Getting Better?

Last week, not so good. This week seems to be going better.

I was scheduled to do a snowshoe race at Beaver Creek on Sunday. I decided not to do it. It was a tough decision. In the end, I couldn't mentally handle spending hours in a car to maybe race 1 mile or less if my leg kept me from being able to run. Instead, I did the swim that was scheduled for Monday.

Swimming on Sunday rather than Monday was a good call. When I saw the swim, I knew it would take a long time for me to do it. As expected, it was long. If I had done it on Monday, I would have felt rushed. Doing it on Sunday allowed me to focus on swimming rather than worrying about how long it was taking to do the swim. The swim itself went well. At the end, my back muscles were sore, but it was the good kind of sore after a quality workout.

On Monday, I ended up taking an unscheduled rest day. I had planned to do an hour elliptical workout to make up for the missed BC race. However, I was unable to find time to make it to the gym so it didn't happen.

I had an option on Tuesday: 30 minute run or 30 minutes on an elliptical. I elected to do 30 minutes on the elliptical. My leg was a little sore after the elliptical workout but much better than if I would have run. Further, I was able to walk without limping. It was nice to get in a good cardio workout and be able to walk normal after it.

Today was 2 hours on the trainer. It was a great workout. In fact, it was the best trainer workout that I have had in a few months. Even better, my calf felt the best that it has in the last few weeks.

Tomorrow is a scheduled rest day. I am looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow and taking it easy. This has been a good week so far.

Ugh

This week has not been a good week training or otherwise. It started great on Monday and has gone downhill since then.

On Monday, I swam. Although it was a long swim, it was probably one of the best swim workouts ever for me. I felt strong and relaxed in the water. The swim was going so well that I was kind of disappointed when the workout ended. This is unusual as typically I am glad when the swim workout is done. If it is possible, I may have been on a swimmer's high. Despite the great swim, work quickly killed my motivation for the day. It was such a struggle that I barely billed six hours for the day, which was not a good start to the month.

On Tuesday, I was scheduled to run six miles. I say scheduled to run because the run did not actually happen. The day before, I had discussed this run with Steve. I was concerned about it because of my left calf. For the last month or so, every time I have run, there is a dull pain in my left calf. After a run, I typically limp around for a day or two. Because of this injury, I've not been running much lately. Thus, for this run, Steve wanted me start off very slowly to see if I could avoid the calf pain. If not, we agreed that I should stop the run.

As discussed with Steve, I started slowly. It didn't matter. Less than a few minutes into the run, the dull ache was back. I tried to give it a go for about a mile but the pain didn't go away. At that point, I just ended the run. I'm probably could have done the run but it wasn't worth it. I knew that I would just end up limping around. Later in the day I talked to Steve about the run. Steve suggested that I do a workout on an elliptical to see if there was still pain. That evening, I did exercised on an elliptical. The ache was still there although it was not as bad as it is during running.

Work was not much better than the run. Once again I didn't come close to billing the number of hours that I need to bill each day.

Wednesday was another swim. The swim was 50 continuous minutes of pulling. During this swim, I tried doing flip turns at both ends of the pool. Other than trying something new, the swim was uneventful. Work, from a billing standpoint, was a bit better than Monday and Tuesday as I least I hit the target number of billable hours.

On Thursday, Andrea once again worked on my calf. At times, it was painful as my left calf lit up each time she worked the inside of it. Afterwards, the leg felt better. Because I didn't feel like going to work, I talked with Andrea after the massage much longer than I should have. The end result was that I got into work after noon. While talking to Andrea, I also found that I was scheduled to ride 1.5 hours on the trainer. Knowing that I had to ride the trainer after work, I left work early even though I had billed less than five hours. This was the worst billing day of the week. Even worse, I already need to make up like five hours just for this month.

When I got home, Brenda wanted to go out to eat. So instead of getting on the trainer, we went to dinner. By the time we got back, it was almost nine. I really didn't feel like riding the training but did it anyway. I'm pretty sure the workout was not that great. Even though I had the bike on low resistance, I had no motivation to spin at a high cadence. After an hour, I just wanted off the bike. However, I struggled through another 30 minutes of riding.

Today was another long swim. This swim was not so good. During the swim, I felt anything but strong and smooth. In fact, I felt like a lead weight in the water, and flip turns were not going much better. It started with coming up short once at the wall. I then started to over think the flip turns and had numerous other almost not reaching the wall turns. At one point, it got so bad that I didn't do a flip. Instead, I ended up diving to the bottom of the pool, which I am sure was very funny to the watching lifeguards. Needless to say, the swim couldn't end fast enough. After the swim, I was very tired and my back muscles were fatigued.

Fortunately, I decided to work from home today. It was a good decision since I didn't get home from the swim until around 11;00. Despite the late start, I actually had a good work day. I completed a new project and got my required hours in for the day. Unfortunately, I will probably have to work either tomorrow and/or Sunday just to catch up on the other hours that I missed this week.

Trying New Things

This has been a week of firsts. On Sunday, I swam my longest continuous time and distance. Yesterday, I received by first massage by a massage therapist. Today, I flip turned every time at the deep end of the pool while swimming.

I've already blogged about the long swim so this is old news. The massage occurred because of Steve. My left calf has been bothering me since I ran in New Orleans. It has bothered me enough that a run with Steve was cut short last Thursday, and after consulting with Steve, I did not run on Sunday or Tuesday as scheduled. Steve wanted me to see Andrea to work on my calf. Being a procrastinator, I did not immediately call Andrea. Fortunately, she called me to set up an appointment.

It didn't take long for Andrea to find the problem. It hurt, but not too bad, as she worked on the left calf. Afterwards, she had me wear the Normatec pants for fifteen minutes of additional treatment. The pants basically have a bunch of air bladders that are systematically filled with air to compress the legs, which is suppose to help circulate fluids through the legs. After the massage and Normatec treatment, my legs both felt better. The left calf was a little sore later in the day but much better today. I may need to add periodic massages to my schedule.

Finally, today was a 45 minute continuous swim. After practicing flip turns on Monday and Tuesday, I decided to do this swim with flip turns every time at the deep end and open turns at the shallow end. There were some ugly ones at the deep end but every turn was a flip turn. It is a work in progress but I am getting closer to trying flip turns at both ends.

Quick Update

It's been pointed out to me that it has been some time since I've blogged. In fact, there have been no entries since last year. In the next few days, I'm going to try to do some posts about my trip to New Orleans and Mexico.

As for training, it is going okay. Yesterday, I did a 4K swim. This was the longest time and distance that I have ever done for a swim. I felt good at 3K. At 3,300 meters, I started to feel fatigue in my arm and back muscles. The last 700 meters were a struggle to complete. However, I did it, and I'm looking forward to the next long swim scheduled for March 1: a 5K.

Today was another swimming day. I was scheduled for HR Masters but I didn't go because I stayed in Arvada. Actually, I have not made it to any scheduled Masters workouts. I don't feel ready to swim in a Masters group yet and the 5:15 am start time makes it even less appealing.

With no specific swim workout, I was inspired by watching Doreen work on flip turns after the swim yesterday to work on flip turns today. It went better than I expected, and I'm looking forward to working on them again tomorrow. At the next long swim, I want to do flip turns at least every other 5o meters.

Taking Off the Training Wheels

Today was the 3K/5K continuous swim. I was scheduled to swim the 3K distance. I had done this distance a month ago. However, I swam the entire distance with a pull buoy. Today, I was instructed to swim the distance without the pull buoy. In other words, the training wheels were coming off.

We were instructed to meet a little before 6:00 am at Carmody Recreation Center. Steve had arranged for the pool to open early for us so that we could do the swim with a 50 meter setup. For me, this meant at least a 5:00 am wake up. This was tough as Brenda and I had gone to a holiday party Saturday night and did get back to her place until 11:00 pm. Ugh.

I was doing okay time wise until I hit a snag leaving. My car was parked in Brenda's garage, which is a detached garage. When I got to it, the garage door was locked, and I had no key. Even worse, her house was locked so I couldn't immediately get back in to get a key. I tried knocking on the door for Brenda to let me in, but she was still sleeping.

I resorted to finding the house key that she keeps in a lock box. Although I found it, I then had a new set of problems; it was so dark that I could not see the numbers on it. After fumbling around for what seemed like forever, I finally opened the lock box. I got back into the house. Brenda gave me the key to the garage, and I was off. However, I was now running late based on how long Mapquest said it would take to drive to Carmody Recreation Center. I only hoped that I would not get lost on the way there.

I arrived just at 6:00 am. I was glad to see everyone was still in their cars. We entered the pool through the back door to the recreation center and got ready to swim. The lanes were divided into 3K and 5K lanes. I picked the slowest 3K lane and started to swim.

The swim itself was not too exciting. It just seemed to be an endless going back and forth in the lane. I got passed more than once during the swim by Barry and Max. I tried to keep track of how many times I was passed by each of them so that I could double check my distance when they finished.

My goals were modest: complete the swim and finish my 3K swim before Steve finished his 5K swim. When I finished, I was happy to see that Steve was still swimming. I got him by about 4 minutes. This just shows how slow I am in the pool; Steve almost finished his 5K before I finished my 3K. I try to keep this in perspective, however. Last year at this time, I could barely swim 50 yards, and I was worried about completing 500 yards in a pool swim triathlon. Now, I am swimming 3000 meters continuously and could have kept on swimming. If you had told me a year ago that I would swim 3000 continuous meters, I would have told you are crazy.

I'm glad that this swim is done. It was one of those workouts that concerned me when I saw it on my training schedule. I am sure that this will not be the last time that it is written into the schedule but now I know I can do it. It is a great feeling to complete something that you are not sure you can do.