Recent fitness adventures

I wasn't in the pool much last week. One of the pools was closed so it was a bit of a gong show. For a few days in there I felt like I was on the verge of getting a sniffle so I dialed back and tried to stay warm.

Friday it worked out I was in the pool again. The swim club wasn't quite done yet so I did some water running in the dive tank to warm up. Then in the lap pool I decided to try to push my CSS times a bit. I've been working on 1:50 for 100 m on 2 minutes. I can do this for a long time in a short course pool.

Today I decided to try to swim 1:45 on 2 minutes and see how that goes. The first one, trying to swim easy was 1:38. Oops. The next several were 1:42 or so. I decided to keep going till I couldn't make 1:45. It turned out my seventh the clock turned to 1:46 as I touched the wall. Good enough for me. I was really beginning to feel it.

I'm pretty sure that trying to do 1:45's on 10 seconds rest, like you're supposed to for CSS is going to go anaerobic pretty soon, and that's not the point at all.

Trying to do 1:47 with 10 seconds rest is very quickly going to get into careful clock watching, and trying to keep track. It's easy to get confused during this sort of thing. At least it is for me.

My legs have been feeling better, enough so that I decided to try an easy run today. I did lots of joint mobility stuff to warm up, and walked further than I normally do. It's -10 C with a bit of a windchill and I was maybe just a little bit underdressed. First K felt choppy and slow. Second K was a bit better but I was beginning to feel my legs a bit. I had to push just a bit to get to 3 K, 23:30, and happy to stop. Again, a longer walk than usual and lots of stretching after. My legs are feeling pretty good.

Sunday was shoveling the hard packed mess at the bottom of both my driveway and my neighbor's driveway. His is a double. Maybe I should have waited to run today; it's so beautiful out.

I have been mulling over doing a marathon this year and have decided that trying to train up for it just isn't a smart thing to do. After two months of not running I cannot say I have a running base to work from. A slow 3K doesn't count.

I've been on the bike a few times, but no serious workouts. I've been feeling ambiguous about the bike. It seems to be just as hard on me as running, and that's before I get outside where I can control the effort and output. Much as I loved riding on the roads, I'm not sure how much of that is going to happen anymore. Wait and see in spring, I guess.

I have been accumulating old running shoes. As the great tidy and organize effort goes on, I keep finding old running shoes. One pair is the ones I did IMC in. They're pretty beat up. I'll gather them all up and take them in next time I buy shoes. Some of them have been worn very little. The Altras were an experiment that didn't work out. Another pair made me run on my heels so I set them aside. So if someone with feet the same size as mine ~12 wants some really cheap shoes, as in, take them away, we can work out a time to meet up.

Lunch time. Chicken and duck, with a specialty stuffing, and spuds as a one pot dish. Corn, and wine of course. Gotta go...