We did some CrossFit tonight – or, as I sometimes like to call it, XFactor.
I also started menstruation today.
Not that I initiated it or anything, of course… it just began.
Usually, if I have any pain, it is right at the beginning of menstruation, Day one or Day two.
And, naturally, Day one this time around opted to give me a bit of pain.
Not much, but some pain, nonetheless.
Add to this my significantly lowered energy level – yes, this is totally normal for menstruation, in case anyone was unsure – and the high humidity and heat of this afternoon, and you can imagine a tough workout ahead of me when I arrived for the class.
So, the sprints for the first fifteen-ish minutes were tough, but I made it.
And the weight stuff was okay – I was just generally weaker and shorter-winded than usual.
But the plank stuff at the end – by the way, plank is usually no big deal for me at all – was one of the oddest experiences I’ve ever had with all of this.
You see, plank was fine… it was when we continued from regular into what light have been called a marching plank, where you put one arm stretched in the air in front of you at a time, while keeping your back flat, legs wide, and butt still low, that I hit a tiny bit of trauma…
For that part, followed by mountain climbers (still with the butt low), a lot of the lower abdomen ends up being used.
… a part which had not clicked for me ahead of time…
And so, as I struggled through my second round of the plank combo, and was on the marching plank things, I actually had to stop – something I’ve never done in plank work – for the extreme and intense pain that felt like my ovaries and uterus were about to explode forward out of my lower abdomen… I skipped over the rest of the marching things and just finished the mountain climbers before stopping, but it was still enough to leave me almost rather paralyzed when I sat back, crying.
I’ve never cried in the middle of a workout before, but I did it about three times today.
Yes, the one cry could have been enough, but I had to make sure I wasn’t just being lazy, wanting to get out of the hard work simply because it was hard, and using the excuse of my menstruation to get out of it… and it turned out that it was a combination.
So, I did a few of the marching things and all of the mountain climber things each round afterward, thereby still putting in the work, but not putting myself in unnecessary and useless pain.
I know I have lower energy at these times, and so I have aimed recently to allow for that (and rather successfully for the most part).
Tonight was just the first time I had to factor that into my goals of becoming more fit – I always push hard when my fitness is on the line these days, and it was surprisingly hard to scale back tonight, despite the fact that it was necessary and good for me to scale back.
Anyway, speaking of all of this, nature calls, so I’m off.
Sweet dreams, World at large.
Post-a-day 2019
hannah ananas 