Pinocchio legs

As soon as I got in the pool I promptly forgot the workout plan. I knew there was stuff in it, drills, golf, intervals and such. Maybe senility is approaching; that's twice now I've totally spaced on the workout. They aren't THAT complicated.

Maybe it's just as well. I was mostly done my warm up and was thinking about what to do next, when the pool big dog got into my lane. Not surprising, I was swimming along in an orderly way, just a hair quicker than 2 min per 100 m. Everywhere else was chaos, with lane walkers, people trying to swim, the talkers (who are well behaved, btw), and some people trying to do something else.

The warm up had gone well. I'm still not feeling really strong, but I was feeling smoother. Once he started, I picked up the pace a bit. I was lapped quickly since he had started just behind me. I got into his draft, and hung on for a length. He does a fast flip turn, saw me right behind, and grinned. The bastard GRINNED at me. And stepped on it. I was slowly slipping out of his draft at the end of the next length, and that was all. I slowed down a bit. Then we did it all again next time he lapped me. I caught a look at my watch and did a 45 second 50 m lap, with him slowly pulling away. That's pretty close to my top speed, and I don't normally do that in the middle of an ongoing swim. I called it done after 1 K, 19:30. That felt fast for today, though I've gone faster. Did some drill, and one golf 84. Yuck. Cooled down. Long session in the dive tank working on core and stretching. This was about an hour overall.

I feel a bit smoother, so maybe my swim has learned something from hanging out with Kelly's swim. My arms and shoulders are still feeling a bit weak. During my last ride, I was paying attention to my shoulders and arms. I think I might have been tensing them up, and that's why I ended up with that soreness.

Breakfast and puttered about the house for a bit, then dressed for my run. I looked at the plan. More slow builds. Oh Dear. It turns out I still suck at slow builds. I warmed up with a walk, then a slow run, and gradually found a nice pace. But my legs felt like wood. It felt like a very stiff run, there was no flow. There was also no gradual build. I could pick it up a bit, but it was a jump from one speed to the next, and today I didn't have it to keep that faster speed going any longer than a few minutes. I've no idea how fast these paces actually were.

Once I got going, I warmed up, and it felt ok, but no better than that. My feet felt fine, but my legs were heavy and stiff. Normally, I'd say the run was barely ok, but I was doing a route where I used to get to a certain point in an hour. I added an out and back in Fish Creek to this route, right at the very west end of the park, up the escarpment. When I'm doing serious hill run repeats, I'll come here. It's steep enough I have to walk my bike up and down. Anyways. I'm not sure how much the out and back added, maybe another K. Even after doing that, I got back to the place where I normally ended at the hour point, and ended there at the hour point. Which made me pretty happy. Improvement has happened.

What the run ended up being once I got going was alternating between my faster pace, and slower one. One of the things that did go well was running up the hill out of Fish Creek. Last time I ran this it was a high high zone 3 plod. Today is was a fairly springy low zone 3 or so, based on my breathing. After an hour I walked the rest of the way home, and stretched lots. Had my feet in the air for 15 minutes or so. I'm going to call this a 75 min workout, since there was a brisk walk to warm up and cool down in addition to the hour run.