12/27/08

Grappledunk & Nerf, at Grappledunk's pool. Zero hot swimmer ass sightings. But we did:

200 S, 200 P, 200 K, 200 choice, 200 varied speeds

3 sets of:
200 kick/drill
200 pull
200 swim
-first set free, second set IM, 3rd set choice (we did a mix of breast and fly)

4 x 50, down underwater back easy (I did all 25s underwater with no problem!)

200 cool down

total: 3200 yards.

It was as easy for me as 2000 was a month ago, so I'm psyched!

Holy shit!

Masters practice tonight. I wound up not doing quite as many yards as everyone else cause I am a lot slower, but here is my best estimation of what I did do:

200 free warmup
200 drill (free, alternating between anchor drill and catchup)
1800 main (400 free, 200 kick/drill, 200 free, 400 pull, 200 kick/drill, 400 free)
100 timed
200 easy
300 IM (4 x 75)
300 (this was supposed to be a pyramid, but at that point I was just trying to keep swimming, so I wasn't timing or anything)
200 breathing set (4 x 50)

So, about 3300 yards. Holla! That's by far the most I've ever done; and not only did I surprise myself with how much I was able to do, but the fly portions of the IMs were no problem at all, even though they fell near the 3000 yard mark when I was already really tired. I mean, I remember the first time I went swimming with Grappledunk around Labor Day, I could barely make it to the end of a 25 fly lap when I'd only been swimming a few minutes. And the breathing set at the end was supposed to be 4 x 50 yards, breathing five times, then four, then three, then two. I did five, then six, then three, and was sure I could never do the two breath 50 that the coach wanted me to--but I did! I did the first 25 with no breaths at all.

So, I guess I am gradually making progress, even though sometimes it doesn't feel like it... now that I know I can do over 3000 I will just have to keep pushing until I can do it consistently, and can polish off 4000.

12-16/08-12/17/08

Yesterday I did 43 minutes on the elliptical, at a pretty high resistance (including the handles) and then ran on the treadmill for 17 mins, mixing in lots of sprint intervals. The day before that, I had a pretty shitty, weak swim. I HAVE to break 2000!

Mornings...

I'm not sure why, but somehow I can get up to swim before work easier than I can make myself swim after work. Which is great, because I've been getting waaay too much sleep as it is...sigh

Wednesday morning I swam a 500 pyramid working strokes and drills and kicking, but with the 100 and the second 200 working my open water pace. The 100 was ok. The 200 was pretty slow. Baby steps, right?

Now I'm trying to figure out when I'm going to deal with my car registration, and my address change with the DMV (which I neglected to address - ha!- when I moved a year and a half ago...)

 I'm afraid it's going to seriously infringe on my swimming/grappling/other important stuff time this Saturday.

12/15/08

400 swim, 200 kick, 400 pull, 200 kick, 400 mixed breast/back, and then 400 alternating whatever it took to get me through to the end--followed by 50 sculling, just to really wear me out. I'm pretty whipped. Next goal--to get through 2500!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

After two weeks of hardly working out at all and only making it to the pool once, I went back to the Y tonight. It's possible I'm imagining things, but I swear it seems cleaner and somehow less cold than it was last time I was there. Didn't have a great workout, but that's no surprise since it had been a while; they key thing is that it didn't fill me with despair. Oh, and if I were to avoid eating half a dozen fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies (I am warming up for Christmas) a couple hours before getting in the water, that would probably help.

Theoretical workout schedule

Who knows how close to this I will actually get. But barring awful work hours, headaches, fatigue and general demoralization, here is where I would like to be:

Monday: AM weights
Tuesday: AM swim
Wednesday: Am weights, PM swim (this will be swim class once the next program session starts)
Thursday: AM swim
Friday: AM swim
Saturday: AM weights, PM swim
Sunday: PM swim (Masters practice)

It's not really meant to be a 7-day schedule, but I know inevitably the day off I take will vary from week to week, and the weekends are actually my best times to get in good workouts. It's going to be tough to get to bed early enough that I will be willing to get out of bed at 6:30, but I gotta do it; I've been working till 7 or 8 a lot lately and it's pretty much impossible to summon the motivation to go to the pool after that. So let's see how this goes.

This is courage.

While I was running yesterday, the overhead TV was showing NBC's special on some of the American Paralympic athletes, and the last person they featured was a 16-year-old swimmer, Marin Morrison. She was a potential Olympic-caliber swimmer when she was diagnosed with brain cancer a few years ago, and has undergone four surgeries, the last of which took place after she had locked in her qualifying times for Beijing, and left her with devastating speech and motor impairments that should have made it impossible for her to swim. Yet despite that, and punishing rounds of chemotherapy, radiation and experimental drugs, she still had the courage and determination to come to the Olympics and complete all her races, even though she is so frail she had to be wheeled to the edge of the pool and helped into the water--she still did it.

Not only does that kind of courage and strength put all my petty daily troubles into perspective, but it tells me that if someone can come back literally from the brink of death, endure what she has, and still find the toughness to finish her Olympic races, then healthy, able-bodied me ought bloody well to be able to get strong enough to swim two miles in a lake by May.

12/06/08

The good news is, my second workout (I only worked out twice! Blurgh!) of this awful awful hellish week was actually a good one. The bad news is, I wasn't swimming. I worked all day yesterday and didn't have the concentration or energy for a swim, so I just hit the treadmill instead. I ran four miles in 36 minutes (which is exciting to exactly no one other than me; the first time I timed myself at it I took 40 minutes, and then 38 minutes another time), and then after I caught my breath I ran another mile just for good measure. Shockingly, now my legs are tired and I'm wondering exactly how bad I will be at masters practice tonight...

Short - but not as bad

Here's today's workout:

W/U: 400 free, 250 stroke, 5x50 e, m, f, m, e

200 pull

100 kick 

500 test swim: I went a 6:17. Meh. I suppose it wasn't too horribly bad for just the second week of swimming...

3x100 pace

200 pull

100 kick
I'm actually proud I got in the pool today. My usual pool (seen here:

 was closed due to some arts and crafts fair (arts and crafts?? why close the pool for that??) so I had to go waaaay out of my way to this one:

It was strangely dark in there. I wonder if they forgot to pay the electric bill. I like my usual pool better, but it served the purpose...

Is there such a thing as pool rage?

Ok, it's a few days late, but here's what I did on Wednesday:

W/U: 300 swim,  

          4x100 IM (this is where I realized this was going to suck.)

Free set:

5x100 on 1:30

4x100 on 1:25

3x100 on 1:20 (this is where I got really pissed at myself and stopped the set. I had another 2 100s on 1:15 and one on 1:10 left to do, plus another whole set that I didn't do.)

5oo swim - 50 free, 50 back, trying to loosen up and get my stroke feeling somewhat normal.

15 minute hot shower, which felt great until I realized I was going to be late for work. Dammit.

30 minutes of road rage in rush hour traffic.

--2400 yards

12/03/08

In summary: blurgh. I was tired and gaspy; didn't count laps because I was too busy sulking over how gaspy I was; only swam for about 45 minutes before giving up due to persistent chill and horrible foot cramps. Grappledunk, do you have any advice/suggestions re the foot cramps? I get them sometimes in the arch of my foot, but tonight I was even getting them in the muscles of my toes. Fun!

Topic for debate.

Tonight was my first time swimming at the Y since coming back from Thanksgiving, and after two delightful days in the clear, balmy, placid, and almost drinkable waters of the Braddock Road rec center, the Y was a depressing wake-up call. It was like coming back to Long Island Sound after vacationing in the Caribbean. As I did my first few laps, shivering wretchedly, I was inspired to conduct a little informal analysis as to which is more unpleasant: Nerdy Fashionista's Y Pool, or the Schuylkill River? Let's see how they stack up against each other.

Current: Okay, the Schuylkill wins this one easily (although the frequency with which I beach some part of my anatomy on the lane rope at the Y without being aware of having moved over suggests that there is, somehow, a mysterious current at work).

Waves and chop: This is probably a toss-up. I got slapped in the face with water more times than I could count tonight.

Temperature: The Schuylkill, but only by a narrow margin. The Y water is COLD. Plus, maybe some of those rotting corpses and industrial petrochemicals in the Schuylkill help keep things warm?

Water quality: Again, another toss-up. The Y is the cloudiest pool I have ever swum in, as well as the most aggressively chlorinated; and I think over the Thanksgiving weekend they may have dumped in some Lysol for good measure, because tonight I thought I detected a soupcon of disinfectant mixed in with the usual outright bleach. And everyone seemed to be trailing more bubbles than usual.

Microbes and wildlife: Well, the Y is pretty frickin' gross, but I think I've got to give this one to the Schuylkill.

Debris: Yeah, Schuylkill takes it again, although I did swim past a discarded band-aid tonight.

Crowding: There were twelve people in the pool while I was there tonight--mind you this is a tiny four-lane pool--whereas one of the advantages of swimming in a river has got to be personal space. The Y wins here, no contest.

So where does that leave us? The Schuylkill has four points, and the Y has one, plus two toss-ups... so it looks like the Schuylkill is grosser, but not by too awfully much. Man, I wish I could afford and/or lived closer to Asphalt Green.

The Wuss-ass Workout

The steps:

1. Leave work for the day at 7:45, sulking.
2. Step out of office into dark, cold, windy city night.
3. Contemplate getting into cold pool at the end of a half hour journey which includes several minutes of cold, windy walking.
4. Run home to warm apartment, sit on couch, stuff face, and write blog entry.

By the way, my first impulse was to call this the Weenie Workout, until it occurred to me that that sounds like something that would be more appropriately located in the pages of Men's Health. Curiously, the Pussy Workout doesn't sound too hot, either.

Tomorrow! I am getting up early and going swimming before work tomorrow.