Cumulative Effects

I'm not sure exactly what is going on, but I'm seeing some sort of cumulative effect from the chemo or my limited training schedule.

It might be that I simply can't work out enough days to maintain my fitness.  Or, it may be a true side effect of the chemo.

I skied over the weekend, but neither day was first chair to last chair.  To be honest, I was done by noon on Sunday - exhausted and ready for a nap.  My FitBit showed that when I got home from skiing on Sunday, I fell asleep pretty much immediately and napped for 2:15.

Despite that nap, I was still exhausted for CrossFit last night.  Just like last Monday, we started with back squats.  After being unable to walk due to heavy squats last week, I scaled the weights a bit and I still struggled.  I did sets of 8-6-6-6 for back squats and kept my max 20 pounds lower than last week.  I then did 4x5 front squats at 135# and struggled.  In March of last year, before I started to get sick, I took from front squat max from 275 to 305 and it felt almost easy.  I'm nowhere close to that after 9-10 months of sub-par training.

Next, the metabolic conditioning was 3 rounds of 30 kettlebell swings, 45 air squats and 90 jump rope reps.  I scaled this to 30-30-60 and still struggled.  This was a lung burner and I simply had no endurance.  Lots of people who did the full rep scheme beat me, despite my lower rep count.

Today, we have Olympic lifting, followed by 10 minutes to do as many ball slams, sit-ups and burpees (in sets of 10 each) as possible.  This will be another lung burner and I expect to struggle.

Is it the lack of training consistency since I've started chemo?  Or is the chemo's effects, gradually catching up with me.

I still hear words like "amazing" and "inspirational" from people at the gym.  I've heard similar comments from my doctors and nurses.  I don't think what I'm doing fits either of those descriptions.  I'm just trying to live my life as close as possible to how I normally live.  My doctors are amazed at how much fitness stuff I'm still doing.  When I start chemo tomorrow, I'll have 4 ski days, 4 CrossFit days, 2 walking days, and one rowing day in the 16 days since chemo ended.  And it's been a struggle.  It's also apparently a lot more than most people on my chemo regime are able to do.

So, I should probably just be happy, and then plan to use the 5 weeks between chemo and surgery to work as hard as I can.  But, if anyone read my last post, happy doesn't describe how I've been feeling recently.

I'm torn on starting the last round of chemo tomorrow.  Partly, I simply don't believe it will be my last round of chemo.  This insidious disease tends to recur frequently.  At some point, surgery won't be an option, and I'll probably be back on regular chemo treatments.  But, that is hopefully down the road a bit.

For now, I want to just get through this latest round and start getting ready for surgery next month.  I have 5+ weeks between chemo and surgery, and I'm hoping I can train hard enough to feel like I'm making some positive progress in those weeks.