July comes to an end

BIKE: 1hr for about 17 miles. MS of 5min hard/5min mod for 45 mins

SWIM: 1:29 for about 2000m.

Got up early to get the bike in. I knew I'd be too tired after the picnic (and I was right) to get a ride done. As much as I dislike sitting on the trainer when the weather aint that bad, this was the plan. And there was no way I'd get in 5/5 intervals on the road around here.

The swim was a near fail. I just didn't have the energy, mental or physical. The umpteenth email to come to me this week reminding my of my inability to balance things out and get things done arrived at the end of the bike ride, and I couldn't shake it off for the swim. But that's just part of it. I was tired. I ended up doing just 50s and 100s, hanging on the wall to rest. We worked on the ABC drill, getting my right arm to catch wide, and w-i-d-e arm entry. When I get it right, it feels good! When I don't, eh, I don't feel so good. But even my "oh geez what am I doing wrong" laps still came in around 1:06 for 50m.

Then near the end my left leg cramped a little. Just a minor one, it shook out in a few mins, but it spooked me. F^CK. I decided, that was it. I'm done. Get out of the pool. I got to the wall where I overheard HJ in the next lane saying she had a foot cramp. Then she pushed off the wall. Then I pushed off the wall.

In the end, the distance is only a reasonable guess. There was lots more standing around today than usual, but still I only did freestyle so it's not like the time was eaten up in the kicking sets that I opted out of.

How do I feel? I'm told my eyes have a glazed over look. A few people have asked in I'm OK (them's being CHG and PS). I tired as all hell but lovin' it. July is over! What a month! Something for the club every stinking weekend! August is for ME.

NUMERICS: planned: 14:15. actual 14:12
SWIM: 5906 y in 3.33 hrs, planned 3.58
BIKE:103.40 miles in 6.5hrs, planned 6.08
RUN: 24.90 miles in 4.03 hrs, planned 4.08

damn, almost exactly as planned!

Long ride in IL, new riders!

BIKE: 4hrs and 62 miles. 4hrs=actual time moving, actual ride closer to 5hrs.

Back to the Mill-Wat-Val loop from the ColMark. Lots of new riders with us today, both new to the group and new to riding with me. That always puts me on edge for the first hour or so, waiting to learn how they react, signal, ride, etc. Once I have that figured out, it's all good.

We started at 5:30am. The sun wasn't even up yet! There was absolutely no wind, and 100% humidity (or so it seemed). Sweat would bead up on us and just sit there. Oh and it was still hot--in the low 80's at first but once the sun came up it settled back into the mid-90's.

The ride was at a slower pace than usual, we had a new rider (doing IML!) whose pace was just a few beats slower than our average. I stayed back with him, knowing that feeling he might have of being the guy who slows everyone down. I've felt that way, and when I feel that way no one can convince me that I'm not the SlowZebra. So I made sure to try to convince him that he wasn't. Hope I succeeded!

Great ride overall! I ate too much before hand, ate and drank just right during the ride, then overall afterwards. This sent my tummy into some real discomfort!!! And it was only noon! Gotta watch these super early workouts. In part, that contributed to my problems.

Day Off, Systems Review

Day off! I was joking to myself yesterday that Thursday's are probably my hardest day, so it's OK to get worn out on xfit cuz I'll have time to recover. Sad thing is, I'm not training but I'm not exactly resting either. The extra time and energy just mean I try to get more done on Friday's.

Today was notable for the b-ee-rr-u-n.

Time for a systems review. Immediate concerns include the right calf muscle that cramped Weds. It still hurts. It even hurts to just touch the muscle, let alone flex or stretch it. No other injuries or pains.

My time management has improved, and my to-do list shrunk from 36 to 15 by the end of the week. Many of those 15 are left for Sat/Sun, so that's not a bad job! I'm restarting some projects at work, so that helps there.

Home has been a bit haywire schedule-wise. We haven't worked on the house all July and right now it really needs a good clean-up.

Feeling good. Tired but good. I get tired just walking up the steps. I've mentally needed a rest break all week, hopefully one is coming up soon!

Getting back to long runs

RUN: 12.6 miles in 2hrs. 1st and last 30 mins were at an easier pace, the middle 60 mins was 6.6 miles in ~55 mins for a 8:20-8:30 m/m pace.
STRENGTH: 20 mins total, 3 rounds of 3 min walking lunges, 2 min crunches, 1 min burpees.

Started early and the weather was much cooler (85F). LC and I started early and did ~28 mins before the group. She had some great stories to share :)

Then we met with the group, and DC and I took off at a faster pace. We did the loop together with him pushing me a bit. I kept asking for a slow-down (although I really didn't want to slow down) and wasn't granted one. This is good for me, but I was worried about being able to hang on to the pace and being able to continue running afterwards. But I did. So no worries.

Xfit sounded harder than it was. It was awesome.

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?

Loopty-Loop of Forest Park

BIKE: 1.5hrs for 23 miles. All in the small ring.

I usually do my Tuesday ride alone, often indoors, because it's written to be done that way. Interval and drill work are in the 'script and those are harder to do on the road. But when the offer came up to ride with some friends this morning I took it. Yesterday at work had 3 bad emails to round out a bad Monday so I jumped at this chance. Also I had a medical appt that disrupted the day and took a chunk of time from me.

While driving over to FP I realized that I didn't have to do the Tuesday workout today, that I could swap it with Saturday's small ring ride! Go me!

JM, AB, and I did loops around FP, at some times seeing parts of the park I didn't frequent. When first proposed, I wasn't all that excited about riding around the park, but once we got going I realize that there was no stoplights, no waiting, few cars, and it made for a nice steady ride. I was pleasantly surprised.

I focused on improving each hill repeat with better gears or form. Much easier than last week's big ring ride!

Didn't get my core training in though.

Swimming in the gutters; 50 mile Benchmark!!

SWIM: 70 mins for 2300m (or 1.4 miles!)
RUN: 66 mins for 6.8 miles at 9:42m/m average

Today I crossed the 50 mile benchmark for swimming in 2011!

This is my longest Monday Master's swim in some time. For once I showed up on time and started the swim at 5:20am. And wouldn't you know it, CHG was out of town for it.

There is finally a break in the heat. Yesterday was 95+ in the AM and only 82 by the afternoon. So while the water was still 85F, it was certainly a more pleasant swim than last week. At least you could stand up to cool off.

The sets were good today: 4x300, 1st 300 as 6x50 kick/drill/swim/kick/drill/swim, 2nd 300 as 3x100 descending 1-2-3, 3rd 300 as 2x150 descending in each 150, and 4th as 1x300 steady.

I was a slop fest today. My mind was buzzing about IM CdA, I was tired (even though I rested yesterday), and I kept hitting the stupid lane lines!!! As in really hitting them!! You know the rule that your body follows your eyes? That if you look at something on the road your bike will follow and then hit that something? Well it turns out if if I think about something, I'll hit it. Once I started hitting the lane lines, I got focused on hitting the lane lines, then all I did was hit the lane lines. For all the smacks I gave the lines, I'm surprised I still have a watch. And that I'm not missing more skin off my right hand. OW! You know what I say to that....

Oh HTFU!

Not sure why I was swimming in the lane gutter. I'm still working on an earlier hand entry, and that seems to leave me lower in the water. So I was gasping for air a bit. I'm getting so much better at not panicking when I inhale water. Just blow it out and get the rhythym back. Still sucks, though.

Regardless, the waning moon was beautiful to swim under, and watching the sun rise over the pool is always a treat. And although I wasn't a smooth or fast as last weeks PR swims, my lane mates have noticed my increased speed. Yeah!!!!!

LC and I ran over lunch again, it was "only" 96F degrees out. It was hot but oh so much better than last week! The Rx for the run was 3 Art Hill climbs but the high sun drove us to more shaded hills. Not as good of a workout as it could have been, maybe I can throw in a climb on Weds run? I'm glad LC was there today, I think left to my own devices I would have tried the hill climbs and really cooked myself. Did this run in the Kinvaras, I'm finally getting some long miles in those shoes! I can remember being able to do only 3-4 miles before my legs called for quits.