Happy Sunday! I started off today’s off day nice and slow by reading a book all morning, then walked to a plaza, savored an helado in the sunshine, and enjoyed an iced café con leche at a café with some friends while working on a paper. Then, I got yelled at for being late to lunch, and I am now writing this post while listening to bachata music 🙂
Week of 6/11-6/17:
- Monday: AM: 6×4 min run, 1 min walk + drills + 30 min bike. PM: 30 min elliptical + ~20 min circuit I made up. Lots of push-ups and dumbbell squats involved. Iced foot and quads.
- Tuesday: AM: 60 min bike workout. Legs were dead again so I did what I could. 15 warm-up, 4 x [2 min hard, 1 easy], 4 x [2 min hard, 2 easy], 3 x 1h1e, 10 cool down. PM: 10 min core.
- Wednesday: 4-8-4-8-4 min run with 1 min walk + active warm-up + 25 min bike. Legs/body were tired. ~12 min core circuit. PM: ice, some foot exercises, bachata class!
- Thursday: AM: 70 min bike workout (15 warm-up, 45 min of hard/easy songs, 10 cool down). Tired legs and foot hurt a bit. PM: 20 min bike shakeout (legs felt great after!) + lift (glute and core activation, squats, OH/UH DB row, weighted RDLs, chin-ups, Swiss ball hamstring curls, TRX).
- Friday: 6 x 5 min run, 1 min walk. Later: 30 min aqua jog in the ocean. Stayed in the sun too long and felt awful at night.
- Saturday: 80 min XT (52 elliptical, 28 bike). Very tired.
- Sunday: off. Yoga (planned).
Total: 11 miles + 345 min XT + strength/yoga/etc.
So my coach likes to refer to the first few weeks of a new training block as the “Valley of Fatigue”, where your body is adjusting to the increased workload and you generally feel like crap for awhile. Looking back at this week, that’s exactly what happened 😉 Luckily, my teammates and I have been commiserating with each other and most of us have been feeling similarly, so we know it’s just this stage of training and (hopefully) it’ll pass/we’ll adjust.

XT sweat overactivity??
Overall, I got some quality work in this week and increased the duration of my running intervals. I had planned to do 7 x 4 min run, 1 min walk on Wednesday, but I impatiently and stubbornly skipped two of the 1-minute walk intervals, which resulted in two running intervals that were 8 minutes long (aka twice as long as I had been running). This did not bode well for my foot. It’s been hurting more than it had been for several days. You live and you learn. The concept of walk-to-run exists for a reason!
On Thursday, I didn’t feel like coming up with a structured bike workout, so I put on the Latin Dance Cardio playlist on Spotify and alternated hard/easy intervals depending on when the song switched. It was a great way to switch things up! However, I literally left a pool of sweat on/underneath the stationary bike. Ew.

Nice
I was getting kind of tired of the bike by the end of the week…
On Friday, as I mentioned, I spent all afternoon in the blazing sun at the beach, which resulted in some mild sun poisoning 😉 OOPS.
This week, I also read The Favorite Sister by Jessica Knoll. I would recommend it as a summer beach read! I thought the ending was the best part, so I would say it’s worth wading through the somewhat melodramatic plot/characters and exaggerated pseudofeminism at times.

Image source
I still didn’t sleep very much this week, which was annoying and has had negative repercussions on my body’s ability to recover. However, I’m getting okay sleep, and I know it will all work out.
While so many aspects of study abroad have been absolutely amazing, by this point I am craving home and familiarity and starting to feel depressed and anxious (partially due to physical exhaustion). At the risk of sounding like a spoiled princess, I am tired of not feeling comfortable in this house (due to a variety of factors). I am tired of not having a name (my host mom can’t pronounce my name, so I’ve been nameless for a month, which is harder than you would think!). I am tired of not sleeping well or having any privacy. However, I am not tired of the beautiful Spanish language, friendliness of the people, cheap food, mercados, beach, university, or nice cool mornings! There are some things I will miss so much when we leave in a week.
Last night, after an admittedly bad day, I dragged myself out of a depressive funk and went to watch the sunset on the beach with my close friends. We ended up talking and laughing for over two hours, and by the end, I felt so much better. It was unprecedentedly wonderful ❤
Intentions for next week:
- Continue icing (I did a pretty good job this week!)
- Sleep as much as you can 🙂
- Crush the last week of classes!
- Safely increase running
- Listen to your body about cross training intensity ❤
- Learn 1+ new thing about Cádiz (or Spain in general) every day
And to end this post, here is a picture of a shark that you can actually buy at the Mercado Central. I love that place.