This past week was incredibly stressful: Herbert started his new job, caught a cold, which he later passed on to me, and we were in the final stages of preparing for my grandmother’s 90th birthday party, which we had on Saturday. I was really frustrated when I started feeling sick because I was convinced I would be able to “survive” the colder months without even getting a small cold, but I suppose the body gets weaker when you are stressed out, no matter how healthy you eat and live. I ate all the vitamins I could find (primarily in the form of superfoods, sprouts, vegetables, fruits, etc.) and was able to prevent the worst until the party was over. It is still quite upsetting when you’ve been looking forward to an event for a long time and you can’t fully enjoy it because you’re feeling sick.
Training
Since my body was fighting viruses all week, most of my workouts weren’t that “successful.” Additionally, the weather was quite “temperamental” and some of our oars’ blades were being painted in club colors, so there was very little motivation to spend time in the boat. After treating myself to a rest day on Monday, I went for a run along the Danube on Tuesday. After a 10-15 minute warm-up, I did eight 500m intervals, followed by a 10-15 minute cool-down. I was supposed to do 12 intervals in total, but was so exhausted after the first 8 that I couldn’t possibly force myself to do more, especially since I am not really used to running more than an hour. By the end, my knees were already hurting a little bit, so I was happy to get home.
On Wednesday, I was considering doing a workout in the single, using my oars from the double that weren’t being painted, but it was really windy, so I decided to give the good old erg a bit of love. I first spent 40 minutes on the erg and then migrated to the weight room, where I did two sets of strength exercises: four rounds of 5 hang cleans and 10 long jumps, as well as four rounds of 20 bulgarian split squats, 20 one-legged deadlifts, 10 ring rows and 40 seconds handstand hold.
Since I had a hairdresser’s appointment on Thursday, in addition to not feeling particularly well, I decided to only spend 45 minutes on my indoor bike. It is always nice to have a worst-case option for doing a “relaxing” workout at home. It is already getting quite hot in our small office when I am cycling on our Kurt Kinetic, but so far, I am able to survive with the window open. However, it is only going to get warmer from now on… at least on average because it is actually snowing in some parts of the country right now. Crazy, isn’t it?
On Friday, I spent almost the whole day baking cupcakes for my grandmother’s birthday party, and I wasn’t feeling any better, so I decided it was necessary to rest in oder for my health situation not to get any worse before the party. As I might have told you, I get slightly aggressive when I don’t work out for more than a day in a row, so I decided to do a quick 30-minute indoor bike ride on the morning of the party (on Saturday) instead. I don’t know if it was a good idea though because on Sunday, I felt really sick. Thankfully, our training in the quad was cancelled because of strong winds on the Old Danube, so I went back to bed and took the day off.
Nutrition
I’ve been trying a lot of office-friendly meals lately in preparation for my new job (outside the house) starting in June. I purchased a German cookbook called “Vegane Lunchbox,” which I can really recommend for people who understand the language. Most of my vegan cookbooks are in English, but somehow, I wasn’t able to find any that really appealed to me in this case. I am a big fan of all the recipes I’ve tried so far, especially the faux egg salad. Perhaps, I’ll write a post on vegan office-friendly meals once I’ve actually tried more than a couple of recipes.