Welcome to the latest edition of How I Work it Out, where we get a glimpse of a week in the workout-life of various women. (Here are all the past posts.)

For November, we’re spending the week with Emma Ross. Emma is 55, lives in Sacramento, CA with her husband and dog. She has three adult step-daughters and one granddaughter. She works at a health system leading a team of prospect researchers in the philanthropy department. After never having one athletic bone in her body as a child, she fell in love with running 12 years ago!

Monday is a difficult day for me to work out. I work in a hybrid office/remote situation and Mondays I usually go into the office. There are many days that I can motivate myself to work out before going in. Today was not that day. The real conundrum is if I don’t get my workout in early, I really struggle with motivation. I am very thankful that I have enlisted my friend Susan to be my accountability partner. Just knowing that I will report to her when I’m done helps me to get going on my strength training when I get home from work. I’m following the AMR Fall into Fitness program in addition to religiously doing physical therapy exercises. During the workout I did a series of challenging strength moves including dumbbell front squats and hip thrusts. I love the Fall into Fitness program because I can follow along a series of exercises at my own pace. This is very different than other prerecorded fitness programs.

My exercise passion is running, but I’ve been sidelined for about 4 months until just three short weeks ago. I injured my knee and after many diagnostics and some physical therapy, my physical therapist cleared me to do a return to running program. Today, a five times three-minute run, three-minute walk was on the docket. I got up early and got it done in the dark. There is nothing quite like returning from an injury to help you appreciate being able to do something again. I had none of yesterday’s desire to stay in bed. Hooray! I got to run!

I got up early, but not too early because today I worked from home. I deliberately waited to do my strength workout until after I was done training a team member. I love to teach my team new things, but it expends a lot of mental energy. Exercise is very good way for me to clear my head and recharge. This set of strength exercises were quite challenging for me. I had to force myself through it and it was well worth it. I felt very accomplished afterwards and had the mental clarity to continue my work day. One of the fun parts about this program is that at the end of each workout the app tells you the equivalent of how much weight was lifted in different animal increments. I lifted 55 Siberian Huskies today!

Thursdays are for HIIT workouts. The Fall into Fitness program defines HIIT as a 10-minute warm up followed by five times 30 second sprint, 30 second rest. After that first block there is 4 minutes easy effort and then a repeat of the five times 30 second sprint, 30 second rest. It ends with at least 5 minutes cool down. My PT says no to any high intensity with running for now so I opt to do my HIIT workout on the rower. Do I like the rower? No, I do not. I do like to watch The Amazing Race, however. I pair this workout with watching Wednesday night’s episode. I purposefully did not watch it last night so I would have it for this morning. Form is very important in rowing so I don’t tune out of the exercise completely while watching.

The strength workout I had today was the last of this three-week block of programming. The suggestion is to increase weights in these sessions this week, since next week will be a de-load week. I gave that a try and amazingly was able to increase my single armfloor press from 30 to 35 pounds per arm! I almost can’t believe I was able to do that. The last couple of presses were very challenging. I incorporated my PT exercises as well. The strength workout I had today was the last of this three-week block of programming. The suggestion is to increase weights in these sessions this week, since next week will be a de-load week. I gave that a try and amazingly was able to increase my single arm floor press from 30 to 35 pounds per arm! I almost can’t believe I was able to do that. The last couple of presses were very challenging. I incorporated my PT exercises as well.

Saturday is a run day! This morning, I took my best running dog, Enzo, with me. We did three-minute run, three-minute walk intervals again. I’m very pleased to say that I accomplished this run with no pain again. Because of that, next week I will be able to progress up to four-minute run, two-minute walk intervals. I finally feel like my running is coming along. Slow and steady progress keeps the re-injuries away, right? I can tell Enzo will miss these run walk intervals once I get fully through the rehab. He likes the extra sniffing time during the walk portion.

Rest day! I spent some quality time resting today. My favorite rest day activity is curling up with a good book and I spent a satisfactory amount of time doing. In the afternoon, my husband and I had a leisurely lunch at my in-law’s house followed by a trip to Trader Joe’s to stock up for the week. I truly love it when I can say I managed to get all my scheduled workouts done for the week.