Craptastic

Today I had a spectacularly bad swim. If I swore on this blog (which I do not because I know my mother reads it), I would have several choice words to use as descriptors. When I woke up this AM feeling tired and less than 100% (but really, who feels 100% at 4:55am?), a little voice inside my head said, "you should just go back to bed now." At the time, it sounded like the voice of laziness talking. But partway through a really ugly 1600, when I was on the verge of getting lapped (okay, I did get lapped, whatever), it sounded like the voice of reason. The arms wouldn't turn over, the legs felt like dead weight, I felt like I was working hard but going nowhere fast. I don't think I could've kept up if I had a jetpack strapped to the back of my Splish. THAT is how slow I felt. After the relative success I've had with swimming the past few months, this was a little slap in the face.

At the end of practice, I got out of the pool and wanted to take a nap. My brain immediately started thinking, "you're overtired, you just need a break, you should TOTALLY skip that scheduled run and use that time to rest up for camp instead." Now I was all ears to the voice of reason. During my commute to work, I grabbed the trusty iPhone and tapped out a frantic e-mail to Jen, trying to make my swim workout sound as pathetic and sad as possible, hoping she'd respond back with - "yup, you are tired, you should take the rest of the day off and eat bon-bons." Of course she actually said nothing of the sort, providing me with no excuse to skip my run. This is all made more awesome by the fact that the run was about 20-25 minutes longer than I had thought it would be and included intervals. Oh the drama. I cajoled myself onto the treadmill, saying I didn't have to do the whole workout, I didn't have to do intervals if I didn't want to, if I felt crummy, I could get off in 30 minutes, blah, blah, blah. Wouldn't you know, once I started running, it didn't feel so bad. My warmup came and went, the intervals started (a little slow at first, but eventually I stopped being a wussy sandbagger), the intervals finished, and the whole 70 minutes of the workout were suddenly over. I still wanted a nap, but I felt decent about my run and I was glad I didn't make excuses to skip it. The decent run workout semi-canceled out the craptastic swim (or at least gave me something else to think about). And really, when have you ever gone for a swim, bike, or run that you regretted later? I think the only regrets are for those workouts that you skip. I'll make sure I tell myself that next time I am tempted to skip out.

Swim Lane Promotion... But Will It Stick?

It's no secret that I'm not a great swimmer. I'm relatively consistent with my times, with my last four Ironman swim times all being within 2 minutes of each other and all but one of my half Ironman swim times last year being 35 minutes and change. I want to be better than that this year. But how?

Yesterday morning while plowing through my breakfast bagel, I read a blogpost on swimming by Elizabeth Waterstraat and she talks about how challenging herself with swimming, putting herself in a faster lane, forcing herself to meet more demanding set intervals, was key to her making improvements over the years. Reading this post got me all jazzed about my Tuesday AM swim - I was going to promote myself up a lane whether I liked it or not! I've been on the fence for awhile about doing this - I feel like I am between lanes right now. I'm a PITA in my original lane and I'm risking being a PITA in a new, faster lane. Tuesdays are usually a pretty safe day to take such a risk because there aren't typically any lung-busting sets and hopefully that would save me from being lapped n a 50. Anyway, I had second thoughts when I pulled into the parking lot. "Maybe this isn't your week. Maybe you should stay safe and think about a lane promotion, but don't actually act on it until next week." I was hopscotching the fence all the way to the edge of the pool. And I saw my normal lane had twice as many people as the lane I was considering moving into. And the sets didn't look too bad (alas, I didn't look very closely, the last set was 10x100 IM: I-freaking-M).

Long story short. I moved up a lane. I survived. And I'm going to give it another go on Thursday (when there usually are lung-busting sets). Oh, and my butterfly is as unpretty as a caterpillar. Bleck.

Why Mr. Sweetie IS a Sweetie

So I swam this morning and actually got to the pool before my lanemates started the first set (this has been the week of being on time - I've gotten into work EVERY DAY before 9am. It's a strange and awesome feeling to beat your co-workers to work). Anyway, back to the swim. Good lord I'm terrible at pacing during the swim. Really terrible. I've not yet mastered the art of the "descending swim" or the "start conservative and finish strong" type of set. No, no - instead, I try to start and hold a stupid fast pace (for me, I will not say my splits because in reality they are NOT stupid fast) which always ends with my lanemates saying, "hehe, you kind of died there in the last 50, didn't you?" And I've also discovered that trying to swim stupid hard really only buys me about 2-3 seconds over 100yds, compared to swimming a steady, strong, DOABLE pace that doesn't leave me gasping at the end. And please let's not get started on open water swimming and how my pool fitness does NOT seem to translate to the types of OWS times I'd like.

Anyway. Would you like an example of why Mr. Sweetie is a sweetie? He's been super nice this week by dropping me off at the metro station on his way to work, saving me from the worst 30 minutes of my morning (the bus commute to the metro station). He leaves for work too early for me to fit in a shower between my workout and our departure, so I've just been getting ready for work at the gym in my building. And guess who forgot to pack her work shoes this morning? And guess who didn't realize it until, oh, halfway to the metro station? Mr. Sweetie was nice enough to turn around, bring me back to the house to get my shoes, and then drive me back to the metro station. Without a single snide remark (had the roles been reversed, I don't think I would've had the willpower to hold my tongue). I brought an extra pair of shoes to work with me today so this won't happen again (but then I forgot to actually take the extra pair out of my bag and leave them in my office, so that didn't do me any good).

I looked at my workouts for next week. Not going to lie... I am getting EXCITED! Excited as training ramps up, excited for upcoming races, excited for... my first ever double run day! Neither run is super long, but even when I was just training for a marathon and trying to qualify for Boston, I don't think I ever did a double-run day. I feel like double run days are serious, and I think it's kind of cool that Jen thinks I am serious enough to be given a double run day :)

Yesterday I finished the book "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." A co-worker of mine had recommended this book and with the movie out in theaters, it was on the top of my list. It is one year after September 11th and Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old boy whose dad died in the terrorist attacks, is on a mission to figure out a puzzle that he thinks his dad left behind for him to solve. The puzzle ends up being the backdrop to other more important story lines. In the beginning, I wasn't a big fan of Oskar's character (I know, terrible thing to say about a kid whose father died). He comes off as being too smart and pompous for his own good, kind of reminding you of that know-it-all child you used to babysit for when you were a teenager. But then layers start to peel away and I found myself liking him and feeling sad for him and rooting for him by the time the book finished. In the end, he really is just a kid trying to overcome a trauma that hopefully most of the rest of us never experience. It was well-written, definitely quirky, and as you read it, you feel like you are inside the minds of the characters who are narrating. The most poignant part, I thought, was when Oskar was talking to someone about why he needed to know exactly how his dad died. It was towards the end of the book and I really just wanted to give him a hug. NOBODY should ever have to think about something like that. Definitely a book I would recommend.

Swim test

This morning I didn't go to Masters swim... I went to the local high school pool to do my timed swim test - 10x100yds with exactly ten seconds in between. At a pace that was almost all out but yet something I could manage for all 10 intervals without falling apart. I did a leisurely warm up, in absolutely no hurry to get to the main set. I actually brought a watch with me to the pool (because I had to) and, to tell you the truth, I was a bit curious what my swim time would average out to be for the 100s. I held things together for intervals 1-9, doing flip turns and everything (I don't know how I used to swim and NOT do flip turns), and on the tenth interval, the wheels were starting to come off. I was so glad to be done. But, overall it really wasn't that bad and I found that I was mentally in the game as well, just focusing on the interval at hand and not counting down the moments until I would be finished. I think that made it easier to do all ten AND it actually went by pretty quickly.

The final result - a 1:38 average for all 10. I know my split for the first one was 1:35 but after that I just stopped trying to figure it out. And even though 1:38 isn't fast by most standards, I'm pretty pleased with it - not too long ago I couldn't have kept that pace for 50 yards to save my life. I'm a runner, not a swimmer. But slowly I've started to become a runner who swims, and I've noticed that when I go to the local pool, I'm not the slowest one there. I think that sometimes (on the good days) I could even be mistaken for a swimmer! Let's just put it this way, in my very first triathlon back in 2005 (a disaster in itself in terms of the swimming and biking) it took me 34:47 to do a 1200m swim. At Savageman this year, I did a 2000m swim in about the same amount of time. It pays not to dog paddle!

So, a good day in terms of the swim. AND Mark comes home tonight - I pick him up in just a few hours from the airport! Yaaaaaay!