Tried to skip my swim. Failed. Swam. WON!

RUN 2.7 out of 3.7 miles, 25 out of 42 mins
SWIM 1700 in 45 mins
BIKE COMMUTE 12.6 thanks to forgetting something at home

Another one of those "up early yet not to work until 5 hours later" mornings. What the hell do I do all morning? Good question. So I started a little notepage from a spreadsheet, with 15 minute increments to track where I am and what I'm doing. It's just for a week, patterns will emerge and I can go from there.

I'm up at 5, don't walk dog until just after 6, start my run 630, end run 715, get dressed to leave on bike but then don't leave house until just after 8. Huh, half hour of....packing, nom'ing, delaying. Hence another spreadsheet to ask 'what was I avoiding doing' and 'what was I doing to avoid it'. Again just until patterns emerge. Today, I was avoiding leaving to swim because I wanted chicken. Wow, great reason.

Off to swim, get half mile out and realize I forgot my bike lock. Back home, and on the way home that tempting thought of "just shower at home and get to work" pops into my head. Sure I didn't want to swim, but not that badly. I did want to swim to some degree. So home, grab lock, leave again 8:23. I told myself that I just needed to swim 30 mins, and that's good enough.

Pool, shower and to deck. The Plan called for a Locomotive swim of 3x500, so I just did those as S-P-S then rounded up to an even 45 mins and 1700 with a CD. The swim felt sloppy at times and good at others. BUT IT'S DONE!

Shower, out, (saw Deb!), bike to work, stuck at a train for a while on Manchester. (Haha, I wrote trail instead of train). This was kinda cool, the train was stopped and when it started moving again the clang-clank-clang-... went from left to right as all the cars started being pulled. Then again as the train (haha, trailed, habit typing!) paused and started again I got to enjoy the effect two more times.

Got to work around 10:10. So....5 hours and 10 mins to get from bed to work. Ugh. Then another 15-30 mins of making the spreadsheets, and more minutes filling them out and looking at them. Ugh. But productive day otherwise.

HOT out, finally, I'll be tired for my commute home. I'm still optimizing a non-construction route home, until then I'm seeing old neighborhoods, new bumps, and fresh pave.

When tagging this post I saw my Swim Challenge tag. What was that? Gotta go check that out. :)
And log it as time wasted on my spreadsheet hahahaha. Turns out it was a March 2010 personal swim challenge to get me in the pool more. Goal was 3-4 swims per week of 45' or more, on a set MWRF schedule. I spent more time thinking about the "carrots" i was going to use as a reward. I came up with all foods described back then as "highly pleasurable": Lara bars, nut butters, and cashews. Good Lawd Jeezus Krist, was I trying to make myself sick? And a $ carrot of $5/swim, 3 month accumulation. And benchmark times like <1:50 100y.="" for="" nbsp="" p="">
On Day 1 I ate the nut butter before I even dipped a toe in the pool. In less than a month I'd broken the benchmark times and set new records for myself. I soon gave up on the $ carrot and stuck to foods and being able to watch the TV show ANTM. Bought my TeamUSA armwarmers with my cash. Then I puttered out after 2 months. In July I tried again in one post, then mentioned it again in January 2011. This time I did a cashew butter on a banana if I went to Monday Master's.

Aw, I was so cute back then.

And it's a good idea to get my benchmark times measured. Was bemoaning what I perceive as a lack of progress this morning at the pool...look into it.