Does Kim Tri? Yes, yes she does!

 I have triathloned! It went very well. I was in the 8am wave, so we got there around 7:30 (my mom came with me to cheer me on). I got marked up with my number and my swim cap and got ready for the swim. I decided to treat that part just like I do for swim practice, since when I do practice, I'm always laying out my stuff so I can get in and out of the locker room quickly (I go before work). So I did that, and it took all of 5 minutes because, well, I'm organized like that. So, yeah, I was way early as usual. But that was all right because there was actually time for me to warm up a little in the pool.

It turned out my wave was really full. This meant I had to share a lane in the pool, but it was okay. I gave the other girl in my lane a 10 second head start so we weren't right on top of each other. 10 seconds is usually plenty enough separation- it's what we do in practice- and it was fine this time, too. She went past me maybe twice, but it wasn't bad. I went out pretty fast on the first 25- too fast, really- but then I settled down and got into my groove. My shoulders burned a little at first, because I wasn't really warmed up as much as I usually am before I start going for distance, but they calmed down. I knew they were calling out times, like, 5 minutes left, but I couldn't really hear what they were saying until they said there was 30 seconds left. I was about 2/3rds of the way to a wall at that point, so I picked it up to hit that one (your score goes by pool lengths). I did 325 yards total, which is about what I had planned- I'd figured on 300, but when we did a trial run in practice on Thursday, I did almost 325, so I was hoping I'd get that last 25 in today.

And then it was on to transition, whereupon I discovered that putting on a sports bra and bike shorts is not easy when you've just gotten out of the pool. But I was on time (a lot of people were not getting through transition on time. The bike people were complaining about that).

The bike part was the hardest part, which I anticipated. The seats were really hard, and I knew I'd slacked off on the training for this part, so I wasn't surprised. But I knew my dupke would get with the program after about 10 minutes, and it did, more or less. I alternated between standing and sitting when it got too much to sit. It seemed to take forever, really. But I did it! I went 12.3 miles in 30 minutes. And called out the guy who asked who was doing a "real" tri this year. I said, "I'm doing a real tri. I'm doing it right now!" Hopefully he changed his vocabulary to outdoor tri as opposed to "real tri", but I wouldn't hold my breath.

And then it was on to the run. My legs were a little tired, although, honestly, I didn't start getting tired until about the last five minutes of the bike leg. If my dupke hadn't been sore, I wouldn't have even started feeling sore at all until then. But I had a couple minutes to stretch my legs back out after getting off the bike before getting on the treadmill, so that helped. I walked the first minute, just to get my legs back under me, but then I started running. I ran for about 4 minutes or so, and my legs started tightening up and the muscle right above my ankle started hurting, so I walked for awhile. Then I ran some more and walked some more. I probably wound up running just about half of things. Here, have a photo:

This is oh, maybe half way through the run. It's blurry- Mom was taking it was a cell phone, and I joked that it was a short person taking a picture of another short person on a treadmill, so yeah. But, you can see I'm still smiling. I smiled pretty much the whole time. The girl taking official photos got several of me, because I was grinning so much. I was just so excited to be doing this and doing it well.

And here's me all done:

See, still smiling!

So, all told, I swam 325, biked 12.3 miles and ran/walked .94 miles. The run part is a bit lower than it maybe could be because I had the treadmill set on 3.0 at the fastest and I think I'd backed it down to 2.8 by the end. If I go much faster than that, I start having balance issues.

But I am very pleased and very proud- I'm gonna take the swim cap they gave me and write my distances on it and put it up in my cube. And I can now cross "do a triathlon" off my life goal list. I don't know exactly if I want to do this again- the swimming part was great, the running part was fun, but the biking part was not so much fun- but I'm not going to rule it out completely yet. I did have fun, and that's the point.

Right, So

So, shortly after my last post, I got walloped by a rather bad sinus infection. And so, I spent about two weeks mostly unable to handle minimal daily activities, let alone training on top of that. The fact that it got super cold here and then warm, then super cold again was Not Helpful, as cold is one of the absolutely worst things for my asthma and flip-flopping weather is one of the worst things for my chronic sinusitis. Therefore, there was a giant chunk of January where nothing happened. I am largely over the infection- I have about three more days of antibiotics to go, but I'm only slightly congested and I can walk around and breathe and I don't need a 4 hour nap after doing such strenuous activities such as baking a batch of brownies anymore. Naps are still a good thing- I'm still getting tired pretty easily, but it's getting better and it'll go away probably by the end of next week.

Since it is still very cold (although, I think it's supposed to be more reasonable this week. Reasonable meaning "above freezing". I can't exercise outside if it's under about 45, but I can manage walking across a parking lot without coughing my head off and wheezing if it's around freezing. Below that is a crap shoot). Ahem. Since it is still very cold and since I am still getting tired easily, I am going to start back very, very slowly. I'm going swimming this week. It will suck mightily, probably, and I will want to cry because I can't do what I want to do (I will probably NOT cry. It's bad for the breathing). But I will do it. Swimming is the hard one- if I can do that, I can probably handle running and cycling. But, one thing at a time. I have about 8 weeks until Triathlon Day. I am really hoping that the base I've built up over the past 6 months will not have diminished too terribly much (I know 2 weeks or so is not a big deal for most folks. My lungs are not like most lungs) and that will get me through. Since it's probably going to take another 2 weeks or so to get up to anything resembling speed, that leaves about 6 weeks of focused training whereupon I should probably, like, do some cycling perhaps. I think it's doable- I just want to finish and that was well within my capabilities when I got sick.

But, man, if that wasn't really frustrating.

Wait, what? It's January 12th?

When did it get to be January 12th? Buh? 

So, I, like many people, have a list of goals that I want to accomplish in 2013. Or, rather by January 31, 2014, because I always make my birthday my end date for goals like this. I figure, it's the beginning of my year, and it's not like it's all that far off from January 1st anyway. These aren't resolutions, per se- they're goals, yes, but they're specific and they're realistic and they are easy to plan to do. Well, okay, there's a stretch goal in there, but as Robert Browning said, “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?” The rest of them are pretty realistic. 

2013 Goals: 

1. Finish the triathlon- this is the primary goal and the one that's getting the most focus until it happens in April
2. Develop a daily yoga practice- This will be easier once I figure out when the best time for this is. 
3. Be deliberate about Intuitive Eating or Normal Eating- They're very similar philosophies with different methods and I'm not sure which methods I'm more comfortable with yet. I will say that Ellyn Satter's book Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family is a must read, no matter how your family is configured. 
4. Try a new class or activity. I'm eyeing Zumba at the moment. Or cardio kickboxing. But that will come after the tri
5. Run a mile without stopping- this will probably occur as part of the tri training, but I wanted to emphasize it, so I made it a separate goal
6. Run for 30 minutes without stopping- this will probably also occur as part of the tri training
7. Improve my 50 time to 1:00- this is the stretch goal. I'm pretty comfortable pacing 1:30 right now and I was making 50s in about 1:20 pretty easily this week, but getting to the point where I'm comfortable at a minute (as in, I'm not sprinting) is going to take awhile and may or may not be possible. But I think it's worth trying. This is also a post-tri goal. 
8. Try to lower my resting heart rate- This may not be possible, due to my asthma medication which tends to increase my heart rate. And there's also the fact that since I've been tracking it over the past 2 weeks, my average RHR has been roughly 70, with a number of 60's in there, and that's already the low end of normal. 
9. Track progress on my goals daily- I have a notebook that I'm using to do this. I made myself up a little form to fill in at night and so far, that's going well. And it will help with goal 10, which is...
10. Post to the blog at least once a week. I'm still mostly going to be talking about the tri, but other things may filter in from time to time. 

So, that's the plan for the year. So far, things are going relatively well. Tri training has been a little shaky this past week because I'm having some issues with an irregular heartbeat and so I'm being really gentle, even though I don't technically have any activity restrictions. It's likely being caused by some chemical issue, not a structural issue and there's probably no blockage, so exertion is probably not going to make a difference one way or another. I did do my swimming this week, because I knew it wouldn't be super-strenuous because we were coming off a 2 week break. And being in the water tends to keep my heart-rate from getting very high most of the time (unless I'm doing a lot of sprinting), so I figured that was pretty safe, even with my inhaler. I should have bloodwork results soon (probably Monday, I think) and that'll give more information (the leading candidates are anemia or a thyroid issue, both of which would be unsurprising). I'm going to see how I feel next week about running, or at least walking. So, we'll see. I'm not extremely worried about the impact on training yet, because there's no evidence that I'm going to need to curtail my activity level (I am perhaps being overprotective of myself, but it's been a little freaky and I was also dealing with sinus ickiness last weekend, so I was on the tired side anyway). But at this point, there's nothing to really worry about- my doctor was not terribly concerned and this may wind up on the list of "annoying, but not dangerous" things that I put up with. 

Happy New Year!

Lest anyone question my commitment to this whole thing, let me tell you a small story:

I went to the gym today to find a sign on the front counter saying that the heater in the pool was broken and the water temperature was 74 degrees. And I just muttered to myself, "Oh, damn, this is gonna be cold", and then proceeded to put my suit on and swim anyway.

I'm a bad updater, but a good trainer. Mostly good trainer, anyway.

December was the month of sprints in swim practice, which nearly did me in, but may have had its benefits. As in, my steady pace may have increased a little tiny bit. Maybe.

It was also the month of discovering that, hey, I can do the Couch to 5K program. I was getting bored with running, mostly because I couldn't seem to get beyond 10 minutes, so I said, hey, let's give the C25K program a try, because at least I won't be bored anymore. And turns out, that yeah, no problem. So I'll be continuing that into the New Year.

I have roughly 4 months to race day (I don't know the official race date just yet. I imagine that information will be available soon). I feel pretty good about this at this point.

I hope your 2013 dawns brightly for you!

Week...something.

It's December, I'm not greatly functional in December. So I have no idea what week I'm working on now.

Swimming is going well. Just after Thanksgiving, I did a timed 1000 and completed it in 31 minutes, which is roughly 1:35ish per 50. Not bad at all. Let's see...we're doing a lot of sprint work right now because we'll have two weeks off (the week of Christmas and the week of New Year's), so the idea is to build up some muscle before then because that'll last over the layoff better than endurance will. I will be swimming over those two weeks anyway, but I know I don't push myself as hard as I do during practice because no one's keeping me focused. But the sprinting is going all right- I did a 50 in 1:02 last week, which is darn near close to my race pace from high school (my PR is 48.47. I was generally in the mid/high 50s). It's really hard for me, though, and I've yet to complete an entire workout without needing a time out. We found the exercise induced asthma wall and it's when you ask me to sprint multiple 100s in a short period of time.

Running has gone less well. 10 minutes straight seems to be some kind of limit. I'm thinking it may not be a hard limit- that I can get beyond it- but right now, I don't seem to be able to. So, I switched things up because I was frustrated and bored. I modified the Couch to 5K plan slightly to be a 2x a week plan (which stretches it out past 9 weeks to 12 weeks) and it turns out that yes, I can in fact do the first workout of the plan now, without a problem at all. Which would not have been the case back in August, so hey, I've definitely made progress. So, I'll play with that for awhile and see where I get.

And let's not discuss cycling. Because, yeah. I gotta get on that.

Okay, I need to get myself to bed because 6 am swimming comes awful early in the morning...

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!

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.

testing 2

Trying again to fix the issue

testing something

Just testing something because the thing that posts to FB seems to be a bit off....

Week 10

Week 10 was a little like Week 9, sort of. All I managed to do was swimming, because my impromptu road trip kind of kicked my butt. And then swimming kicked it even more.

The problem with swimming was that 1) I went to the morning session on Tuesday because I hadn't been up to going on Monday night after I got back from Chicago/Cincinnati. The morning people are considerably faster than I am and faster than some of the rest of the evening people, so I had to try and keep up. I did, barely. Which is another "problem", because since I could keep up, my coach figured I was ready to push it a bit more, which she did on Wednesday. And I kept up again, for the most part. But, I paid for it on Thursday through Sunday in a big way. My back started agitating (that might have been more from the car trip and my somewhat miserable attempt to do butterfly on Wednesday than anything else, though), I was exhausted (that could also have been stress) and just in case I wasn't paying attention to those two things poking at me, my body sent up one of its bigger SOS's in the form of post-herpetic neuralgia. I had shingles in February 2011 and despite being on the nerve medication for 2 months, I seem to be one of the small percentage of people who still experiences the pain long after the episode has cleared up. Fortunately, it's not constant in my case. It pops up when I'm overly tired or not feeling well or very stressed. Also fortunately, it's uncomfortable, and it doesn't go away with Advil (although Tramadol blunts it somewhat), but it's not incapacitating (high pain threshhold for the win!). And, honestly, I'd rather my body choose that as an SOS instead of making my twitchy airways extra reactive, because asthma attacks are doubleplus ungood.

So, the upshot was, I didn't get any of my other workouts in last week. This was mildly annoying, but there is only so far I'm willing to push through my body yelling at me and last week was too far. Fortunately, a weekend of sitting around and watching football and taking naps has put me back to rights, more or less. And Week 11 has shaped up to be better, thus far.

Week 9

Week 9's recap is a little late- I had an impromptu road trip to take, but all is going to be well.

So, last week, there was swimming, whereupon my coach overestimated my abilities- she forgot that I haven't done anything faster than 1:40 per 50 and went with a time for a set of 300s that put me doing them on 1:30. I think I made the first one of the set, barely, but I definitely didn't get the rest of the set. But, I didn't fall off pace too, too badly- I was making the 50s in about 1:45, which is not awful. I could definitely have curled up right on the pool steps and gone to sleep, though, after.

Then, on Tuesday, Dad and I moved the vast majority of my belongings out of the storage locker where they've been hanging out for the last year. Since that was a lot of lifting and carrying, I didn't do an additional workout. I was pleased, though, that my back held up really well. It's getting stronger!

Wednesday was more swimming, and that went better. We also practiced flip turns, and I found out the right way of doing them, as opposed to the not-quite-correct way I've been doing them for years. They might be a little easier for me now. We'll see this week. I'm hoping to do them at least during warm-ups.

Thursday was a Not Good Day. And working out didn't happen. But, Friday, I hit the treadmill, whereupon I "ran" (I say I ran. Mom keeps saying it's not running if you were only going 2.6 on the treadmill. Whichever) for 8 minutes. Which was actually the goal for the week- 8 run, 22 walk- and it felt reasonably good. My ankles keep getting cranky after a little while, but it's not sharp pain, and it walks off, so it's probably that they need strengthening more than an actual problem. So, I've more or less caught back up on the running plan. I'm going to go for the goal of 10 minutes "running" this week and see what happens. If it works, then, yay, I'm on schedule. If I have to do it again next week, then, well, whatever. It's fine.

This week I also hope to make it to a spinning class. I got my bike shorts a few weeks ago, but there was that week I was sick, so it put that back a little. But it's all good. Things are going well, and hopefully they'll continue that way.

Revolutionary

This post on the Fat Nutritionist blog* really resonated with me this week. Not in the least because I got a dirty look waiting for the elevator to go to the parking garage at the gym. Given the quality of the look and the mumbling under the person's breath, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if I were thin, I probably wouldn't have gotten that look. And I refuse to defend my choice to take the elevator instead of the stairs. I have good reasons, but they're really no one's business but mine.

But really, I'm mostly lucky. People at the gym I go to don't usually give me dirty looks or act condescendingly towards me, as though it were the first time I've ever attempted to work out. I've heard stories from other fat people where such things have happened. I've gotten my own looks at other facilities. So, I am lucky in that I don't face significant harassment at any of the three branches of my gym that I frequent, occasional dirty looks at the elevator notwithstanding. It's generally a very welcoming place, and the employees I've interacted with have been nothing but kind and respectful.

At the same time, though, I am aware that putting on my swim suit and hitting the pool for practice is something of a revolutionary act. I'm a size 22 and I have no qualms about wearing a swimsuit. Part of that is because I love to swim, I love my water time and I'm coming to believe that it just might be a necessity for my mental health and sanity. So, those things outweigh any body consciousness I might feel. Part of it is that after being on swim team in high school, I don't have a whole lot of body consciousness in a swimsuit anyway. Once you've spent 15 hours a week or so in a suit as a teenager, you kind of don't care too much anymore.

The thing is, however, it shouldn't be a revolutionary act for me to go swimming. It shouldn't be a revolutionary act for anyone to put on a swimsuit. Or to get on the treadmill, or walk outside, or go to Zumba, or do yoga, or do whatever type of movement makes you happy. Everyone should have the ability to do any of those things without fear of ridicule or harassment. And the fact that this is not true is wrong. It is just plain wrong.

*The Fat Nutritionist is one of my favorite Heath at Every Size blogs. It was where I was introduced to the concept and the concept of Intuitive Eating. I recommend it for anyone.

Week 8: Mostly Swimming

I feel considerably better this week, which is good. So, I went swimming on Monday and Wednesday. Monday was a little rough- I was still pretty tired and still had a lot of crud messing with my throat, which sometimes made it a little hard to breathe. But Wednesday was much better. And then, yesterday, I felt pretty good, so I went to the gym and hit the treadmill. I figured I'd try for running for 4 minutes, which was where I was on the plan before I got sick, but I hit 4 minutes, still felt pretty good, so I went for 6, which is what I was supposed to be doing last week. And that went just fine, so clearly taking about 10 days off while my immune system protested the coming of fall didn't have a huge effect on my cardiovascular endurance. Good to know.

Next week, I'll be doing my swimming and adding back in my strength training and walk/running. So, almost back to normal. I have to redo my calendar for the running, because I'm now a week behind where the calendar says I am, but that's all right. I'm definitely making progress!

Getting back into it

I am feeling much better after feeling pretty lousy for the past week or so. I wasn't actually sick- it wasn't a cold. It was just chronic sinusitis acting up combined with weather allergies. Aside from being a little bit coughy and sniffly today, I feel all right. I can breathe through my nose again and I can take a deep breath without coughing, and my throat has stopped being so irritated, so I think it's safe to say I'm pretty much fine.

I was tempted to just jump right back into the full schedule for this week, which included 2x swimming, 2x strength training/run/walk and introducing spinning class. And then the more rational part of my brain took over and said, um, yeah, no. So, this week, I'm going to do my swimming. I might throw a walk in there later in the week if I'm feeling good after Wednesday's swimming. Next week, I'll add back in the strength training/walking and then the week after, I'll see about adding the spinning class. It's possible that this is a tad over-cautious, but October and I have a History, so chances are pretty good that I'll be back to dealing with this or a similar issue sometime in the next month. I'd rather not tax my already stretched reserves (my immune system might have been fighting itself as opposed to a virus, but the effect is nearly the same). I know exercising is supposed to improve one's immune system, but mine has disadvantages (I need inhaled steroids to breathe within reasonable parameters. While they aren't as rough on your system as oral steroids, they still decrease immune function), so I don't expect miracles here.

So, swimming this week. Yay!

Week 7: Um.

A conversation with myself today:

Brain: Hey, we haven't been to the gym since Wednesday. That's, like, five days.
Body: Yes, I am aware of this.
Brain: Training? Triathlon?
Body: Extreme fatigue? Nasty sinus drainage causing you to cough since Saturday? Exercise induced asthma that kicks up badly when you're already coughy?
Brain: Oh. Right. But...it's a little better today, right? I mean, we're not quite so tired?
Body: We have the energy to possibly try to work out...
Brain: Great! Let's go!
Body: If you'll let me finish...
Brain: Oh. Sorry.
Body: As I was saying. We may be able to work out, but we also have to have enough energy to wrangle 2-6 4th to 6th graders through homework this evening. We don't have the energy to do both without a nap.
Brain: And it's 1, and that happens at 6.
Body: We also need to eat.
Brain: Right, right. So, what you're saying is, I can do one or I can do the other, but not both.
Body: Exactly.
Brain: And while the triathlon is a priority, the kids are too.
Body: That's your department. I'm just telling you what the capabilities are for today.
Brain: Okay, okay. No gym. Tomorrow?
Body: I'll take it under advisement.

...In other words, I'm sick (well, I'm having allergy/sinus issues due to the weather changes. I'm not actually infectiously sick). And while many people can work out when they're sort of sick, if I'm coughing, I kind of can't. I'm pretty sure the coughing is mostly due to throat irritation, but that's a bit of an academic distinction. In practice, coughing is coughing, according to my twitchy airways. I might give swimming a go tomorrow night, but it'll depend on how I feel tomorrow afternoon. I am annoyed, but well, it's not like I didn't know this was likely to happen at least a few times during this whole process. It's the body I have, after all, and while at the moment, loving this body is a little beyond me, I can at least manage to accept it. Mostly.

Week 6: Master's Swimming, Strength Training and Walk/Run

I'm moving on to weeks, because I lost track of how many days. I could go back and count, but after 30ish, weeks just seem to work better. Anyway.

So, Monday night was my first night swimming group. It went all right. I really appreciated not getting up at 4:40 am. But I was a little out of sorts because I broke my good nose clips on Saturday when I went swimming with Mom (I mostly just messed around with practicing head position and kicking and just really playing around. I think the professionals call that "active rest". Sounds better than "I was just messing around in the pool", no?). So I had to use another kind that I really don't like. They work well, but they don't seem to fit on my nose the way I want them to and they're just awkward. The kind of nose clips I like don't seem to be sold in stores very often (and it's not like nose clips in general have ever been all that easy to find, in my experience), but I do have some on order and I am hopeful they will come in today's mail so I have them for tonight. I actually ordered them before I broke my other ones, because it occurred to me that only having one pair of clips was probably asking for trouble. And yes, yes it was.

But anyway, swimming was hard, because I was a bit of an idiot who forgot to take her inhaler. It wasn't even that I was getting cocky and wanted to try without it. I just flat out forgot. I'm blaming that on being at a different time and flustered about the damn nose clips. I will not forget tonight, let me tell you. I did it, I even did it well, according to Mich, but damn. It was ridiculously hard. And I also kept choking because I figured out where my face is supposed to be when I breathe, but I have not mastered not breathing in the water. Having taken my inhaler wouldn't have prevented it, but I probably would have recovered a lot quicker and maybe still wouldn't have been coughing yesterday morning (I'm fine now). So, yeah, not my finest hour.

Tuesday, though, was better. I met with Kevin the trainer to get some lower body strategies. Turns out that I know how to do a squat and a lunge with good form. And that I still can't breathe right when my abs are engaged, which makes doing bridges and leg curls with the balance ball its own special kind of hell. Oh well, it's not like I'm being timed on any of that, so if I have to stop and breathe, then, I suppose that's just going to have to be all right.

But then, I did my walk/run- this week, it is walk 26, run 4. I split this up by dividing the walking part by 2, so I walk 13, run 4, walk 13. This gets me nice and warmed up for the running part and gives me lots of time to recover afterwards. At least right now it does. I was thinking that going from 2 minutes to 4 minutes was going to be very, very challenging. And I was feeling a little bleh after the leg workout (note to self: don't take the fish oil capsule right before going to the gym, unless you like the tummy upset feeling. Which you don't). So, I got on the treadmill and said, "okay, I'm going to do the 13 minutes of walking and see how I feel". Well, I got to minute 12 and my stomach had settled down and I was feeling pretty okay, so I said, "Well, let's just try. If I don't make it all the way to 4 minutes, that's okay, but let's see if we can at least make it 2 minutes". And then I got to minute 15, and I was still doing okay, so I thought, "Okay, well, let's see how far we can get." and then I was at minute 16 and 20 seconds and it was like, "Oh, heck, there's only 40 more...30 more seconds. You can do this!" and I did it! I had to stop completely for a little bit (less than a minute, I think) when I was done to get a drink and get a deep breath, but hey, I ran for FOUR MINUTES. Without stopping. There was a lot of self-congratulatory self-talk going on for the remaining 13 minutes of walking. I think that's probably okay, though, because heck, if I can't tell myself I did good, then who can, really?

Training Plan Changes...Again

So, I suppose it's a good thing that I didn't expect my training plan to be static, because it's changed more often than...a really change-y thing.

The way things were originally planned was 1 day of swimming, 3 days of walk/run, 1 day of cycling. That changed pretty quickly as I figured out my swimming endurance wasn't as high as I thought it was, and also because I joined the Masters' swimming, which is twice a week. So, then it looked like 2 days of swimming, 2 days of walk/run and 1 day of cycling. But then I realized that some strength training was probably going to be necessary to keep me from hurting myself. Then, the plan looked like 2 days of swimming, 2 days of walk/run, and 1 day of cycling and strength training. And then...it occurred to me after doing a fair amount of reading that 1 day of strength training is generally not thought to be sufficient. And I want to do a spinning class for my cycling. And then someone mentioned overtraining could be part of why I'm really tired (maybe. There's a few other possibilities). So, the plan is changing again. I'm backing off a day for a few weeks until I get the strength training incorporated, and then I'm adding the spinning class (it helps that I didn't want to start the spinning class until I got a pair of cycling shorts. They're on their way).

Until the 1st week of October, the plan looks like this:

• Monday: Swimming (from 7-8pm, thank God)
• Tuesday: Strength Training and Run/Walk*
• Wednesday: Swimming
• Thursday: Strength Training and Run/Walk

*Strength training and then doing the run/walk may or may not work. I'm not sure yet. But that's the only two days it works, because the run/walk workout is only 30 minutes, and everything else is 60 minutes and I'm definitely not doing a strength workout before or after swimming.

Starting in October, the plan looks like this:

• Monday: Swimming
• Tuesday: Strength Training and Run/Walk
• Wednesday: Swimming
• Thursday: Strength Training and Run/Walk
• Friday: Spinning Class

It's entirely possible that the days will shift, depending on a million potential complications, but the general outline should stay the same now. I hope. 

Day 32: Strength Training, Walk 28, Run 2

Today, I attempted to replicate the shoulder workout from Wednesday and kind of failed because I forgot to bring the sheet with the workout with me. So I was going from memory and while I have a very good memory, I don't think I remembered everything properly. But, I gave it a try. I did also find out that doing 1 set is very different from doing 3 sets and I had to drop the weight down in order to get all the way through even 2 sets. And I didn't on some exercises. That's fine, I don't mind too much (particularly since I'm not sure I was starting out with the right weight anyhow), but something to keep in mind going forward.

I also ran again! Woo! I went a tiny bit faster today and it was a little harder, but I was doing fine by the time I finished the whole thing. Next week, it gets bumped up to running 4 minutes. I suspect this will be the hardest bump for awhile, since it's doubling the amount of time I'm running and every other time will only be going up by 2 more minutes, which will only be 1/3 the week after, and then 1/4th, etc. So if I can't do all 4 minutes consecutively, I am not going to be upset. Or all that surprised, actually.

I also realized that I have a lot of data on how I'm feeling in terms of performance, etc (the answer: pretty good. Really TIRED, still, but I feel good otherwise), but no actual hard empirical data. Grad school and the last permanent job I had woke up the latent data nerd in me, and while I still leave the major statistical analysis to Heather, my sister-in-law, I can at least follow a trend line and make pretty graphs and figure percent. I don't have a smartphone that would have a fancy app for doing this, so I bought a daily planner with enough room to write things down while I'm at the gym (and to write the full strength training workout so if I forget the paper, I will have it. Unless I also forget the notebook. We'll endeavor to not do that). That will let me write things down like, how far, how fast, how heavy, etc. and then I can make a spreadsheet (I love spreadsheets) and then I can make graphs (I also love graphs). And then I will figure out how to plug them in here so you can also see the pretty graphs. Yay, data!

Days 30, 31 and 31: Walk/Run, Strength Training and Swimming

I did actually get all my workouts in so far this week. I've just been too busy/tired when I get home to record them, so I'm doing it all at once right now.

Day 30: Tuesday: Walk 28, Run 2.

This turned into walk 20, run 2, because I was having an extremely flaky morning and I was running late. But, the most important part of the workout was the 2 minutes of running. In a row. Without stopping. And without complaining lungs until the very, very end, which is especially impressive, given that my allergies are awful at the moment (bad year for ragweed, plus the weather's so nice at night that we turned the AC off, so I'm sleeping with open windows which I'm not really supposed to do. I figure if I can breathe well enough to run, then I'm fine). My back didn't complain much either, although my ankle wasn't happy. But it walked off just fine and it was achy pain, not sharp, oh, I sprained it again pain. It'll get used to it.

Day 31: Strength Training

Yesterday, I met with Kevin the trainer, who was very nice and very willing to design a program for me that I can do on my own that will help with the swimming and the running (I figure whatever muscle I build for those two things will probably serve me fine on the biking). So, yesterday, we concentrated on what to do to train my shoulders, one of which is a little touchy. I separated it about 10 years ago, and it flares up now and again. Swimming isn't really aggravating it anymore- it was at first, but it settled down- but I'd like to prevent further injury and get stronger. So I now have an upper body, shoulder focused workout to do. It was relatively painless in terms of how much I really detest weight lifting (and I told him that up front) and only uses one machine whereupon I might feel exceedingly short compared to the machine. My main complaint about weight machines is that they are all apparently designed for men who are roughly 6 feet tall. Being as I am demonstrably not a man, nor 6 feet tall, this deserves a #fail on the part of the imaginations of the designers of said machines. And it's annoying. I made the happy discovery yesterday that cable machines are much, much better in terms of flexibility of design for a wider cross section of users. That is something I can probably get behind.

Day 32: Swimming

My coach sent us all a text message around 20 to 6 that she wasn't feeling well and cancelling practice. Only thing is, I was already on my way and didn't get the message until I got there. Actually, I didn't get it until I left- another woman had gotten it when she got to the gym and let me know. Since I was already awake and already dressed and already sitting with my feet in the pool, I shrugged and swam anyway. I think I almost have the head position thing down- I can tell when I pick my head up now. Breath control is still an issue, but I think I'm getting better. I made up my own workout for the day. I was going to try to do a distance ladder where I swam 50, then 100, then 150, then 200, then back down, all with 2 minutes per 50, which is what I've been doing during practice. So, I got to the 150 and my shoulders started getting really, really cranky. I couldn't figure out why they were upset. Until it dawned on me that I did a full, brand new shoulder work out about 12 hours before. Apparently, you should get more than 12 hours of rest between your upper body workout and making your shoulders work so hard in the pool. Or at least I should get more than 12 hours of rest between the two. This will not be a problem moving forward, since swimming is moving to the evening. So, instead of finishing the ladder, I did another 50 and another 100 and then practiced flip turns for awhile because I'm getting tired of stopping and turning at the wall. It may take awhile for me to get through a full practice with flips, but I'm feeling reasonably confident I know where the wall is now.

Day 29: Masters' Swimming

My deliverance is upon me! We are changing the swimming schedule next week to be Monday and Wednesday, 7-8 pm and Tuesday and Thursday 6-7 am. I don't have to haul myself out of bed at 4:40 am anymore!! (after Thursday). Well, at least not on a regular basis; I suspect that there may be weeks where Tuesday or Thursday may be more convenient for my schedule. I can do any combination of those days and times I want, which is very nice. But let me tell you, that was the best possible news I could have gotten at 6 am this morning.

This morning, we did 20 50s on 2 minutes. The goal for me was to keep pace around 1:40 or 1:45, leaving me with 15-20 seconds rest in between each. I, um, crushed that goal. I kept pace roughly around 1:30- I think my slowest was 1:38, and that was like, number 17. I was getting a little better at keeping my head where it belonged and I could actually feel when my knees were slipping into the way I'm not supposed to be kicking by the end, so there's progress there, too.

But yeah, tired. And I'm getting up early tomorrow, too, because I'm tutoring tomorrow night and there is not enough time between getting out of work (temp gig) and needing to be at tutoring in a different part of town to get to the gym (between the two, so this is not as insane as it might be), change, do my treadmill work, shower and change again, get myself fed and to the church for tutoring on time. But, since the gym is fairly close to work, I don't actually need to be at the gym until 7, so I don't need to leave until about 6:30, which means I don't need to get up until 5:45, which is a full hour later than I got up this morning. I'm still going to bed pretty much as soon as I get this posted, though. I be tired.