Hmmm, it has not been a very triaspirational couple weeks, but I get the impression from the other triathlon blogs I read that a lot of people find February a very difficult month as far as training goes! I am just going to have to be patient--and now I'm coming down with a mild lung ailment of some sort, so it will be wise to take it a little easier than I might be tempted to...
A good swim last night. Not sure these are the exact details, I was kind of confused at various points as to exactly where we were or what we were doing (and I didn't for instance have a pull buoy, so on those lengths I was just doing swim-no-kick), but it was along these lines.
Warmup: 250 or so
6 x 100 free, 25 kick 25 pull 50 swim
25 fly 50 back 75 breast 100 drill 200 free
100 drill 75 breast 50 back 25 fly
(something like that anyway!)
3 x 100 25 no breath 75 swim
And a bit of swim down, including a couple more lengths of other strokes. Very pleasant indeed...
Friday, February 22, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Tuesday swim
And I spent pretty much the whole hour practicing (attempting?) flip turns!
I asked the coach before I got in to warm up whether she might help me with 'em sometime in the next few weeks, and it turned out there was another woman who was also interested, so after the warmup (300 choice--I did 100 free, 100 fly down breast back and 100 back--200 IM drill-swim, 100 kick-swim) we had a rather comical and frolicky stint of trying various things... made me feel like a little kid playing in a swimming pool, in a good way!
(Slight water-up-the-nose problem makes me distinctly nostalgic. I'm serious!)
(At first they got worse, which I find is par for the course with anything one does not know how to do properly--you get a sort of beginner's luck effect on the first few, and then once you really start paying attention they deteriorate--but I persisted, and after about thirty-five minutes did suddenly find there was rather an improvement. Still a ways to go--a long ways! But it is a start.)
(Counterintuitive to come off the wall upside-down and on your back, I'm thinking this is why my body always kind of twists me sideways before I have properly finished turning in the first place!)
But it was coming clear to me last week that I am never going to learn how to do them if I do not, horribly, make myself do them. I was sorry to miss an actual workout this evening, but it seemed like it would be a cop-out to pass up the external encouragement and the good lane company to work on this funny and wretched little skill that I am anxious to learn.
So I am making an evil resolution, which will be moderated by common sense as needed. Resolved: during this semester at CU masters swim, and any time I get a quiet spot in a lane elsewhere, I will always do flip turns on my freestyle warmup lengths, and will start adding turns as I can face them in other freestyle bits.
And it also seems to me that in the weeks when I can go to the Saturday afternoon workout, which is 1.5 hours rather than 1.0 like the weekday ones, I could easily take the last fifteen minutes for working on turns--given the amount of basic technique improvement still to go, and the length of the race I'm training for, I think that the benefits of a 3000-3500-yard workout are more notional than real, I should really just go up to about 2500 and then use the last twenty minutes on something technique-related that I need to practice...
My goal for the next week: calm down!
I asked the coach before I got in to warm up whether she might help me with 'em sometime in the next few weeks, and it turned out there was another woman who was also interested, so after the warmup (300 choice--I did 100 free, 100 fly down breast back and 100 back--200 IM drill-swim, 100 kick-swim) we had a rather comical and frolicky stint of trying various things... made me feel like a little kid playing in a swimming pool, in a good way!
(Slight water-up-the-nose problem makes me distinctly nostalgic. I'm serious!)
(At first they got worse, which I find is par for the course with anything one does not know how to do properly--you get a sort of beginner's luck effect on the first few, and then once you really start paying attention they deteriorate--but I persisted, and after about thirty-five minutes did suddenly find there was rather an improvement. Still a ways to go--a long ways! But it is a start.)
(Counterintuitive to come off the wall upside-down and on your back, I'm thinking this is why my body always kind of twists me sideways before I have properly finished turning in the first place!)
But it was coming clear to me last week that I am never going to learn how to do them if I do not, horribly, make myself do them. I was sorry to miss an actual workout this evening, but it seemed like it would be a cop-out to pass up the external encouragement and the good lane company to work on this funny and wretched little skill that I am anxious to learn.
So I am making an evil resolution, which will be moderated by common sense as needed. Resolved: during this semester at CU masters swim, and any time I get a quiet spot in a lane elsewhere, I will always do flip turns on my freestyle warmup lengths, and will start adding turns as I can face them in other freestyle bits.
And it also seems to me that in the weeks when I can go to the Saturday afternoon workout, which is 1.5 hours rather than 1.0 like the weekday ones, I could easily take the last fifteen minutes for working on turns--given the amount of basic technique improvement still to go, and the length of the race I'm training for, I think that the benefits of a 3000-3500-yard workout are more notional than real, I should really just go up to about 2500 and then use the last twenty minutes on something technique-related that I need to practice...
My goal for the next week: calm down!
Monday, February 18, 2008
It's done...
I've e-mailed the files to my editor and I'm about to take the hard copy to the xerox shop.
No negative thoughts to speak of, either. Though I did just spend half an hour wrestling with unwanted page breaks in the table of contents, but decided that the press will be better equipped than I to strip the wretched formatting off the silly little things...
This will still come back to me for a couple more rounds of work, most notably for indexing, but it's substantively finished now. I was first thinking about it a bit more than five years ago, and I started properly researching and writing it in September 2003. Books take a long time to write, I do not know why I continue to be so surprised by this fact!
No negative thoughts to speak of, either. Though I did just spend half an hour wrestling with unwanted page breaks in the table of contents, but decided that the press will be better equipped than I to strip the wretched formatting off the silly little things...
This will still come back to me for a couple more rounds of work, most notably for indexing, but it's substantively finished now. I was first thinking about it a bit more than five years ago, and I started properly researching and writing it in September 2003. Books take a long time to write, I do not know why I continue to be so surprised by this fact!
Monday gym workout
And very nice too...
Pretty tired, I thought I'd better take it cautiously, we just did some lower-key strength-type stuff and a short core bit at the end. Probably only working about 85% of the usual. But it was still a very good workout, I really enjoyed it.
Especially some delightfully evil one-legged squats--3 x 15 on each side, holding a ten-pound dumbbell in the other hand, but the weight is beside the point, it's the balance that's challenging--that really does seem to me an exercise that must be good for cycling...
Pretty tired, I thought I'd better take it cautiously, we just did some lower-key strength-type stuff and a short core bit at the end. Probably only working about 85% of the usual. But it was still a very good workout, I really enjoyed it.
Especially some delightfully evil one-legged squats--3 x 15 on each side, holding a ten-pound dumbbell in the other hand, but the weight is beside the point, it's the balance that's challenging--that really does seem to me an exercise that must be good for cycling...
Book report
Well, I am just now printing out the full and final draft of the book manuscript...
(As per the thoughts of a commenter below, it is strange the extent to which no activity other than book-finishing produces such aches in the muscles, such awful bleariness of the eyes and such an acute sense of general physical malaise! But I am not complaining, I chose to write it, I've got to suck it up when it comes to finishing it...)
I'm not done, not really--I've got to check this version against the marked-up one I just typed in corrections from, for one thing, and I've still got to do the bibliography and front matter. Minimum of six more hours work, I'm guessing, more likely eight. (Hmmm, and a couple dodgy pages where I did too much last-minute rewriting...)
But I will go to bed now, and I will have an hour's workout with M. first thing in the morning, and then I will spend the day finishing up the last bits and have every chance of e-mailing it all out and dropping the original off at the xerox shop by around six.
That would be good.
There is no doubt I have had several spells over the course of the weekend of what Brent, in his Ironman Arizona race report from last spring, memorably calls "quite noticeable negative feelings."
(Good phrase, eh?!? Devastating in its accuracy and understatement--book finishing is like a very long endurance race--the other phrase I sometimes use is "pronounced negative thoughts"!)
I am guessing I will have a couple more brief spells of such things tomorrow, at least one of them related to some kind of unanticipated but horrible printer-related disaster. Fortitude will doubtless be required!
(As per the thoughts of a commenter below, it is strange the extent to which no activity other than book-finishing produces such aches in the muscles, such awful bleariness of the eyes and such an acute sense of general physical malaise! But I am not complaining, I chose to write it, I've got to suck it up when it comes to finishing it...)
I'm not done, not really--I've got to check this version against the marked-up one I just typed in corrections from, for one thing, and I've still got to do the bibliography and front matter. Minimum of six more hours work, I'm guessing, more likely eight. (Hmmm, and a couple dodgy pages where I did too much last-minute rewriting...)
But I will go to bed now, and I will have an hour's workout with M. first thing in the morning, and then I will spend the day finishing up the last bits and have every chance of e-mailing it all out and dropping the original off at the xerox shop by around six.
That would be good.
There is no doubt I have had several spells over the course of the weekend of what Brent, in his Ironman Arizona race report from last spring, memorably calls "quite noticeable negative feelings."
(Good phrase, eh?!? Devastating in its accuracy and understatement--book finishing is like a very long endurance race--the other phrase I sometimes use is "pronounced negative thoughts"!)
I am guessing I will have a couple more brief spells of such things tomorrow, at least one of them related to some kind of unanticipated but horrible printer-related disaster. Fortitude will doubtless be required!
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Home stretch?
Must. Finish. Book. Exercise incompatible with book-finishing. ARGHHHHH! Head about to explode...
Meanwhile (no time to read it, looks interesting, Olympic connection): a gunpowder artist.
Meanwhile (no time to read it, looks interesting, Olympic connection): a gunpowder artist.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Propitious esculent
This article leads me to believe I would be justified in adding significantly more potato to the regular menu round here....
No workout this evening after all, must just do a tiny bit more work and then get up super-early for a good long morning stint. Bike tomorrow early evening instead. All is well...
No workout this evening after all, must just do a tiny bit more work and then get up super-early for a good long morning stint. Bike tomorrow early evening instead. All is well...
A book a day...
A nice article at the Times about Wings of America, a team and training program for American Indians on reservations all over the country.
Narrowly averted a minor meltdown this morning--I lost some work on a document out of an unfortunate convergence of factors, but mostly my own carelessness and haste. Full of self-reproach, but mostly just for working last night when I was clearly too tired and for not setting up this new computer and evil new incarnation of Word very thoroughly! Wasted too much time trying to recover the lost version, but felt much better once I gave up and just started doing the work over again.
Also, a funny morale lift this afternoon--a brief rendezvous with my old student Wei, whose marathon report I posted some time ago at my other blog (scroll down). He wanted to give me a tape about the Pose Method of running--but he also cheered me up by buying me a slice of pizza and telling me very solemnly, with the equivalent of a wink, that the first semester of his PhD program in history has finally taught him how to read very quickly, in fact a book a day--by skipping most of it and just reading the first sentence of every paragraph!
Narrowly averted a minor meltdown this morning--I lost some work on a document out of an unfortunate convergence of factors, but mostly my own carelessness and haste. Full of self-reproach, but mostly just for working last night when I was clearly too tired and for not setting up this new computer and evil new incarnation of Word very thoroughly! Wasted too much time trying to recover the lost version, but felt much better once I gave up and just started doing the work over again.
Also, a funny morale lift this afternoon--a brief rendezvous with my old student Wei, whose marathon report I posted some time ago at my other blog (scroll down). He wanted to give me a tape about the Pose Method of running--but he also cheered me up by buying me a slice of pizza and telling me very solemnly, with the equivalent of a wink, that the first semester of his PhD program in history has finally taught him how to read very quickly, in fact a book a day--by skipping most of it and just reading the first sentence of every paragraph!
Friday, February 15, 2008
Friday swim
A very decent one, nothing earth-shattering but I felt strong in the water and it also made me feel normal for the first time all day, because I am having devastatingly inconvenient insomnia this week. Catch-22: must finish big job and get through other upcoming ordeals (knighthood-type ordeals, not suffering-type ordeals--everything is fine, just very busy!); too stressed out to sleep; working well below capacity!
I really like digging in and working hard, I feel cheerful at the thought of finishing this manuscript this weekend and getting it out by the end of the day Monday, but the way I was feeling yesterday and today due to sleep deprivation was making it fairly impossible to execute the plan at desired intensity levels...
Intersection of Monday deadline, sleep problems and a family obligation Sunday has led me to do some drastic cutting/streamlining of the workout schedule in coming days. Now is the crunch, got to just get through it, no point worrying about shortfall from training plan. (Lack of sleep means body unlikely to absorb anything much in any case.) No bike before swimming today, because I need to do a couple more hours of work this evening and I couldn't spare either the late-afternoon work time or the later-night energy. And--this is a test for me, I must not always be skipping the bike!--I think I have to skip the projected eight-mile run Sunday, alas...
This seems to me best bet for the next five days in terms of meeting various commitments and maximizing work hours:
Saturday evening: 120 mins. bike plus 2-3 miles run off bike, but run only if it is not too late at night
Sunday: off (non-family hours desperately needed for book, cannot spare time for even the nicest run in the world...)
Monday: 8am workout with M. at gym; optional pm bike/run workout, but only if I can email the book manuscript out by 6pm or so, I need to switch over to reading and teaching prep for Tuesday by mid-evening Monday
Tuesday: swim
Wednesday: 4-6 miles daylight run, plus 120 mins. bike, but bike as higher priority
In other words, two real bike workouts plus one extra if I can fit it; one gym workout; one swim; a couple very short runs squeezed in as it seems possible.
All will be possible if I can get some hours of solid sleep tonight. A friend appealingly (glamorizingly, really it is less exciting!) described what I have been doing this winter as "fighting dragons," and with a large grain of salt it is indeed an apt notion. I sort of love the part where I am actually whacking the dragons with my sword. But I am not so keen on the 2am racing-thought situations where I consider for the fifty millionth time which dragons I might want to whack and which want to whack me, what I will do with them once I have whacked them into submission, etc.
Details of tonight's workout as follows...
Warmup: 3 x (100 swim, 50 drill, 100 swim) - I did 100 free, 50 hodgepodge drill stuff (some catchup, some thumbsies with evil salute, some double-arm back), 100 IM for all three
First set: 16 x 25 in sets of 5 plus one extra: choice, build, 12.5 sprint 12.5 easy, build, choice. Did each stroke in IM order over the three, then a final 25 of free.
Second set (which I only got through the first third-and-a-bit of, frustrating, that workout is too long for me to do in an hour, I was not late starting today):
300 smooth free
3 x 100 75 free/25 kick
2 x 50 hard effort free (this was focus of set)
1 x 50 recovery
200 smooth free ...
and then I had to stop because it switched over to regular pool swim and I just needed to go anyway. Would have been 2 x 100 IM, 2 x 50 hard effort stroke, 50 recovery, then 100 smooth free, 100 IM, 2 x 50 hard effort free, 1 x 50 recovery.
So: 2100, not bad. I guess that's what I can swim in an hour, with rest...
I actually did the first 300 pretty hard effort, it is not really to my credit but the fellow on the other side of the lane line started at the same time as me and we were neck and neck the whole time! Enjoyable race-like feeling... maybe it was 5:35 or 5:40? Forgot to look and register time at the end, I was catching my breath! (And a fast open turn really is pretty much the same speed as a flip turn...)
I really like digging in and working hard, I feel cheerful at the thought of finishing this manuscript this weekend and getting it out by the end of the day Monday, but the way I was feeling yesterday and today due to sleep deprivation was making it fairly impossible to execute the plan at desired intensity levels...
Intersection of Monday deadline, sleep problems and a family obligation Sunday has led me to do some drastic cutting/streamlining of the workout schedule in coming days. Now is the crunch, got to just get through it, no point worrying about shortfall from training plan. (Lack of sleep means body unlikely to absorb anything much in any case.) No bike before swimming today, because I need to do a couple more hours of work this evening and I couldn't spare either the late-afternoon work time or the later-night energy. And--this is a test for me, I must not always be skipping the bike!--I think I have to skip the projected eight-mile run Sunday, alas...
This seems to me best bet for the next five days in terms of meeting various commitments and maximizing work hours:
Saturday evening: 120 mins. bike plus 2-3 miles run off bike, but run only if it is not too late at night
Sunday: off (non-family hours desperately needed for book, cannot spare time for even the nicest run in the world...)
Monday: 8am workout with M. at gym; optional pm bike/run workout, but only if I can email the book manuscript out by 6pm or so, I need to switch over to reading and teaching prep for Tuesday by mid-evening Monday
Tuesday: swim
Wednesday: 4-6 miles daylight run, plus 120 mins. bike, but bike as higher priority
In other words, two real bike workouts plus one extra if I can fit it; one gym workout; one swim; a couple very short runs squeezed in as it seems possible.
All will be possible if I can get some hours of solid sleep tonight. A friend appealingly (glamorizingly, really it is less exciting!) described what I have been doing this winter as "fighting dragons," and with a large grain of salt it is indeed an apt notion. I sort of love the part where I am actually whacking the dragons with my sword. But I am not so keen on the 2am racing-thought situations where I consider for the fifty millionth time which dragons I might want to whack and which want to whack me, what I will do with them once I have whacked them into submission, etc.
Details of tonight's workout as follows...
Warmup: 3 x (100 swim, 50 drill, 100 swim) - I did 100 free, 50 hodgepodge drill stuff (some catchup, some thumbsies with evil salute, some double-arm back), 100 IM for all three
First set: 16 x 25 in sets of 5 plus one extra: choice, build, 12.5 sprint 12.5 easy, build, choice. Did each stroke in IM order over the three, then a final 25 of free.
Second set (which I only got through the first third-and-a-bit of, frustrating, that workout is too long for me to do in an hour, I was not late starting today):
300 smooth free
3 x 100 75 free/25 kick
2 x 50 hard effort free (this was focus of set)
1 x 50 recovery
200 smooth free ...
and then I had to stop because it switched over to regular pool swim and I just needed to go anyway. Would have been 2 x 100 IM, 2 x 50 hard effort stroke, 50 recovery, then 100 smooth free, 100 IM, 2 x 50 hard effort free, 1 x 50 recovery.
So: 2100, not bad. I guess that's what I can swim in an hour, with rest...
I actually did the first 300 pretty hard effort, it is not really to my credit but the fellow on the other side of the lane line started at the same time as me and we were neck and neck the whole time! Enjoyable race-like feeling... maybe it was 5:35 or 5:40? Forgot to look and register time at the end, I was catching my breath! (And a fast open turn really is pretty much the same speed as a flip turn...)
Thursday, February 14, 2008
"Her coat is called oyster brindle"
Because the Westminster Dog Show is reported in the Times under the heading "Other Sports," we will allow further coverage on a fitness-oriented blog...
Dog hairstyles. Slideshow particularly recommended...
Dog hairstyles. Slideshow particularly recommended...
Blissful Thursday run-swim
Quiet day at home of book work, then a really super-enjoyable run and a swim. The swim was perfect, I loved it--the run was good too, very nice afternoon for it, but my legs were a bit tired...
(I was idly thinking that I must have done a good job with last night's bike-run workout--and then I was, like, oh, wait a minute, it is only Thursday and I did run a half-marathon on Sunday, it is not really surprising that my thigh muscles are feeling on the tired side...)
It was a good day to bring my camera with me and take a few shots of most scenic bits along the usual Riverside Park run, and indeed I did exactly that--only I am too ravenously hungry to deal with them now, I will save them for a day when I've got nothing else to post about! These double workouts are a strain on my refrigerator's ability to provide me with suitable things to eat, I think I must go out and find a real dinner somewhere that is not swarming with Valentiners...
Due to camera handling distractions I accidentally stopped my watch halfway through the run: in any case I still have not gotten around to recalibrating distances!
Part 1: 22:56, 2.448 miles, avg HR 143, avg pace 9:22. Part II: 25:06, 2.753 miles, avg HR 150, avg pace 9:05.
I want to start doing my runs faster, I have been pretty tranquil about doing all lowish-HR running but I think it's time to speed up a bit!
Then an absolutely lovely swim. My freestyle felt great, and in fact the backstroke felt very nice too today, I suppose it is the reward for slogging through quite a bit of it on Tuesday with very low morale. Today it was very dancey, it really is out of all the strokes the most like doing a waltz (not that I really know how to do a waltz--but I know how the music goes!)--I was very vividly thinking of my late lamented swimming teacher Doug Stern waltzing around on deck as he tried to get us to imagine the proper rhythm of the freestyle kick...
Warmup: 700 (200 free, 200 drill-swim back/breast by 50, 100 free "4-3-2-1 catchup by 25" [i.e. four strokes on each side on first 25, then three, etc.], 100 drill IM, 50 free, 50 back)
First set: 20 x 25 (1 underwater, 3 swim free) on :40, :35, :30, :25
(Got a bit mixed-up on times on a couple of these, one of the pace clocks wasn't working and it was also a mental challenge to really keep track, but by the last couple I was good... can't yet swim more than half the length underwater, though!)
Second set (it was a 5-4-3-2-1, but I only had time for 5 and 4--it was lovely, though--so the bits I missed [I have stolen the sheet with the workout printed on it, I would not be able to remember this part!] were 3 x 150 kick-drill-swim free, back, breast, 2 x 200 free, 1 x 300 IM, and then one more set of 6 x 75 with a mix of freestyle drill and swim--I would need it to be an hour and a half in order to get through that whole workout...): 5 x 100 free on 2:00, 4 x 125 IM (with the extra 25 coming on each stroke in IM order, i.e. start with 50 fly, 25 back etc. and so forth--don't know what my times were on these...)
So here's the thing that put me in such a super-good mood, I was imagining I would really have to swim the 100s of free on 2:10, a couple weeks ago I was definitely swimming 1:55ish. But I guess I just got mental focus and kind of regained swimming energy and fitness over the last few weeks of regular workouts--I did my first one and it was a definite 1:45, hard work but sustainable, and I did all five properly on 2:00 and came in 1:44-46 on all of 'em.
Oh, I must start practicing those wretched flip turns, the open turn is so slow in comparison, I would be able to take off a number of seconds if I could just do a proper flip turn without oxygen debt and without veering off into the lane line! All right, there's a goal...
So--2200 yards? Very respectable.
Now to refuel...
(I was idly thinking that I must have done a good job with last night's bike-run workout--and then I was, like, oh, wait a minute, it is only Thursday and I did run a half-marathon on Sunday, it is not really surprising that my thigh muscles are feeling on the tired side...)
It was a good day to bring my camera with me and take a few shots of most scenic bits along the usual Riverside Park run, and indeed I did exactly that--only I am too ravenously hungry to deal with them now, I will save them for a day when I've got nothing else to post about! These double workouts are a strain on my refrigerator's ability to provide me with suitable things to eat, I think I must go out and find a real dinner somewhere that is not swarming with Valentiners...
Due to camera handling distractions I accidentally stopped my watch halfway through the run: in any case I still have not gotten around to recalibrating distances!
Part 1: 22:56, 2.448 miles, avg HR 143, avg pace 9:22. Part II: 25:06, 2.753 miles, avg HR 150, avg pace 9:05.
I want to start doing my runs faster, I have been pretty tranquil about doing all lowish-HR running but I think it's time to speed up a bit!
Then an absolutely lovely swim. My freestyle felt great, and in fact the backstroke felt very nice too today, I suppose it is the reward for slogging through quite a bit of it on Tuesday with very low morale. Today it was very dancey, it really is out of all the strokes the most like doing a waltz (not that I really know how to do a waltz--but I know how the music goes!)--I was very vividly thinking of my late lamented swimming teacher Doug Stern waltzing around on deck as he tried to get us to imagine the proper rhythm of the freestyle kick...
Warmup: 700 (200 free, 200 drill-swim back/breast by 50, 100 free "4-3-2-1 catchup by 25" [i.e. four strokes on each side on first 25, then three, etc.], 100 drill IM, 50 free, 50 back)
First set: 20 x 25 (1 underwater, 3 swim free) on :40, :35, :30, :25
(Got a bit mixed-up on times on a couple of these, one of the pace clocks wasn't working and it was also a mental challenge to really keep track, but by the last couple I was good... can't yet swim more than half the length underwater, though!)
Second set (it was a 5-4-3-2-1, but I only had time for 5 and 4--it was lovely, though--so the bits I missed [I have stolen the sheet with the workout printed on it, I would not be able to remember this part!] were 3 x 150 kick-drill-swim free, back, breast, 2 x 200 free, 1 x 300 IM, and then one more set of 6 x 75 with a mix of freestyle drill and swim--I would need it to be an hour and a half in order to get through that whole workout...): 5 x 100 free on 2:00, 4 x 125 IM (with the extra 25 coming on each stroke in IM order, i.e. start with 50 fly, 25 back etc. and so forth--don't know what my times were on these...)
So here's the thing that put me in such a super-good mood, I was imagining I would really have to swim the 100s of free on 2:10, a couple weeks ago I was definitely swimming 1:55ish. But I guess I just got mental focus and kind of regained swimming energy and fitness over the last few weeks of regular workouts--I did my first one and it was a definite 1:45, hard work but sustainable, and I did all five properly on 2:00 and came in 1:44-46 on all of 'em.
Oh, I must start practicing those wretched flip turns, the open turn is so slow in comparison, I would be able to take off a number of seconds if I could just do a proper flip turn without oxygen debt and without veering off into the lane line! All right, there's a goal...
So--2200 yards? Very respectable.
Now to refuel...
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Wednesday bike-run
OK, that was great, I had a really good workout just now...
(I actually felt like I might be able to become a totally competent triathlete...)
(Slept more than adequately though not perhaps enough last night, had a big lunch once I was done with teaching and office hours and then slept again for a couple hours in the afternoon--I'm so knackered by the time I get home on Wednesdays that there is no other option than total crash. A bit groggy when I woke up, but clearly conditions were subsequently right for exercise. Interesting. In my work life I am used to totally disregarding the problem of rest!)
Another round of Spinervals 5.0, that is a great workout. Looking forward to trying one of the longer ones this weekend!
And then I went out and just did two miles only of running. It does not seem to me sensible to do more than that in the winter after dark, too crazy, but it's very easy to go downstairs (hmmm, not really a run-straight-off-the-bike brick, it was probably about ten minutes between getting off the bike and actually starting running, but it's still good) and run along the sidewalk at the edge of the park down to 96th St. and back. I believe the advice about trying to run often off the bike--good mental practice as well as physical, I think. Leg muscles certainly rather odd for first half mile, but good after that (there's a nice downhill that warmed me up properly in mile .5 to 1.0--then of course good going back up the hill for the first half of the second mile!).
I will do some further tweaking of the projected training schedule, this week has been rather illuminating to me as to what will and won't work. On the other hand--implausibly, I do not usually travel that much!--I have three trips in the next four weeks, so it will all be a bit of a mess. Main thing is to stay calm and keep training!
(It was strongly present to me as I did the bike workout this evening that if I do four hours a week of trainer riding plus a couple outdoor rides each week once the weather is better, and make sure that my long ride is a proper one on the hills of Central Park, there is every reason that I will have an enjoyable race in May. I do not have really any experience on the bike, this is a pity, but I am very consistent in my training and that will potentially make up for it. Had a reassuring exchange with one of the other swimmers on Friday where she said that for her first half-iron-distance triathlon she had literally never run more than eight miles, she had had a knee injury that made her limit long runs--that is more daunting, I would say, than figuring I will just have to go rather slowly and steadily on the bike...)
Cycling: 1:25:22 (avg HR 135, max 157)
Running: 20:38 (avg HR 152, max 161), 2 miles
(I actually felt like I might be able to become a totally competent triathlete...)
(Slept more than adequately though not perhaps enough last night, had a big lunch once I was done with teaching and office hours and then slept again for a couple hours in the afternoon--I'm so knackered by the time I get home on Wednesdays that there is no other option than total crash. A bit groggy when I woke up, but clearly conditions were subsequently right for exercise. Interesting. In my work life I am used to totally disregarding the problem of rest!)
Another round of Spinervals 5.0, that is a great workout. Looking forward to trying one of the longer ones this weekend!
And then I went out and just did two miles only of running. It does not seem to me sensible to do more than that in the winter after dark, too crazy, but it's very easy to go downstairs (hmmm, not really a run-straight-off-the-bike brick, it was probably about ten minutes between getting off the bike and actually starting running, but it's still good) and run along the sidewalk at the edge of the park down to 96th St. and back. I believe the advice about trying to run often off the bike--good mental practice as well as physical, I think. Leg muscles certainly rather odd for first half mile, but good after that (there's a nice downhill that warmed me up properly in mile .5 to 1.0--then of course good going back up the hill for the first half of the second mile!).
I will do some further tweaking of the projected training schedule, this week has been rather illuminating to me as to what will and won't work. On the other hand--implausibly, I do not usually travel that much!--I have three trips in the next four weeks, so it will all be a bit of a mess. Main thing is to stay calm and keep training!
(It was strongly present to me as I did the bike workout this evening that if I do four hours a week of trainer riding plus a couple outdoor rides each week once the weather is better, and make sure that my long ride is a proper one on the hills of Central Park, there is every reason that I will have an enjoyable race in May. I do not have really any experience on the bike, this is a pity, but I am very consistent in my training and that will potentially make up for it. Had a reassuring exchange with one of the other swimmers on Friday where she said that for her first half-iron-distance triathlon she had literally never run more than eight miles, she had had a knee injury that made her limit long runs--that is more daunting, I would say, than figuring I will just have to go rather slowly and steadily on the bike...)
Cycling: 1:25:22 (avg HR 135, max 157)
Running: 20:38 (avg HR 152, max 161), 2 miles
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Taking comfort
where I find it, I will note that this week is the Westminster Dog Show, and there is some very funny coverage at the Times! The Clydesdales of the dog world, as it were (some suspect grammatical usage there--"laying"? "girthiest"?!?). Not triathlon-related, but appealing in any case...
Tuesday swimming
Hmmm, and I am smitten with guilt, I got home too late to do even half an hour on the bike--I spent the first ten minutes of swimming (very wintry mix out there tonight, took twice as long as usual to get over there, so that annoyingly I only had time for a very short warmup!) thinking I should really have stayed at home and done an hour of cycling instead.
(No run either, arghhh, bad time management and organization on my part--hmmm, have just deleted much longer spell of self-reproach, it is not edifying. Will hope to get back on track tomorrow.)
Not a bad swim, but not blissful. Really the good ones for me involve my excessive and restless thinking finally sort of temporarily shutting off and letting me concentrate on the workout, this was not one of those, I was having a sequence of minor and not very interesting insights that would not stop, arghhh! I do not know, either, that I can quite reconstruct the details of what I did, I never quite mentally grasped it in the first place (there was one too few copies for each lane to have one, I was not able to ponder it and let it sink in) and my mind was racing around too much on other questions...
Warmup: 1 x (25 breast 50 back 75 freestyle catchup 100 IM? I am completely making up details, I cannot remember at all--should have been 3 x but as I say I was late... call it 250 of non-wintry mix)
First set (which I did not even have time to finish):
8 x 50 (even free, odd back)
6 x 100 (50 breast, 50 free no kick--took me 2:05, did it on 2:20)
4 x 150 IM drill-stroke by 25
(Corrected--couldn't remember at first--this I think is right though, and the last bit of the set would have been 2 x 200 free, that makes sense now, I am sorry I did not have time to do it though.)
I guess I did 1800 or 2000, something like that. Or maybe there was no something else and it was only 1650. [Ed. No, it was 1850, that's right.] I felt very, very slow.
Pointless insights:
1. I am so tired by the end of the day on Tuesdays this semester that I cannot expect to have a great swim.
2. I need to get there on time, because the bad thing today was that it was a bit more crowded than usual, though we were still able to split lanes, and I ended up splitting with a considerably faster fellow in a middle lane. Obviously bad to get used to any one spot, good to shake it up, but I really like having a nice quiet berth in one of the two slowest lanes, whereas in this spot I was surrounded on all sides by considerably faster swimmers, very bad for my morale...
3. I like the actual backstroke, but I slow down almost to a standstill as I feel around with my hand for the wall, and then it takes me forever to get myself reoriented in the other direction! This must be a target for improvement, even though in substantive respects there are more pressing things to work on (flip turns, breathing, freestyle technique more generally), because it makes my backstroke times also incredibly bad for my morale...
There were others, but that is quite enough, really. In sum: more than tolerable, by the end my backstroke felt pretty decent, but this day has gone on too long already!
(No run either, arghhh, bad time management and organization on my part--hmmm, have just deleted much longer spell of self-reproach, it is not edifying. Will hope to get back on track tomorrow.)
Not a bad swim, but not blissful. Really the good ones for me involve my excessive and restless thinking finally sort of temporarily shutting off and letting me concentrate on the workout, this was not one of those, I was having a sequence of minor and not very interesting insights that would not stop, arghhh! I do not know, either, that I can quite reconstruct the details of what I did, I never quite mentally grasped it in the first place (there was one too few copies for each lane to have one, I was not able to ponder it and let it sink in) and my mind was racing around too much on other questions...
Warmup: 1 x (25 breast 50 back 75 freestyle catchup 100 IM? I am completely making up details, I cannot remember at all--should have been 3 x but as I say I was late... call it 250 of non-wintry mix)
First set (which I did not even have time to finish):
8 x 50 (even free, odd back)
6 x 100 (50 breast, 50 free no kick--took me 2:05, did it on 2:20)
4 x 150 IM drill-stroke by 25
(Corrected--couldn't remember at first--this I think is right though, and the last bit of the set would have been 2 x 200 free, that makes sense now, I am sorry I did not have time to do it though.)
I guess I did 1800 or 2000, something like that. Or maybe there was no something else and it was only 1650. [Ed. No, it was 1850, that's right.] I felt very, very slow.
Pointless insights:
1. I am so tired by the end of the day on Tuesdays this semester that I cannot expect to have a great swim.
2. I need to get there on time, because the bad thing today was that it was a bit more crowded than usual, though we were still able to split lanes, and I ended up splitting with a considerably faster fellow in a middle lane. Obviously bad to get used to any one spot, good to shake it up, but I really like having a nice quiet berth in one of the two slowest lanes, whereas in this spot I was surrounded on all sides by considerably faster swimmers, very bad for my morale...
3. I like the actual backstroke, but I slow down almost to a standstill as I feel around with my hand for the wall, and then it takes me forever to get myself reoriented in the other direction! This must be a target for improvement, even though in substantive respects there are more pressing things to work on (flip turns, breathing, freestyle technique more generally), because it makes my backstroke times also incredibly bad for my morale...
There were others, but that is quite enough, really. In sum: more than tolerable, by the end my backstroke felt pretty decent, but this day has gone on too long already!
Accountability
Hmmm, I think I can use the blog for better accountability on this slightly intractable cycling stuff...
Skipped last night's projected bike workout for perfectly sensible reasons having to do with work, fueling and tiredness. (I got up at 4:30 to work on my book, I have to face the fact that I do not get a good stint of evening time when I've started so early!) But skipping bike workouts is exactly what I do not need to do---and it's a funny thing, somehow I never quite seem to need to skip a run or a swim for the same sort of reasons!
(Partly it really is that the fact of being able to do it at home makes it get later and later--this should get less problematic once I'm (a) riding outside and (b) more in the swing of things.)
Schedule for today has 30 min. run on gym track and swim at 6, sort of 5:15-7:00-type slot, but I'll see if I can't get home and have a quick half hour on the bike instead of the run. It will depend on how promptly I can extricate myself from the office...
The truth of the matter: next two weeks very busy with work and life. Must just do the best I can fitting in these workouts, and then really properly get down to business as of the beginning of March. February is an excessively short month, I am trying to fit too many things into it!
Skipped last night's projected bike workout for perfectly sensible reasons having to do with work, fueling and tiredness. (I got up at 4:30 to work on my book, I have to face the fact that I do not get a good stint of evening time when I've started so early!) But skipping bike workouts is exactly what I do not need to do---and it's a funny thing, somehow I never quite seem to need to skip a run or a swim for the same sort of reasons!
(Partly it really is that the fact of being able to do it at home makes it get later and later--this should get less problematic once I'm (a) riding outside and (b) more in the swing of things.)
Schedule for today has 30 min. run on gym track and swim at 6, sort of 5:15-7:00-type slot, but I'll see if I can't get home and have a quick half hour on the bike instead of the run. It will depend on how promptly I can extricate myself from the office...
The truth of the matter: next two weeks very busy with work and life. Must just do the best I can fitting in these workouts, and then really properly get down to business as of the beginning of March. February is an excessively short month, I am trying to fit too many things into it!
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