Goodness, I have just had the most lovely swimming lesson: in fact it has been an extraordinarily decadent-feeling day, I have pretty much done nothing but exercise (with brief intervals of caffeination, refueling and internet time-wasting in between). Swimming lessons are particularly decadent because they are so expensive, it is an extraordinary luxury (in general I spend fairly unbelievable amounts of money these days on fitness-related things, my frugal soul is moderately outraged at my own extravagance, but the swimming lessons really are over the top--it is probably just as well that they will soon come to an end).
(I must get at least four hours of work in this evening, or else I am not in a good situation...)
We worked on lots of miscellaneous stuff: I did remember to ask about how to do that butterfly-kick-on-back-with-double-arm-back thing (we worked on it for a while, it's tough!). Almost all fly and breast, with some interesting drills--I think both the breast and the fly really are improving. An interesting breast drill that involves holding your left leg in your right hand behind your back (or the other way round) and just swimming with the other two limbs--after a couple lengths on each side of this, you go back to the full stroke and it works like magic....
And lots of good fly stuff, I had a couple lengths where it was absolutely magically amazing! I was really working on the short exit and letting the arms fly forward, and suddenly the stroke seemed to require virtually no effort (it is true that I was wearing big fins) and I was just flying down the pool, I loved it--these glimpses are a lovely thing, it does not need to be like that all the time but it gives you something to aim for...
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Saturday run
It is not worth making myself irritable wrestling with the watch-to-computer interface, I cannot get the exact data onto the computer this morning but we will say it was a very nice eight-mile run, around 9:30-9:40 pace...
One unfortunate thing about running is how long it takes to warm up, especially trying for lower-HR runs. The first four miles, I couldn't help thinking that really though I know it is slightly mentally pitiful I do prefer doing the 'long' run with company. It wasn't that I wasn't enjoying myself, it was reasonably enjoyable in some sense, but I just wasn't really in the flow of it. Then around the four-mile mark it all came good (though my hands were remarkably cold by that point, I forgot to wear gloves and was too lazy to go upstairs for 'em when I realized!), the second half was rather lovely.
It's pretty much exactly eight miles if I run down Riverside Drive to 106th St., then over to Central Park and around the full loop once, then back home. This is good, I should make this my mid-week run and then, when it's suitable based on schedule and training considerations, have a longer one on Saturday...
One unfortunate thing about running is how long it takes to warm up, especially trying for lower-HR runs. The first four miles, I couldn't help thinking that really though I know it is slightly mentally pitiful I do prefer doing the 'long' run with company. It wasn't that I wasn't enjoying myself, it was reasonably enjoyable in some sense, but I just wasn't really in the flow of it. Then around the four-mile mark it all came good (though my hands were remarkably cold by that point, I forgot to wear gloves and was too lazy to go upstairs for 'em when I realized!), the second half was rather lovely.
It's pretty much exactly eight miles if I run down Riverside Drive to 106th St., then over to Central Park and around the full loop once, then back home. This is good, I should make this my mid-week run and then, when it's suitable based on schedule and training considerations, have a longer one on Saturday...
Friday, November 23, 2007
Postscript
Because I am a literal-minded and determined person, but also have fairly scrupulous leanings, I am clarifying the nature of the 30 in 30 bike commitment. I really am going to do it barring unforeseen calamity (the first day is 11/25), and in a worst-case scenario where I miss a few I will do two bike workouts each day between the 21st and the 24th. But it will be better if I can do one a day...
Upcoming training schedule
The holiday season is a trying thing for the aspirational triathlete! There are various kinds of uncertainty and pool closing issues that make it very difficult to lay out a clear plan.
The week of 11/26 is probably the single busiest week of my entire year, I am looking at my appointment book in utter horror and dismay (three rehearsals in midtown for this performance art project I've gotten in on, midtown lunch with editor and marketing people, two lectures to attend and a two-day conference on Friday and Saturday in which I am a participant and for which I learned only a week ago that I will need to write some kind of a "lecture" as opposed to just serving as respondent, plus the usual teaching and exercise stuff...). The next three weeks in general are just more complicated than usual due to various end-of-semester things.
So: priorities.
This is going to be slightly half-assed, but I'm pulling back a bit on running and trying to have six weeks where I concentrate on gym workouts (extra sessions with M.), some high-intensity interval stuff and super-scrupulous eating for weight loss if possible but at any rate body composition improvement. I have a lot of muscles already, to tell the truth, but there is always need for more muscle! Holidays will make things difficult, but on the other hand for that reason alone it's a sensible time to have a stricter than usual set of rules.
(But I will eat a cookie here and there, I think...)
I am also going to have, starting on Sunday, a "30 in 30" approach to the bike. Thirty workouts in thirty days, and I'm going to pull this off (if possible!) by setting the bar extremely low on what counts as a workout. Half an hour on the stationary bike at the gym or the bike trainer at home counts. There will only be one guaranteed long bike each week--most of the others will be short bike or bike-run combos--and in fact I am not really going to be doing great training bike-wise, because my schedule is horrendously impossible this next month or so.
I'm still leaving things relaxed for this weekend, recovery week spirit. Probably 7-8 miles slow run tomorrow morning, plus a swimming lesson in the afternoon; then a longish indoor bike on Sunday.
(Another minor complication is that the CU gym has good stationary bikes but the gym where I work out with M. has unusably ancient ones--I mean, they are technically usable, you can turn around the pedals--but they are several generations old and do not give anything like the workout the newer kind do. Not really worth using--so on these days I need to combine bike trainer at home with gym workout, even though it is psychologically and logistically worse not to have 'em happening in the same place--you know how it is, you get home from the gym & you've already been out for an hour and a half exercising and all you want is coffee and food and internet. Mental fortitude, though! I think this means I have to do the trainer ride FIRST, before I go to the gym for my personal training session with M. Will try that this week, anyway.)
Schedule for week of 11/26:
Mon. am: 30 min. bike trainer, PT; pm: swim.
Tues. am: swim; pm: CU gym for bike-run workout (30 min. bike, plus 30 min. fastish running on evil absolutely tiny little 1/10-mile indoor running track).
Wed. am: 30 min. bike trainer, PT.
Thurs. am: swim, 30 min. gym bike.
Fri.: 1 hr. easy bike trainer.
Sat.: am: bike-run (30 min. bike, 30 min. run); pm swim.
Sun.: 2 hr. steady bike trainer.
I will see how that goes before making a commitment for the following weeks, but this is going to be the shape of things (I hope) between now and Xmas, only with more running than I have time for this coming week. In theory I'm doing this indoor triathlon (10 mins. swim, 30 mins. bike, 20 mins. run) on 12/16, but I'm not planning on doing any tapering for it, more just using it to get a feel for things in a very unstressful indoor situation. (There are set transition periods, for instance, ten minutes between each to change and get set up for the next thing.)
I also can see already that I am just going to have to stay calm and flexible for the weeks between 12/22 and 1/2. The nearby pools are closed (though I should be able to fit in a couple swims at Riverbank), I will need to visit family for a couple days right at Xmas, I may need to attend a conference in Chicago between Xmas and New Year's (but won't know till the last minute) and may visit friends in South Carolina for a couple days over the New Year's holiday.
(Hmmm, the redeeming feature of a possible Chicago trip would be if I found a hotel with a swimming pool, this is a consolatory notion--suddenly I feel slightly more optimistic about things...)
The week of 11/26 is probably the single busiest week of my entire year, I am looking at my appointment book in utter horror and dismay (three rehearsals in midtown for this performance art project I've gotten in on, midtown lunch with editor and marketing people, two lectures to attend and a two-day conference on Friday and Saturday in which I am a participant and for which I learned only a week ago that I will need to write some kind of a "lecture" as opposed to just serving as respondent, plus the usual teaching and exercise stuff...). The next three weeks in general are just more complicated than usual due to various end-of-semester things.
So: priorities.
This is going to be slightly half-assed, but I'm pulling back a bit on running and trying to have six weeks where I concentrate on gym workouts (extra sessions with M.), some high-intensity interval stuff and super-scrupulous eating for weight loss if possible but at any rate body composition improvement. I have a lot of muscles already, to tell the truth, but there is always need for more muscle! Holidays will make things difficult, but on the other hand for that reason alone it's a sensible time to have a stricter than usual set of rules.
(But I will eat a cookie here and there, I think...)
I am also going to have, starting on Sunday, a "30 in 30" approach to the bike. Thirty workouts in thirty days, and I'm going to pull this off (if possible!) by setting the bar extremely low on what counts as a workout. Half an hour on the stationary bike at the gym or the bike trainer at home counts. There will only be one guaranteed long bike each week--most of the others will be short bike or bike-run combos--and in fact I am not really going to be doing great training bike-wise, because my schedule is horrendously impossible this next month or so.
I'm still leaving things relaxed for this weekend, recovery week spirit. Probably 7-8 miles slow run tomorrow morning, plus a swimming lesson in the afternoon; then a longish indoor bike on Sunday.
(Another minor complication is that the CU gym has good stationary bikes but the gym where I work out with M. has unusably ancient ones--I mean, they are technically usable, you can turn around the pedals--but they are several generations old and do not give anything like the workout the newer kind do. Not really worth using--so on these days I need to combine bike trainer at home with gym workout, even though it is psychologically and logistically worse not to have 'em happening in the same place--you know how it is, you get home from the gym & you've already been out for an hour and a half exercising and all you want is coffee and food and internet. Mental fortitude, though! I think this means I have to do the trainer ride FIRST, before I go to the gym for my personal training session with M. Will try that this week, anyway.)
Schedule for week of 11/26:
Mon. am: 30 min. bike trainer, PT; pm: swim.
Tues. am: swim; pm: CU gym for bike-run workout (30 min. bike, plus 30 min. fastish running on evil absolutely tiny little 1/10-mile indoor running track).
Wed. am: 30 min. bike trainer, PT.
Thurs. am: swim, 30 min. gym bike.
Fri.: 1 hr. easy bike trainer.
Sat.: am: bike-run (30 min. bike, 30 min. run); pm swim.
Sun.: 2 hr. steady bike trainer.
I will see how that goes before making a commitment for the following weeks, but this is going to be the shape of things (I hope) between now and Xmas, only with more running than I have time for this coming week. In theory I'm doing this indoor triathlon (10 mins. swim, 30 mins. bike, 20 mins. run) on 12/16, but I'm not planning on doing any tapering for it, more just using it to get a feel for things in a very unstressful indoor situation. (There are set transition periods, for instance, ten minutes between each to change and get set up for the next thing.)
I also can see already that I am just going to have to stay calm and flexible for the weeks between 12/22 and 1/2. The nearby pools are closed (though I should be able to fit in a couple swims at Riverbank), I will need to visit family for a couple days right at Xmas, I may need to attend a conference in Chicago between Xmas and New Year's (but won't know till the last minute) and may visit friends in South Carolina for a couple days over the New Year's holiday.
(Hmmm, the redeeming feature of a possible Chicago trip would be if I found a hotel with a swimming pool, this is a consolatory notion--suddenly I feel slightly more optimistic about things...)
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Thursday run
It is sixty degrees and sunny--that's crazy...--and I just had a nice quiet run in Riverside Park. Everyone is very smiley because of the holiday...
A recovery week run. Quiet and slow! As I came to the four-mile point I felt strikingly warmed up and fluid and ready to really run, it is a pity it takes so long: but I had a nice little surge up the hill on the outside of the park above 96th St., and I ran faster for the last bit also, it was too enjoyable to miss.
(Stress fracture area rather sore still from the race--I didn't really notice while I was running on Sunday, but it was definitely--I won't say painful--but I was feeling it quite a bit the couple days following. It was definitely affecting my gait. I'll just make sure to take it easy for the next week or so still with the running, I think it is a muscle thing rather than an actual problem with the bone.)
5.16 miles, average pace 10:31, average HR 143 (I was trying to keep it really low, but it didn't quite happen)
10:55 (133), 10:57 (143), 10:46 (141), 10:23 (143), 10:06 (151)
But the higher HR on the last is because by lap end my pace was 8:41; for the last .16, I've got 8:00 pace and HR165.
Over the weekend I've got to think about the next sequence of training weeks--I've got some ideas... I want some HIIT-type stuff for weight-loss benefits but I think it will be more prudent not to have it running-related, not even treadmill running, it is too likely to contribute to injury; but actually the bike trainer should be a good way of doing some stuff like that. Must ponder...
A recovery week run. Quiet and slow! As I came to the four-mile point I felt strikingly warmed up and fluid and ready to really run, it is a pity it takes so long: but I had a nice little surge up the hill on the outside of the park above 96th St., and I ran faster for the last bit also, it was too enjoyable to miss.
(Stress fracture area rather sore still from the race--I didn't really notice while I was running on Sunday, but it was definitely--I won't say painful--but I was feeling it quite a bit the couple days following. It was definitely affecting my gait. I'll just make sure to take it easy for the next week or so still with the running, I think it is a muscle thing rather than an actual problem with the bone.)
5.16 miles, average pace 10:31, average HR 143 (I was trying to keep it really low, but it didn't quite happen)
10:55 (133), 10:57 (143), 10:46 (141), 10:23 (143), 10:06 (151)
But the higher HR on the last is because by lap end my pace was 8:41; for the last .16, I've got 8:00 pace and HR165.
Over the weekend I've got to think about the next sequence of training weeks--I've got some ideas... I want some HIIT-type stuff for weight-loss benefits but I think it will be more prudent not to have it running-related, not even treadmill running, it is too likely to contribute to injury; but actually the bike trainer should be a good way of doing some stuff like that. Must ponder...
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Wednesday gym session
I had the most enjoyable workout this morning with M. at the gym--usually I am sort of insanely foaming at the mouth and wanting to work fiendishly hard--but today I really did feel lazy and we had a wonderful recovery-week workout of the lightest and most delicate kind, like having broth and toast and grapes in an invalid-type situation! I broke out a light sweat, but nothing crazy--just a nice quiet traditional full-body workout of a most pleasant sort.
(But I am glad we're starting up like crazy again on Monday! I'm going to switch from just once to twice a week for the next three weeks, starting on Monday, and then once I'm done teaching for the semester and the schedule opens up a bit I will have three sessions a week just for three or four weeks--do lots of pushups and stuff... I have not entirely abandoned my long-term goal of trying to get to where I can do three or four unassisted pullups, for instance--but I am far from it at this point--it is not really where my imagination really drives me, in any case--but it would be cool, eh?!?)
(But I am glad we're starting up like crazy again on Monday! I'm going to switch from just once to twice a week for the next three weeks, starting on Monday, and then once I'm done teaching for the semester and the schedule opens up a bit I will have three sessions a week just for three or four weeks--do lots of pushups and stuff... I have not entirely abandoned my long-term goal of trying to get to where I can do three or four unassisted pullups, for instance--but I am far from it at this point--it is not really where my imagination really drives me, in any case--but it would be cool, eh?!?)
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Tuesday swim
A good swim physiologically, so to speak (there must be some better way of saying that!), but it unfortunately awakened my inner grumbling striving voice--WHICH I may say is a voice that gives me great inconvenience, on the whole I think it is for the best that I have such a thing and yet it would be even better if I could shut it off at will!
Locker-room consensus: better-than-average Tuesday am workout.
(They are all 'canned,' so to speak, just hung off the thing at the end of the lane--the block?!? Is that what it's called? I feel ludicrous using swimming expert-knowledge vocabulary that really is beyond my grasp...--in ingenious little plastic sleeves with strings. This means there is really no coaching/intervention in the lanes...)
My usual lanemates were not there, so I was swimming with the real lane seven people, with mixed results. The workout (approximately--I can't remember all the intervals):
warmup around 400 yards I suppose, mostly free but I did 4-5 lengths of fly also, very enjoyable, and some kick...
8 x 75: evens fly back kick-free-free, odds free with 7-5-3 breathing (on 25s)
8 x 25: uneven sprint descending (on :40): 1/2 easy 1/2 hard, 1/2 hard 1/2 easy, hard, easy
3 x 75 free on 1:30
3 x 50 choice descending on 1:00
2 x 200 free on 3:30
3 x 50 choice descending on 1:00
3 x 75 free
Then a set we only had time for part of, 25-25-50-50 (and so forth, but we didn't get to 'em) kick-swim.
But here's the thing. These women are better swimmers than I, but also their priorities are different. It is inevitable that my free is much, much better and faster than my other strokes--I handle this by working really hard during the other stroke bits and by skipping repeats when necessary (I skipped one of the 75s at the beginning because I had used up a vast amount of energy trying to sort out the fly back kick--I still did not get the timing right, my double-arm back strokes were actively at odds with my dolphin kick...--and I skipped the third repeat on each of the choice 50s, I am just too slow to keep up properly). Really I am better off swimming with my usual lanemates, but it's not inappropriate for me to swim in real lane 7, my free pace is just fine.
However it is very striking: partly because they're all good comfortable swimmers, what they do is ignore the intervals, take no rest, and just swim everything at a comfortable pace. So for instance the sprint 25s were supposed to be on :40 (and I am thinking I do understand the intervals for the free, though the other intervals are just not relevant for me yet, I cannot repeat 50 back on 1:00 for instance, I can't even really quite make that time the first go round...). This means REST. And I understand the point of a mini-set like that is to take the rest. But instead we're just swimming down and back, not really taking any rest (say more like on :25-30), so the sprints are not really sprint... And then the pace for the 200s was quite leisurely, where really you want to do 'em hard and then take the rest, I would have swum those a lot harder left to my own devices!
Arghhh... it was making me slightly crazy though as I say I was physiologically enjoying my swim, hands still all nice and pawlike...
I need to check out that Masters swim at CU--what I want is a really consistent coached workout that will really push me to get better. This is fine for now, and the Thursday morning workout is great, but it is not exactly what I need...
Also: I am still not doing flip turns on warmup let alone main sets. I do need to work on this, but I am making an executive decision that a higher priority for now is to practice bilateral breathing. I never do it except on these assigned sets with breathing constraints--it's a bit better than it was at first, but I still have a super-strong preference for breathing on the right side that will not serve me well when I start to do what I most want to do in the world, that lovely thing called a sea swim...
Locker-room consensus: better-than-average Tuesday am workout.
(They are all 'canned,' so to speak, just hung off the thing at the end of the lane--the block?!? Is that what it's called? I feel ludicrous using swimming expert-knowledge vocabulary that really is beyond my grasp...--in ingenious little plastic sleeves with strings. This means there is really no coaching/intervention in the lanes...)
My usual lanemates were not there, so I was swimming with the real lane seven people, with mixed results. The workout (approximately--I can't remember all the intervals):
warmup around 400 yards I suppose, mostly free but I did 4-5 lengths of fly also, very enjoyable, and some kick...
8 x 75: evens fly back kick-free-free, odds free with 7-5-3 breathing (on 25s)
8 x 25: uneven sprint descending (on :40): 1/2 easy 1/2 hard, 1/2 hard 1/2 easy, hard, easy
3 x 75 free on 1:30
3 x 50 choice descending on 1:00
2 x 200 free on 3:30
3 x 50 choice descending on 1:00
3 x 75 free
Then a set we only had time for part of, 25-25-50-50 (and so forth, but we didn't get to 'em) kick-swim.
But here's the thing. These women are better swimmers than I, but also their priorities are different. It is inevitable that my free is much, much better and faster than my other strokes--I handle this by working really hard during the other stroke bits and by skipping repeats when necessary (I skipped one of the 75s at the beginning because I had used up a vast amount of energy trying to sort out the fly back kick--I still did not get the timing right, my double-arm back strokes were actively at odds with my dolphin kick...--and I skipped the third repeat on each of the choice 50s, I am just too slow to keep up properly). Really I am better off swimming with my usual lanemates, but it's not inappropriate for me to swim in real lane 7, my free pace is just fine.
However it is very striking: partly because they're all good comfortable swimmers, what they do is ignore the intervals, take no rest, and just swim everything at a comfortable pace. So for instance the sprint 25s were supposed to be on :40 (and I am thinking I do understand the intervals for the free, though the other intervals are just not relevant for me yet, I cannot repeat 50 back on 1:00 for instance, I can't even really quite make that time the first go round...). This means REST. And I understand the point of a mini-set like that is to take the rest. But instead we're just swimming down and back, not really taking any rest (say more like on :25-30), so the sprints are not really sprint... And then the pace for the 200s was quite leisurely, where really you want to do 'em hard and then take the rest, I would have swum those a lot harder left to my own devices!
Arghhh... it was making me slightly crazy though as I say I was physiologically enjoying my swim, hands still all nice and pawlike...
I need to check out that Masters swim at CU--what I want is a really consistent coached workout that will really push me to get better. This is fine for now, and the Thursday morning workout is great, but it is not exactly what I need...
Also: I am still not doing flip turns on warmup let alone main sets. I do need to work on this, but I am making an executive decision that a higher priority for now is to practice bilateral breathing. I never do it except on these assigned sets with breathing constraints--it's a bit better than it was at first, but I still have a super-strong preference for breathing on the right side that will not serve me well when I start to do what I most want to do in the world, that lovely thing called a sea swim...
Monday, November 19, 2007
Monday night swimming
We got started kind of late, so it was much more technique stuff than main set, not really worth transcribing in detail even if I were mentally capable at this point of reconstructing it! I was knackered--but strange to say it was the most miraculously good swimming evening technique-wise, my hands felt like huge lovely bear paws and I felt like I was having amazing reach & body rotation and stuff, don't know what was up with that. Everyone was, like, "You're flying!"
Anyway, we did 2 sets of 3 x 100 descending, with ten-twenty seconds rest, to get a time to hold--I was starting at 1:45 and got down I suppose to 1:40 (getting a bit of extra rest, though)--then we did 3 more hundreds with a lot of rest, like on 2:30, trying to hold the fastest pace. Really it's a pace exercise, I am not sure I quite got it: but the first one was 1:40 and it felt pretty OK, and then I was worried that my times would slip because I was not wanting to swim more (the times really do slide when you're doing these without so much rest, last time I tried I could not hold 1:45 on a 1:50 interval) & so I worked a little harder for 2 and 3. The second was 1:38, and the third was 1:36--that's crazy, that extra rest makes a huge difference...
I did some lengths of butterfly during the hanging-around not-quite-starting waiting period at the beginning, it seems good. I am regretfully deciding that I will not sign on for the next Monday-night series after this one's done. We've got five more workouts in this session, and it's great for technique and fitness, no doubt--but it's extremely expensive compared to various other options, and I'm also not crazy about a workout that gets me home only at 10 at night on Monday. If I got to bed earlier on Monday, I would be more likely able to make it to the Friday-morning workout at CU which does not cost me any extra money since I'm already paying for it. (Spring semester schedule different in various ways that may make it easier to get more sleep during the week--actually who am I kidding, I always think this and it never is true!?! But I am only teaching on Tuesday and Wednesday, so really it is possible...)
Anyway, I'll leave it for January and February, and then go back in March if I find freestyle technique and/or fitness sliding with just the other. (I will need to find some more skills-and-drills-type workout in any case.) The Monday night sessions are just feeling very depopulated, that's the other fact of the matter--a couple of the faster swimmers are still hanging in, but all the medium-fast ones are gone now. I am not sure if this is seasonal or if they are migrating elsewhere--I think possibly the latter, though. And it is definitely not as interesting swimming only free! Oh, I must check out the CU master's swimming before Xmas and see whether it's worth getting in on--it's some very modest amount of money like maybe $100 for the whole semester so even if I only went once a week it would rather be worth it if it's any good...
Anyway, we did 2 sets of 3 x 100 descending, with ten-twenty seconds rest, to get a time to hold--I was starting at 1:45 and got down I suppose to 1:40 (getting a bit of extra rest, though)--then we did 3 more hundreds with a lot of rest, like on 2:30, trying to hold the fastest pace. Really it's a pace exercise, I am not sure I quite got it: but the first one was 1:40 and it felt pretty OK, and then I was worried that my times would slip because I was not wanting to swim more (the times really do slide when you're doing these without so much rest, last time I tried I could not hold 1:45 on a 1:50 interval) & so I worked a little harder for 2 and 3. The second was 1:38, and the third was 1:36--that's crazy, that extra rest makes a huge difference...
I did some lengths of butterfly during the hanging-around not-quite-starting waiting period at the beginning, it seems good. I am regretfully deciding that I will not sign on for the next Monday-night series after this one's done. We've got five more workouts in this session, and it's great for technique and fitness, no doubt--but it's extremely expensive compared to various other options, and I'm also not crazy about a workout that gets me home only at 10 at night on Monday. If I got to bed earlier on Monday, I would be more likely able to make it to the Friday-morning workout at CU which does not cost me any extra money since I'm already paying for it. (Spring semester schedule different in various ways that may make it easier to get more sleep during the week--actually who am I kidding, I always think this and it never is true!?! But I am only teaching on Tuesday and Wednesday, so really it is possible...)
Anyway, I'll leave it for January and February, and then go back in March if I find freestyle technique and/or fitness sliding with just the other. (I will need to find some more skills-and-drills-type workout in any case.) The Monday night sessions are just feeling very depopulated, that's the other fact of the matter--a couple of the faster swimmers are still hanging in, but all the medium-fast ones are gone now. I am not sure if this is seasonal or if they are migrating elsewhere--I think possibly the latter, though. And it is definitely not as interesting swimming only free! Oh, I must check out the CU master's swimming before Xmas and see whether it's worth getting in on--it's some very modest amount of money like maybe $100 for the whole semester so even if I only went once a week it would rather be worth it if it's any good...
Middle-of-the-night thoughts on running
Well, I really did go to sleep around 8:30, I was knackered, only the trouble is I woke up quite thoroughly at 3 and cannot go back to sleep! Arghhh, it really is too early to get up, I could use another three hours of sleep or so--not to mention I do not have any milk in the house for coffee...
1. Don't worry, I'm not having self-discontent, but I am having a strong feeling that I could have run a bit faster today! Not astronomically faster, but I was holding back pretty hard through the whole middle six miles or so of the run--I could have relaxed into it a bit more, and I am pretty sure I could have sustained an 8:30 pace. Interesting--it will just take a while before I am a more experienced racer...
2. Philadelphia is going to be the ideal place for me to do my first marathon. There were noticeably fewer spectators this year than last, because of the earlier start time, and it is also a course that some people complain about because the spectators are concentrated so heavily in the first half of the race and then at the very end, but there's a long stretch in miles, oh, 13-20 that is very sparsely populated indeed. I like this. Spectators are nice, there were some funny ones (two very tiny kids for instance holding up hands for high-fives on the bridge leading up to Penn, they looked thrilled when I swiped 'em, it was hilarious!), but really I prefer to dig in and concentrate on what I'm doing without all the distraction...
1. Don't worry, I'm not having self-discontent, but I am having a strong feeling that I could have run a bit faster today! Not astronomically faster, but I was holding back pretty hard through the whole middle six miles or so of the run--I could have relaxed into it a bit more, and I am pretty sure I could have sustained an 8:30 pace. Interesting--it will just take a while before I am a more experienced racer...
2. Philadelphia is going to be the ideal place for me to do my first marathon. There were noticeably fewer spectators this year than last, because of the earlier start time, and it is also a course that some people complain about because the spectators are concentrated so heavily in the first half of the race and then at the very end, but there's a long stretch in miles, oh, 13-20 that is very sparsely populated indeed. I like this. Spectators are nice, there were some funny ones (two very tiny kids for instance holding up hands for high-fives on the bridge leading up to Penn, they looked thrilled when I swiped 'em, it was hilarious!), but really I prefer to dig in and concentrate on what I'm doing without all the distraction...
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Recovery week
Which is not exciting, but will be sensible & also fit in with the holiday and the fact that I have a strangely huge other set of things going on over the next few weeks--not really strange, I suppose, it's always like this around this time of year:
Monday pm John Jay swimming
Tuesday CU morning swim
Wednesday am gym workout with M., followed by 30-45 min. on bike trainer
Thursday am run 5 easy in Riverside Park (then to New Jersey for the holiday, just for the day fortunately)
Not sure yet about Friday-Saturday-Sunday: one run somewhere in there (but maybe a bike-run workout), at least one swim if I can drag myself up to Riverbank State Park which I believe is my only available option Fri.-Sun. However I. says it is possible we might have a lesson after all on Saturday afternoon--the heat's off in the school over the Thanksgiving holiday, she says she had to stop teaching on that day because of all the little kids complaining about how cold the water was--but she thinks I will be stoical, and it is true that I am fairly impervious to cold and want to squeeze in as many lessons as possible before she has her baby...
Monday pm John Jay swimming
Tuesday CU morning swim
Wednesday am gym workout with M., followed by 30-45 min. on bike trainer
Thursday am run 5 easy in Riverside Park (then to New Jersey for the holiday, just for the day fortunately)
Not sure yet about Friday-Saturday-Sunday: one run somewhere in there (but maybe a bike-run workout), at least one swim if I can drag myself up to Riverbank State Park which I believe is my only available option Fri.-Sun. However I. says it is possible we might have a lesson after all on Saturday afternoon--the heat's off in the school over the Thanksgiving holiday, she says she had to stop teaching on that day because of all the little kids complaining about how cold the water was--but she thinks I will be stoical, and it is true that I am fairly impervious to cold and want to squeeze in as many lessons as possible before she has her baby...
Philadelphia half-marathon
OK, good, I have done my last half-marathon for 2007 with a really satisfactory PR of 1:54:14 (mile pace 8:46).
It was an interesting and illuminating run. I was aiming for just under 1:57, and spent much of mile 3 and mile 4 mildly berating myself for going too fast. (Like: "You are never going to do a good marathon next fall if you cannot learn self-discipline on pacing!")
Why was it so acute? Well, the half-marathoners and marathoners started in two separate corrals and then fed back in together; there weren't really pace groups in the half-marathon corral but when we came into a single stream I found myself roughly with the 3:45 marathon pace group, and I felt like that was actually a very comfortable speed.
But the numbers on my watch were rather alarmingly speedy--I tried to slow down--I didn't do a very good job.
So I started thinking like crazy--trying to come up with useful mental strategies along the lines of "Well, you cannot just run along with these other people, run your own race, think of it as a challenge like playing a piece that is scored for two different time signatures or something, just concentrate." I thought a lot about how stupid it would be to blow it by going out so much too fast. I thought about slowing down, and I did, but then I would pick it back up again...
Suddenly around mile 4 (mental wheels still churning) I thought a series of thoughts very quickly and then my mind was at rest...
To wit:
1. I had after all decided in advance I didn't need to pace this race conservatively--I had already made my sub-2:00 goal for the year, so it was really worth experimenting.
2. I felt pretty good: HR still in the lower 160s, not really working that hard, quite tolerable.
3. A half-marathon is after all NOT a marathon, not nearly the same pacing hazards (at least insofar as I have been training very steadily and fairly systematically exactly for this distance, which also I think happens to suit me particularly well--I do not have an affinity for running short distances very hard, I like running medium distances at medium-hard intensity).
4. I felt absolutely certain I could comfortably maintain this pace for 10 miles. After that, who knew--but even if I then fell back on something as slow as 10:00 pace, I would still finish under two hours...
In conclusion, I was neither having an on day nor an off day, I was just running solidly in more or less ideal conditions at what is clearly (based on effort) my current comfortable half-marathon race pace. I had a very good taper and sleep week for the Grete's Great Gallop half in the first week of October (this week's sleep was not fortunate), but the heat and humidity were awful, and the course was hilly, so my time of 1:59:07 felt like a triumph--it was a triumph. But it was also, I think, rather slower than I would have been capable of that day under different conditions.
So I stopped thinking so much and just concentrated on keeping effort steady and tweaking the speed back down any time I saw it go into the 8:10s rather than, say, 8:30s, and the time frankly passed by in a flash, I could hardly believe when it was over...
The last couple miles were hard--my leg muscles particularly in the hip flexor sort of area had gotten very tight (I am not used to running on such a long flat course, you get used to having more varied terrain), and I was definitely ready to stop running at the end. But there was never the kind of aerobic load on the body I felt in the August and October half-marathons--the temperature really makes a huge difference...
Splits (the distance on my device is clearly off, it is only counting me 12.9 rather than 13.1, so adjust paces accordingly--dramatic mile differences have more to do with hills, I think, than with dramatic speed adjustment of any other sort):
1 9:23 (HR 152)
2 8:40 (160)
3 8:32 (161)
4 8:50 (162)
5 8:45 (163)
6 8:48 (164)
7 9:26 (165)
8 8:49 (167)
9 9:15 (167)
10 9:25 (166)
11 8:18 (168)
12 8:22 (171)
13 [8:13/176: not counted as a whole mile, plus I forgot to turn the stopwatch off at the finish...]
Two more things:
1. It seems about a million years ago now, but I had a lovely swimming lesson yesterday morning! About halfway through I. was making fake crying gestures (i.e. rubbing eyes with hands in cartoonlike manner) and saying I would be sad at it being the end of our swimming lessons as clearly her work was done... REALLY I can swim the butterfly now, that's crazy! MUCH room for further improvement of course... Note to self: it is very good for the breaststroke if I do alternating lengths of fly down breast back (though as I. also observed, the breast is very decent if one doesn't attend to its being in the style of twenty years ago--which is funny, because I never learned breaststroke when I was a kid, just freestyle, but I suppose flat swimming is flat swimming and we keep our memory of flatness even if it wasn't stroke-specific!).
2. The thing I especially like about this race result is that it makes me think about marathon goals for 2008. I am going to be conservative in choosing pace goals, I am not I think on the whole a hubristic person, but I do believe in having a vision. And my vision is that if certain things happen, I would not be crazy to think of a sub-4:00 marathon goal. (That's a 3:59:50-type sub-4:00, nothing more ambitious!) The three enabling conditions I envisage:
(a) A couple of Olympic-distance triathlons in June and July which for me will be a roughly 3:00+ race, with particular attention to the problem of getting used to that intensity and duration (I will of course keep racing half-marathons all year, I just love that distance, and I will also of course continue to do a lot of swimming and some biking through the marathon-heavy training season of August-November, so my general fitness will be good though I will certainly be using a relatively low-mileage training plan)
(b) Philadelphia as my race--flattish, fastish, late enough in the season that temperatures are likely to be cool and without the mental challenges (i.e. adrenaline, irrational excitement, mentally demanding course) of New York, which I will wait to do the next year
(c) At least one sub-1:50 half-marathon. A sub-1:50 half will really make me feel that a 4:00 marathon is a sensible goal and not a first-timer's insanity. So this race today takes me significantly closer towards seeing how that might happen in 2008.
(Not that I know--but it is really my opinion that I should be able to get my half-marathon mile pace down to about 8:00, further than that I am not sure I will be able to go--though who knows, maybe it's possible?!?--but 8:00 seems to me a reasonable guess at something challenging yet attainable. I've been running only a bit more than a year, I run only three days a week [sometimes four, but the fourth run is only ever very short] and I've never done more than about 25mpw mileage--currently I'm triathlon-obsessed so I won't have a run focus in the next six or eight months, I'll just keep up as I've been doing, probably around 20-22 run miles per week over the winter--but I think that raising mileage at some point for a run-specific season should get me rather faster...)
It was an interesting and illuminating run. I was aiming for just under 1:57, and spent much of mile 3 and mile 4 mildly berating myself for going too fast. (Like: "You are never going to do a good marathon next fall if you cannot learn self-discipline on pacing!")
Why was it so acute? Well, the half-marathoners and marathoners started in two separate corrals and then fed back in together; there weren't really pace groups in the half-marathon corral but when we came into a single stream I found myself roughly with the 3:45 marathon pace group, and I felt like that was actually a very comfortable speed.
But the numbers on my watch were rather alarmingly speedy--I tried to slow down--I didn't do a very good job.
So I started thinking like crazy--trying to come up with useful mental strategies along the lines of "Well, you cannot just run along with these other people, run your own race, think of it as a challenge like playing a piece that is scored for two different time signatures or something, just concentrate." I thought a lot about how stupid it would be to blow it by going out so much too fast. I thought about slowing down, and I did, but then I would pick it back up again...
Suddenly around mile 4 (mental wheels still churning) I thought a series of thoughts very quickly and then my mind was at rest...
To wit:
1. I had after all decided in advance I didn't need to pace this race conservatively--I had already made my sub-2:00 goal for the year, so it was really worth experimenting.
2. I felt pretty good: HR still in the lower 160s, not really working that hard, quite tolerable.
3. A half-marathon is after all NOT a marathon, not nearly the same pacing hazards (at least insofar as I have been training very steadily and fairly systematically exactly for this distance, which also I think happens to suit me particularly well--I do not have an affinity for running short distances very hard, I like running medium distances at medium-hard intensity).
4. I felt absolutely certain I could comfortably maintain this pace for 10 miles. After that, who knew--but even if I then fell back on something as slow as 10:00 pace, I would still finish under two hours...
In conclusion, I was neither having an on day nor an off day, I was just running solidly in more or less ideal conditions at what is clearly (based on effort) my current comfortable half-marathon race pace. I had a very good taper and sleep week for the Grete's Great Gallop half in the first week of October (this week's sleep was not fortunate), but the heat and humidity were awful, and the course was hilly, so my time of 1:59:07 felt like a triumph--it was a triumph. But it was also, I think, rather slower than I would have been capable of that day under different conditions.
So I stopped thinking so much and just concentrated on keeping effort steady and tweaking the speed back down any time I saw it go into the 8:10s rather than, say, 8:30s, and the time frankly passed by in a flash, I could hardly believe when it was over...
The last couple miles were hard--my leg muscles particularly in the hip flexor sort of area had gotten very tight (I am not used to running on such a long flat course, you get used to having more varied terrain), and I was definitely ready to stop running at the end. But there was never the kind of aerobic load on the body I felt in the August and October half-marathons--the temperature really makes a huge difference...
Splits (the distance on my device is clearly off, it is only counting me 12.9 rather than 13.1, so adjust paces accordingly--dramatic mile differences have more to do with hills, I think, than with dramatic speed adjustment of any other sort):
1 9:23 (HR 152)
2 8:40 (160)
3 8:32 (161)
4 8:50 (162)
5 8:45 (163)
6 8:48 (164)
7 9:26 (165)
8 8:49 (167)
9 9:15 (167)
10 9:25 (166)
11 8:18 (168)
12 8:22 (171)
13 [8:13/176: not counted as a whole mile, plus I forgot to turn the stopwatch off at the finish...]
Two more things:
1. It seems about a million years ago now, but I had a lovely swimming lesson yesterday morning! About halfway through I. was making fake crying gestures (i.e. rubbing eyes with hands in cartoonlike manner) and saying I would be sad at it being the end of our swimming lessons as clearly her work was done... REALLY I can swim the butterfly now, that's crazy! MUCH room for further improvement of course... Note to self: it is very good for the breaststroke if I do alternating lengths of fly down breast back (though as I. also observed, the breast is very decent if one doesn't attend to its being in the style of twenty years ago--which is funny, because I never learned breaststroke when I was a kid, just freestyle, but I suppose flat swimming is flat swimming and we keep our memory of flatness even if it wasn't stroke-specific!).
2. The thing I especially like about this race result is that it makes me think about marathon goals for 2008. I am going to be conservative in choosing pace goals, I am not I think on the whole a hubristic person, but I do believe in having a vision. And my vision is that if certain things happen, I would not be crazy to think of a sub-4:00 marathon goal. (That's a 3:59:50-type sub-4:00, nothing more ambitious!) The three enabling conditions I envisage:
(a) A couple of Olympic-distance triathlons in June and July which for me will be a roughly 3:00+ race, with particular attention to the problem of getting used to that intensity and duration (I will of course keep racing half-marathons all year, I just love that distance, and I will also of course continue to do a lot of swimming and some biking through the marathon-heavy training season of August-November, so my general fitness will be good though I will certainly be using a relatively low-mileage training plan)
(b) Philadelphia as my race--flattish, fastish, late enough in the season that temperatures are likely to be cool and without the mental challenges (i.e. adrenaline, irrational excitement, mentally demanding course) of New York, which I will wait to do the next year
(c) At least one sub-1:50 half-marathon. A sub-1:50 half will really make me feel that a 4:00 marathon is a sensible goal and not a first-timer's insanity. So this race today takes me significantly closer towards seeing how that might happen in 2008.
(Not that I know--but it is really my opinion that I should be able to get my half-marathon mile pace down to about 8:00, further than that I am not sure I will be able to go--though who knows, maybe it's possible?!?--but 8:00 seems to me a reasonable guess at something challenging yet attainable. I've been running only a bit more than a year, I run only three days a week [sometimes four, but the fourth run is only ever very short] and I've never done more than about 25mpw mileage--currently I'm triathlon-obsessed so I won't have a run focus in the next six or eight months, I'll just keep up as I've been doing, probably around 20-22 run miles per week over the winter--but I think that raising mileage at some point for a run-specific season should get me rather faster...)
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Thursday run
Last little three-mile pre-race run this afternoon, a chilly dark overcast late-afternoon run with wet leaves on the ground and nobody about the place. I would say three easy miles (ten-minute pace, HR avg 145), only it was one of those days when the legs are leaden and even a slow pace feels like a lot of work! I didn't sleep enough this week, I think...
(Fortunately just at the end I suddenly really was warmed up and felt quite fluid and comfortable, just as well too--this business of tapering is mentally challenging, it introduces self-doubt! I am having a slightly sore right knee for instance--on Tuesday I noticed it, partly through being struck that I was not enjoying this thing of running on concrete--I don't do that Riverside run so often these days as I did over the summer, and there's no doubt the surface is harder on the knees--it's probably better that I'm not doing it so often, but it also means I'm not acclimated--a couple training partners commented on unpleasantness of concrete West Side Highway part of the Nike half this summer, and I really didn't notice it... I do not think I have an injury, I just think that tapering makes you suddenly attentive to these minor things that normally good exercise chemicals totally put out of mind...)
So in the slow hard part of the run I was suddenly asking myself whether I was crazy for thinking I could hold a just-below-9:00 pace for the race--but I think it's really worth trying, there is no huge downside, I already made my sub-two-hour half-marathon goal for the year. So there it is: say 9:00 miles just for the first mile and a half or two until the crowd thins out, then move a bit faster to 8:50ish, settle in on 8:55 according to the Device or "sort of just under 9" if I have a mechanical failure and I'm counting off clock and mile markers (really in that case I would just be running by feel). Speed up to 8:30 for last two miles if I can. I am trying for 1:56:50-something, just under 1:57 at any rate. 8:55 pace, to be precise--of course it seems ludicrous to be so specific, these mechanical devices sort of lead us down the primrose path. Really a lot will depend on how much rest I get in the next couple nights, so my priority (other than some desperately overdue paper-grading that must happen tomorrow!) is to SLEEP.
(Oh, and another useful thing about today's run: Becca is quite right, I do not want to be running with a jacket or fleece tied round my waist, the feeling of running light is priceless. This Brooks jacket is very nice, it's going to be great for long runs this winter as a lightweight and breathable but warmish layer, but when the temperature's in the low 40s you are warm already and no longer need gloves after about TWO MINUTES of running. I must dig through bags of old clothes in closet & just find something I can ditch at the start.)
(Fortunately just at the end I suddenly really was warmed up and felt quite fluid and comfortable, just as well too--this business of tapering is mentally challenging, it introduces self-doubt! I am having a slightly sore right knee for instance--on Tuesday I noticed it, partly through being struck that I was not enjoying this thing of running on concrete--I don't do that Riverside run so often these days as I did over the summer, and there's no doubt the surface is harder on the knees--it's probably better that I'm not doing it so often, but it also means I'm not acclimated--a couple training partners commented on unpleasantness of concrete West Side Highway part of the Nike half this summer, and I really didn't notice it... I do not think I have an injury, I just think that tapering makes you suddenly attentive to these minor things that normally good exercise chemicals totally put out of mind...)
So in the slow hard part of the run I was suddenly asking myself whether I was crazy for thinking I could hold a just-below-9:00 pace for the race--but I think it's really worth trying, there is no huge downside, I already made my sub-two-hour half-marathon goal for the year. So there it is: say 9:00 miles just for the first mile and a half or two until the crowd thins out, then move a bit faster to 8:50ish, settle in on 8:55 according to the Device or "sort of just under 9" if I have a mechanical failure and I'm counting off clock and mile markers (really in that case I would just be running by feel). Speed up to 8:30 for last two miles if I can. I am trying for 1:56:50-something, just under 1:57 at any rate. 8:55 pace, to be precise--of course it seems ludicrous to be so specific, these mechanical devices sort of lead us down the primrose path. Really a lot will depend on how much rest I get in the next couple nights, so my priority (other than some desperately overdue paper-grading that must happen tomorrow!) is to SLEEP.
(Oh, and another useful thing about today's run: Becca is quite right, I do not want to be running with a jacket or fleece tied round my waist, the feeling of running light is priceless. This Brooks jacket is very nice, it's going to be great for long runs this winter as a lightweight and breathable but warmish layer, but when the temperature's in the low 40s you are warm already and no longer need gloves after about TWO MINUTES of running. I must dig through bags of old clothes in closet & just find something I can ditch at the start.)
Thursday swim
That is a lovely way to start the day--the way I feel when I get up at 5:15 is basically along the lines of Not quite as terrible as you might expect, but it is all good once I'm actually in the pool. I am determined to convert myself into an early riser, against the huge weight of years of experience the other way & also a strong genetic bias towards late nights (Seymour Benzer's fruit flies!). Sleep is a slightly intractable problem...
Warmup (really it was 300, but I missed a 50 somewhere in the progress from blackboard to lane): 3 x 250 (100 free, 75 back-breast-breast, 50 double-arm back, 25 fly)
First set (hmmm, I like this one--Thursday workouts are the best...): 6 x 150, 100 free 50 stroke, 1: fly, 2 and 3: back, 4-6: breast. The coach gave us an interval of 3:00 but that was what it took us to actually swim them, so really we went on 3:30 to keep it all clear...
(Elegant!)
Second set: 12 x 50 pull, odds butterfly down breast back, evens back down free back.
The faster lanes had some sprint 25s at the end but this was all we had time for. This workout is too short--really it's only about 55 minutes pool time if you're not in the pool right at 6:00 sharp, the Young Things (who are absurdly lean and muscley, it is ridiculous, it is really as though they are a different species) are hovering waiting to get in right at 7:00...
Warmup (really it was 300, but I missed a 50 somewhere in the progress from blackboard to lane): 3 x 250 (100 free, 75 back-breast-breast, 50 double-arm back, 25 fly)
First set (hmmm, I like this one--Thursday workouts are the best...): 6 x 150, 100 free 50 stroke, 1: fly, 2 and 3: back, 4-6: breast. The coach gave us an interval of 3:00 but that was what it took us to actually swim them, so really we went on 3:30 to keep it all clear...
(Elegant!)
Second set: 12 x 50 pull, odds butterfly down breast back, evens back down free back.
The faster lanes had some sprint 25s at the end but this was all we had time for. This workout is too short--really it's only about 55 minutes pool time if you're not in the pool right at 6:00 sharp, the Young Things (who are absurdly lean and muscley, it is ridiculous, it is really as though they are a different species) are hovering waiting to get in right at 7:00...
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
The adverbial flip turn
Since I cannot have another workout today, I will indulge myself in a frivolous post...
A few weeks ago at Monday-night swimming, I shared the lane with a guy who has relatively recently--i.e. perhaps in the past six months--acquired a fully functional flip turn, after many years of swimming.
(I heard the story afterwards from the women in the locker-room--it was a proud accomplishment that the guy had presented this spring to our late lamented much-loved swimming teacher when he visited him in hospital--I believe the swimming teacher rolled his eyes and said that he could have been doing 'em all along!)
These women certainly (affectionately, but still...) felt that this fellow has been gloating over his flip turns, and I could not exactly differ. If I had to come up with an adverb to describe the style of his flip turn, I would say he turned smugly.
How is it possible that a motion underwater could be so strongly characterized by an adverb?!?
And then I thought about other kinds of flip turn that one might be likely to see. (Now I feel like I'm channeling one of the eighteenth-century novels I've been teaching recently--OK, I'm going to open the Shandean vein...)
AN ANATOMY OF THE FLIP TURN. Viz., the manner in which this underwater maneuver may be conducted....
THE TURN COMPETENT
THE TURN SELF-CONTAINED
THE TURN EFFICIENT
THE TURN WASTEFUL
THE TURN POWERFUL
But I am especially interested in the attachment of an emotional affect, as it were, to the turn. I cannot imagine an angry flip turn, but I can imagine an irritable one. I can imagine flip turns triumphant, joyful, doleful or magnificent, also pitiful (hmmm, I have done a few of those myself, or floundering/incompetent is more like it). But here we're coming away from style and more towards basic questions of competence, which is not interesting in this verbal sense.
Other plausible possibilities: arrogant, modest, heedless, self-possessed, extravagant, furious.
Nigh-inconceivable possibilities: tumultuous, devastated, defeated (though possibly if we had seen the swimmer lose a heat and then do cooldown laps, we might interpret a self-contained turn as a defeated turn).
So what is the constraint? Is the nature of the movement in swimming, i.e. that we cannot really be abrupt or angry underwater in any particularly legible way? Or is the flip turn simply categorizable as part of a family of movements--like, say, waving one's arm in the air--that are constrained to be described with a certain pool of adjectives because of the limits on legibility of bodily motion more generally? Have I missed out obvious possible categories of emotional affect?
And how long a clip of the turn would one need in order to assess affect? Is it mostly the going-in and coming-out parts of the turn that are expressive, or could a very brief clip of the person just coming off the wall be similarly evocative? Would the assessments be impossibly subjective, or would they fall into patterns as assessments of facial expressions do?
(Getting a decent flip turn is one of my winter goals, but clearly I prefer thinking about them to actually doing them, arghhhh!)
A few weeks ago at Monday-night swimming, I shared the lane with a guy who has relatively recently--i.e. perhaps in the past six months--acquired a fully functional flip turn, after many years of swimming.
(I heard the story afterwards from the women in the locker-room--it was a proud accomplishment that the guy had presented this spring to our late lamented much-loved swimming teacher when he visited him in hospital--I believe the swimming teacher rolled his eyes and said that he could have been doing 'em all along!)
These women certainly (affectionately, but still...) felt that this fellow has been gloating over his flip turns, and I could not exactly differ. If I had to come up with an adverb to describe the style of his flip turn, I would say he turned smugly.
How is it possible that a motion underwater could be so strongly characterized by an adverb?!?
And then I thought about other kinds of flip turn that one might be likely to see. (Now I feel like I'm channeling one of the eighteenth-century novels I've been teaching recently--OK, I'm going to open the Shandean vein...)
AN ANATOMY OF THE FLIP TURN. Viz., the manner in which this underwater maneuver may be conducted....
THE TURN COMPETENT
THE TURN SELF-CONTAINED
THE TURN EFFICIENT
THE TURN WASTEFUL
THE TURN POWERFUL
But I am especially interested in the attachment of an emotional affect, as it were, to the turn. I cannot imagine an angry flip turn, but I can imagine an irritable one. I can imagine flip turns triumphant, joyful, doleful or magnificent, also pitiful (hmmm, I have done a few of those myself, or floundering/incompetent is more like it). But here we're coming away from style and more towards basic questions of competence, which is not interesting in this verbal sense.
Other plausible possibilities: arrogant, modest, heedless, self-possessed, extravagant, furious.
Nigh-inconceivable possibilities: tumultuous, devastated, defeated (though possibly if we had seen the swimmer lose a heat and then do cooldown laps, we might interpret a self-contained turn as a defeated turn).
So what is the constraint? Is the nature of the movement in swimming, i.e. that we cannot really be abrupt or angry underwater in any particularly legible way? Or is the flip turn simply categorizable as part of a family of movements--like, say, waving one's arm in the air--that are constrained to be described with a certain pool of adjectives because of the limits on legibility of bodily motion more generally? Have I missed out obvious possible categories of emotional affect?
And how long a clip of the turn would one need in order to assess affect? Is it mostly the going-in and coming-out parts of the turn that are expressive, or could a very brief clip of the person just coming off the wall be similarly evocative? Would the assessments be impossibly subjective, or would they fall into patterns as assessments of facial expressions do?
(Getting a decent flip turn is one of my winter goals, but clearly I prefer thinking about them to actually doing them, arghhhh!)
Wednesday gym workout
A super-enjoyable session with M. this morning (mercifully rescheduled to 8 rather than 6:15, though I got up at 5:15 anyway to do a couple work things early on). There is something about knowing I am only allowed to exercise for an hour (I wrote off the notion of swim or bike today, I need to keep the volume down for taper!) that gives an ineffable and not strictly physiological intensity to the time. Upper-body and core stuff, it's good--I'm looking forward to bumping up the weekly sessions after this race. Next week will be recovery week, partly just because of holiday-related inconvenience, so I'll just have one session on Wednesday, but I think I'll move to 2/week for the last couple weeks of the semester and then go up to three once I'm done teaching. Muscles!
Gear-related musings: hmmm, pondering what to wear on Sunday, it's a bit problematic. The weather's just been freakishly hot, so I haven't really had a chance to test out colder-weather gear (and I don't have a lot anyway, since I was injured all last winter). Last year I checked a bag and it was a great nuisance retrieving it afterwards, they were very chaotic; I'd rather just wear everything on my back.
But the race start is at 7am, so if I'm there by 6:15 it's a longish coldish wait with just a light long-sleeved shirt on. I've got a Patagonia fleece-type pullover that I will fall back on if needed, but during my last short run tomorrow I'm going to try out the new jacket I bought this weekend. I know it's a bit dire trying something new so close to the race, but I'm almost certainly going to take it off just before the start and tie it around my waist anyway, so it should be OK... and it's got lots of pockets, so I can have gloves tucked away, and also my phone. I had thought of running really light, carrying barely anything, but I think to be on the safe side the phone is needed in case there is some reason I do not particularly want to walk the couple miles back to my brother's house--I will hope to get a taxi, but in Philadelphia it's never a sure thing to hail one on the street, not like NY...
(Last year after this race I pretty much couldn't walk, it was NOT good! My poor mother has still not recovered--my brother and sister-in-law and training partner L. were not particularly traumatized--but it is different for mothers... I have made a mental note already that if/when I do an iron-distance triathlon I had better make sure she is (a) in another state and (b) knows as little about it as possible...)
(I got a couple pairs of tights at the same time as the jacket, but they're definitely warmer than I need, I'll just wear the usual Nike capri ones that I always wear--I've got multiple pairs, they are absurdly comfortable...)
Gear-related musings: hmmm, pondering what to wear on Sunday, it's a bit problematic. The weather's just been freakishly hot, so I haven't really had a chance to test out colder-weather gear (and I don't have a lot anyway, since I was injured all last winter). Last year I checked a bag and it was a great nuisance retrieving it afterwards, they were very chaotic; I'd rather just wear everything on my back.
But the race start is at 7am, so if I'm there by 6:15 it's a longish coldish wait with just a light long-sleeved shirt on. I've got a Patagonia fleece-type pullover that I will fall back on if needed, but during my last short run tomorrow I'm going to try out the new jacket I bought this weekend. I know it's a bit dire trying something new so close to the race, but I'm almost certainly going to take it off just before the start and tie it around my waist anyway, so it should be OK... and it's got lots of pockets, so I can have gloves tucked away, and also my phone. I had thought of running really light, carrying barely anything, but I think to be on the safe side the phone is needed in case there is some reason I do not particularly want to walk the couple miles back to my brother's house--I will hope to get a taxi, but in Philadelphia it's never a sure thing to hail one on the street, not like NY...
(Last year after this race I pretty much couldn't walk, it was NOT good! My poor mother has still not recovered--my brother and sister-in-law and training partner L. were not particularly traumatized--but it is different for mothers... I have made a mental note already that if/when I do an iron-distance triathlon I had better make sure she is (a) in another state and (b) knows as little about it as possible...)
(I got a couple pairs of tights at the same time as the jacket, but they're definitely warmer than I need, I'll just wear the usual Nike capri ones that I always wear--I've got multiple pairs, they are absurdly comfortable...)
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