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.