Monday, November 19, 2012

Week 14

So, last week, I had intentions of making all 5 workouts last week. That...did not happen. I was exhausted on Wednesday night, so when I weighed getting an extra hour of sleep vs. going running in the morning (since I was working, it was 6:30 am or nothing), the extra hour of sleep won. And then when I thought about going spinning on Friday morning and then needing to sit at a desk for 8 hours, I thought that maybe was not my smartest idea. But I made both swimming practices and running on Tuesday. I only managed to run for 8 minutes instead of 10, but that's okay.

This week, I technically don't have swim practice, but I'll be swimming anyway on my own. And I'll definitely go running on Tuesday and probably on Thursday- we're pretty low key around here for the holiday itself. I will not be spinning on Friday, because the gym is part of an open air mall and you cannot pay me enough to go anywhere near there on the day after Thanksgiving, thank you very much.

Have a happy Thanksgiving! Eat good things!

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Weeks 11, 12 and 13

Fear not! I have not given up on things! I just sort of slacked off on the documentation. So, let's see what I can recreate here.

Week 11: I talked with my swim coach and we decided that even though I *can* do a 50 in about 1:20-1:30, dropping the base time to less than 1:40 isn't feasible at the moment, given how incredibly exhausted I was after attempting it. So, we're staying at 1:40 until that gets really easy (I'm estimating somewhere around Christmas at this point) and then we'll see about 1:30. Also, I ran for 10 minutes! All at once! Without stopping. Woo!

Week 12: Three months! I rock. I was also the only person at swim practice on Monday, which was kind of nice because it meant that we did something that was on my personal pace for once (I'm about the slowest regular who comes, so I'm always the last one done with anything). Unfortunately, circumstances conspired to keep me off the treadmill, so I didn't get my running in, but I did hit up my first spinning class. Let me tell you, spinning uses completely different muscles than running or swimming. And those seats are ridiculously hard, even with padded shorts. Ow. The undercarriage was less than thrilled with me for several days. Also, I need to ignore the bike adjustment instructions and adjust the seat slightly higher than it seems like I should, because otherwise my knees get extremely cranky.

Week 13: I did my Monday swimming on my own because I was working the polls on Tuesday. I'm getting better with the flip turns. And if I can manage to stretch out my breathing rhythm a bit, I think I'll be a happier person. Tuesday, I was awake for 22 hours and on my feet for about 16 of those hours, so yeah, there was no additional training going on. But, I did it, and I wasn't in nearly as much pain as I expected to be in, so apparently, all this work has been good for something :o) Then, Wednesday, I went to practice, where we did a sprint 100 for time at the end and I came in at around 2:52, which is not terrible (if we'd done it first, as opposed to after having done 6 100s previous, then, um, I might have done better. I might have also done better if I hadn't been recovering from Tuesday. Swimming Wednesday was kind of a pain in the tail). I gave myself a break on Thursday because I started another temp gig and that was the first day and I would have had to go run in the morning and I was still tired and that just wasn't happening. Friday, I intended to go spinning, but had a smashing headache by the time I left work, so I just came home and slept.

This coming week, I intend to hit every workout. That hasn't happened in several weeks now, maybe about a month. I don't feel badly about this- I certainly don't feel like I've lost any fitness or ability by getting the extra rest. But I want to see how it goes with all the scheduled workouts for a few weeks. If I start getting exhausted again, then I'll rejigger the schedule. At this point, I'm pretty unconcerned about being able to do any of the events in the triathlon individually- I can definitely swim for 10 minutes straight and I can definitely at least walk 20 minutes, and spinning class was an hour and I did reasonably well enough cycling for an hour that I think I'd be fine going for 30 minutes. But all on one day still seems kind of a stretch, which is perfectly fine at this point- I've got about 6 months to go, after all.  I mean, everything is getting easier to some extent. I just still get tired afterwards. So, we'll see.