On mental health

A combination of swimming, running, tidying up and sorting out minor school business has contributed greatly to my mental health for the day...

Finally made it to morning swim. (Lungs still gummy, but nothing to be done about it except wait it out.) A good workout--nothing intense, and somewhat wayward lane behavior (I think I was the only person out of four really doing the full workout--I see that really I have to improve my other strokes so that I can switch into lane 7, I think my front crawl speed is suitable to put me at the back of that lane already but it won't do to feel super-rushed on breaststroke while I'm still learning--or to drive everyone else in that lane crazy by being the slowpoke!). I cannot for the life of me reproduce the set, but I suppose it was roughly 2200 yards, including warmup (ten minutes of 75 swim + 50 kick), and I am certain that I did at least 400 yards of breaststroke, so that's good. (A couple sets of the 3 x 150 75 breast/75 free sort, that kind of thing.)

Last week I had one blissful swim where I had the most amazing feel for the water almost the whole way through, with water like handfuls of taffy just squeezable in my fists. It took me longer today to get that back, but by the last set of 3 x 150 free descending I definitely had it again, how lovely...

(It is amazing how absolutely wretched I feel when I wake up--in general this is true, I am a bad sleeper and thoroughly not a morning person, but especially when I get up at 5:40 as I have to do for swimming--and then how miraculously two lengths of swimming restores me to my full senses!)

And just now I did the run I missed yesterday. (Ooh, it's too hot again, mid-70s and humid. When will it stop?!?) An enjoyable one, though not quite the run I'd planned. Since I've been doing the long ones at that slower pace, I seem to have lost all ability to pace myself for regular runs! And it doesn't help that my weekday Riverside Park run is so much flatter than the long runs in Central Park on the weekend. At any rate, though it was hot and my lungs felt slightly awful it was a very brisk one, we will count that as a tempo run: just over 5 miles at an average of 9:05.

Mile splits: 9:28, 9:26, 9:10, 8:52, 8:32.

(I really couldn't slow down, I kept on trying and then I would just kind of revert!)

Off to Philadelphia for a bicycle ride for which I am woefully underprepared. However it is all for the good, if I can successfully deal with bicycles on public transportation and bike-riding in a large group than I am a significant step further towards being ready to sign up for an actual triathlon...

CU swimming's on hiatus now for two weeks, which is a pity. It picks back up on the morning of Oct. 11, from which point onwards it's Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 6-7am. I hereby make a resolution to be more responsible about sleep, and to do my damnedest to be in bed by 11:30 every weeknight.