Thursday workout & musings

Spinervals 14.0 (Totally Time Trial) - 90 mins.

(I prefer the Mental Toughness for a 90-minute workout, but the DVD for that one has a glitch that makes it freeze and I have to skip about 20 minutes of it - I should see if I can get a new copy, or else just use the one I have and fill in the missing bit of workout)

Then I went over to the Columbia gym for a short swim - it was not, fortunately, excessively crowded.

Hmmm, what was it?

2 x 100 free

Free drill:

100 right-arm, left-arm, catch-up, free
50 free
100 finger-drag
50 free
100 thumbs-and-salute
50 free
100 6-3-6
50 free

100 fly drill as right-arm, left-arm, 3-3-3, full stroke
50 free
100 back
50 free
100 breast
50 free

1250 yards total

I have been full of discontent with myself this week, but my rational evaluation is that it's unreasonable - I've only been home for five days, and it's too soon for me to have gotten into a good routine, given that I'm working with a totally different set of factors than usual.

I only got back late Saturday night, and since then I've done two rehearsals for this piece I'm involved with at the Guggenheim, and have realized that it's truthfully going to be very tiring (rather demanding 4-hour shifts, plus an hour each way transportation); I've had a slew of doctor's appointments (on the bright side, I've now got a Flovent inhaler in addition to the albuterol, and it's made my lungs feel normal for the first time in what in retrospect must be several months - I was having trouble with wheezing on long runs in November, and my lungs were very sore and wheezy during and after the marathon); I spent about 7 hours last night doing an elaborate iPod restoration and recovery project, and all is now well again...

(Work IT guy inadvertently deleted iTunes library from my laptop & also did something that made it impossible to reinstall iTunes - and then the evils of the proprietary software are such that one can't just copy the iPod Touch contents back onto the computer, there needs to be an elaborate workaround - but I strongly recommend the PD+ Rescue package - it was idiot-proof, I executed steps and achieved the promised results. Now I am no longer in the nerve-racking situation of having my entire music library on one fragile device - I didn't even use it for my January treadmill runs because I couldn't risk busting it! I am wondering about getting some sort of backup - I think the Shuffle is too much less versatile than a regular iPod to be worth buying, though I am still slightly tempted, but it is probably worth getting an iPod nano and using it for gym workouts.)

Things also look very busy through the weekend - two Guggenheim shifts, a couple out-of-town friends and family members to see, the one-hour swim on Sunday.

In other words, it's kind of a hive of activity round here, and it is not surprising that I haven't exercised as much as I'd have liked or done any of 'my' work - really I need to scale my expectations dramatically down in general, or else I will never beat my insomnia!

On which note, I have been doing a pretty mediocre job hewing to the sleep protocol, but even so, it's helped a lot in terms of falling asleep and sleeping a bit more soundly (of course, sabbatical is helpful too). The huge stumbling block right now - the thing that has given me cause for much self-reproach this week! - is my inability to get up in the morning. This morning I snoozed my alarm for two hours! The trouble is that I am so groggy at that time of day that I basically have no willpower - I need to set up some kind of structure that will get me up and out.

It worked well in Cayman earlier this month to do an hour or two of exercise pretty much first thing in the morning right after I got up, and I'm trying to figure out what would be a good version of that here. Running in theory is good, but I find it especially hard to get up and out for unless I'm meeting someone. I'm thinking that what might make more sense would be to do 30 minutes on the spin bike and then 30-40 minutes of core and moderate strength stuff...