.  What could possibly make you get out of bed before sunrise (other than work)? For me, it’s pretty obvious… rowingJ.

However, it was incredibly tempting to get back into bed this morning, especially when my location for training was right next door in my living room!  So while my husband continued to sleep, I got up, ate some food and got started with my warm up.  My workout was going to take 2 hours in the morning, so I had to get up early enough so that I had time to get ready for work and then head out to the office.

I knew this was going to be a tough week.  When I got my workout schedule, I noticed that it was DOUBLE the volume of last week.  All the workouts I did last week that I thought were hard on their own (as just one set), were DOUBLED for this week.  So as an example, instead of just doing 1x30minute pyramid, I had to do 2 x 30minute pyramids.  One alone is incredibly intense with the splits I have to hold and at the low stroke rates, so to do two of them made me a little nervous. 

So this morning, my workout was as I expected: tough as nails!  I was halfway through my first one when my husband got up, and he saw that I was already drenched in my own sweat, grunting for every stroke to get the split I needed to hold.  Soon enough, the first set was done…then shortly after, I was off again to start my second set.  Although I didn’t hit my splits, I worked hard for every stroke and stayed true to what I could do (no letting up).  I was excited to have my cold smoothie when I finished, yumJ.

After work, I headed to the rowing club and did my 80 minutes of strength training and then 45 minutes of erging.  To put it simply – I am now wiped out and ready for bed!  That’s why I will have to be very aware of my food intake and sleep this week (aiming to get 8 hours a night – super excited!).

Since I was solo today in my training, I made sure I had my visualization poster and music handy.  I also focused a lot on motivational cues that would help me get through my workouts successfully.

Cues can come in the form of words, phrases, sounds and acronyms.  If you’re an athlete, you most likely have a number of cue words you use in your sport.

Here are some that I have come across:

-          I am strong (this is positive self talk)

-          I am committed to each stride (running), stroke (rowing), etc

-          Drive (common in rowing)

-          Sit up

-          Relax

You can probably find some songs that have great cue words in them too.  Below is an old dance song from the 90’s, as well as some of the lyrics that I focus in on:  “your body is moving you on” and “you know that you gotta go on”.

Night:)