Back and forth butterfly

SWIM: 1100-ish yards in ~45 mins
RUN: 5.5 miles in 55 mins.

The was some serious fatigue in training this morning. My swim was unfocused and barely inspired. I kept wondering if it would be better to just quit. But that's my problem, I don't quit. I just keep hammering away...sometimes mindlessly, sometimes to no improvement.

CHG pointed out some tips. The ABC drill to get me to swivel my head back towards the bottom of the pool before my right hand enters the water. Instead I'm keeping my head rotated too long and having to put my arm/shoulder around it. Another tip was to turn my head up as soon as my left arm fully extended. Combine that with the ABC drill, and you get left out out-fast turn of head up- quick inhale-fast turn back down as right arm comes over-right hand enters water.

Oh, and I'm probably hitting the lane lines (again today) because my left arm is crossing over.

I got out of the water feeling the need to vent some frustrations. Work, club, personal, training, I just never seem to rest. I keep bouncing back and forth between one of the other with incremental progress. Or at least that's how I felt this morning. And it didn't help that as I went to hop out of the pool my right calf cramped, leaving me to sit there and hide my pain at the side of the pool. I don't really have anyone to vent to, so I decided to run now instead of later. Off to FoPa to work out my problems.

Today's run was a 55 min form run. But I was determined to get the 3 hill climbs in that I missed Monday. What was that about just hammering away...?

I decided to stay on the flat paths around Art Hill for the drills, and do the 3 climbs in the 15 min pre-drill phase. The drills felt good and they are becoming more natural, all except the leaning. I need to work on that.

The day was getting hot. I was rapidly losing water that my water bottle couldnt replace. The sunrise was pretty in the pool but now I was looking for shade. The last 5 mins of the run felt good, fast, and easy. I ended by the handball courts, and didn't run 1 second longer than I had to. I just stopped. It was then I noticed the butterfly in the handball courts.

The courts have glass doors and windows about 3/4 of the way to the roof, above them is an opening. Most of the roof is really a chainlink fence type of setup, it's open and lets sun in. The rest of the roof was concrete. All interior concrete walls were painted white. Above the glass doors and the opening was a 2-foot wall of concrete along the roofline. The sun was still rising, but cast a beam of light along 2/3rds of the western wall.

At some point, a butterfly flew into the opening over the doors, flew up to the ceiling and was unable to find the opening again. For that, it would need to fly down a few feet. But it was attracted to the sunlight through the fence/ceiling and the white walls. So it went back and forth along the western wall, from the short wall over the door and opening to the end of the chainlink ceiling. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

The butterfly just wanted out. But it was unable to realize that it needed to make a change in its flight plan. It just kept flitting along the sunlight, all it wanted to was the sunshine. I watched it back and forth, back and forther, for some time. When would it find the opening? Would it find the opening? How long would it survive? How long would it just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again?

That was me just one month ago. Doing the same training over and over. All I wanted was to go faster and stronger, but I didn't realize that I needed to change course. Now that I'm working with CP I've changed course, and so far for the better. I'm feeling more focused, like I have a purpose. I've had my reality check and I've rewritten some goals.

But at the same time I'm making some of the same mistakes as I made before. I'm not as focused with work and home. I'm not getting enough sleep each night. My meals are whatever I can throw together quickly. And so I wondered, how long would I just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again?