Today I tried breakfast first, then dropped Linda off at work, then core. Well, to be truthful, there was another cup of coffee inserted between getting home and doing the core. There was the lure of reading blogs. Darn you all for having such compelling content!
Still, I had an appointment downtown for 9:15 and I had to hustle to get through 30 minutes of core, shower, and drive there. Core was all good. For the first time ever, I manage to lift the top leg while doing side plank! Twice even! I'm not hearing much applause, so I guess you're not impressed, but I'm thrilled!
Blood donation went quick as always. The actual draining is the fastest part of the whole process. They said this was the 41st time for me, so I guess I'm getting used to it. One of the blogs I follow mentioned her blood as being A+, and therefore perfect. She has perfect blood she says. Well, mine's almost perfect. A neg.
The bike was a very sweaty 90 minute ride. At one point I had pools of sweat sloshing back and forth on my glasses. That's just a bit distracting, if you haven't had that experience. Plus it makes looking at the bike computer or stopwatch just a bit tricky.
We went out to Route 40 Soup Company in Turner Valley for our anniversary dinner. mmmmmm. I'm ready to waddle off to bed. It was so yummy. Anybody living near Calgary should eat there at least once. Check their web site or phone for hours. Yes, it's worth it.
Ironman Canada - DONE! What next?
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Pool snuffle
Long swim this am. I'd been mulling over the choice of FOMC or CM, and chose CM because I can see the pace clock. My heart sank when half the pool was booked. Kids. Bah! Turned out there weren't so many of them, and these kids could really swim. I found out later it's the Cascade swim club, since their normal pool is undergoing renovation.
The fast lane had 2 people in, so I got them swimming circles. At least they were fast, or reasonably fast and considerate. Near the start I got a bit of water, and spent the next while wanting to burp. Eventually that came out just as I finished a set. I'm sure it echoed off the walls. I messed up and did the 4 x 200m at the end instead of near the beginning, so I didn't quite make the times. This turned out to be just over an hour of swimming. Still trying to surface nicely after flip turns.
I had a chat in the hot tub with a nice Chinese gentleman. To be blunt, he swims very badly, but asked about how to do better. We talked a bit about how to swim faster. I'm trying to find a nice way of suggesting he swim in the slow lane, but so far it hasn't been a problem, so I haven't worried about it.
It's snowed about 4 cm since my run on Monday, and some of my neighbours are slack about shoveling their sidewalks. The roads are getting polished up very nicely, to the point I was running very carefully, more concerned about balance than speed. It was only -15 C (5 F) so not too cold, but I made sure to warm up slow and easy. Ran 10 K, 69:15 overall nice and easy, second half was a minute quicker. K9 was brutal. I was getting tired, it's deceptively uphill, and no shoveling had been done. Walked a bit to cool down, and stretched inside.
Aka Alice posted some nice pics of the weather she has to put up with these days. Visit at your peril. Weeping, wailing, and teeth gnashing are likely to occur.
Yoga class is on again, instructed by Fiona. She promises lots of hip opening stuff over the next 12 classes. Tonight was good. 1.25 hours. Brought some kleenex since pool snuffle struck late this afternoon. I don't understand this. I swim in a salt water pool, though I know there is still a slight bit of chlorine in it. But I don't get snuffle right after the swim. Typically it comes on hours later, often many hours. Sometimes it's not bad, sometimes like tonight I'm sneezing my brains out (which doesn't take much work but I've installed elastic cords so it just snaps back into place) and blowing my nose a lot. It's a royal pain. Anyone have any ideas how to deal with this?
The fast lane had 2 people in, so I got them swimming circles. At least they were fast, or reasonably fast and considerate. Near the start I got a bit of water, and spent the next while wanting to burp. Eventually that came out just as I finished a set. I'm sure it echoed off the walls. I messed up and did the 4 x 200m at the end instead of near the beginning, so I didn't quite make the times. This turned out to be just over an hour of swimming. Still trying to surface nicely after flip turns.
I had a chat in the hot tub with a nice Chinese gentleman. To be blunt, he swims very badly, but asked about how to do better. We talked a bit about how to swim faster. I'm trying to find a nice way of suggesting he swim in the slow lane, but so far it hasn't been a problem, so I haven't worried about it.
It's snowed about 4 cm since my run on Monday, and some of my neighbours are slack about shoveling their sidewalks. The roads are getting polished up very nicely, to the point I was running very carefully, more concerned about balance than speed. It was only -15 C (5 F) so not too cold, but I made sure to warm up slow and easy. Ran 10 K, 69:15 overall nice and easy, second half was a minute quicker. K9 was brutal. I was getting tired, it's deceptively uphill, and no shoveling had been done. Walked a bit to cool down, and stretched inside.
Aka Alice posted some nice pics of the weather she has to put up with these days. Visit at your peril. Weeping, wailing, and teeth gnashing are likely to occur.
Yoga class is on again, instructed by Fiona. She promises lots of hip opening stuff over the next 12 classes. Tonight was good. 1.25 hours. Brought some kleenex since pool snuffle struck late this afternoon. I don't understand this. I swim in a salt water pool, though I know there is still a slight bit of chlorine in it. But I don't get snuffle right after the swim. Typically it comes on hours later, often many hours. Sometimes it's not bad, sometimes like tonight I'm sneezing my brains out (which doesn't take much work but I've installed elastic cords so it just snaps back into place) and blowing my nose a lot. It's a royal pain. Anyone have any ideas how to deal with this?
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Pre-breakfast. Pre-COFFEE even
Yes, I know that anything pre-coffee is weird and unnatural for some of my readers. My brilliant coach had an idea about my core sessions, and why some of them don't go so well. It turns out that I'm always doing core last, after all my other workouts. No wonder I'm tired. So she suggested that I try doing some of them first and see how that works out.
Today core was first. Like really first thing, and it all went well, though push ups within 5 minutes of getting out of bed seems a bit odd for me. Got through all three sets, though the very last pushup was a strain. I only got through it knowing it was the last one. Everything else went pretty good, other than struggling with my ipod's stopwatch "feature". Core was about 20 minutes or so, and I did another 10 minutes of stretching after the bike. Thursday I'll try the core after breakfast and see how that goes.
The bike session was super! Lots of good stuff in it. One set pushed my heart rate up to 145 bpm. That's the highest I've seen it on the bike in a while. Total bike was 90 minutes, though I was actually on it for a bit more.
Today is a rather special day for us. 25 years. Wow. It's gone by so quick. It seems like just a short while ago I woke up from the initial part of the BDD, and according to Linda I've been a work in progress ever since. Oh, BDD stands for Bonk, Drag, Domesticate, which I recommend as a marriage strategy for all my single female friends.
Today core was first. Like really first thing, and it all went well, though push ups within 5 minutes of getting out of bed seems a bit odd for me. Got through all three sets, though the very last pushup was a strain. I only got through it knowing it was the last one. Everything else went pretty good, other than struggling with my ipod's stopwatch "feature". Core was about 20 minutes or so, and I did another 10 minutes of stretching after the bike. Thursday I'll try the core after breakfast and see how that goes.
The bike session was super! Lots of good stuff in it. One set pushed my heart rate up to 145 bpm. That's the highest I've seen it on the bike in a while. Total bike was 90 minutes, though I was actually on it for a bit more.
Today is a rather special day for us. 25 years. Wow. It's gone by so quick. It seems like just a short while ago I woke up from the initial part of the BDD, and according to Linda I've been a work in progress ever since. Oh, BDD stands for Bonk, Drag, Domesticate, which I recommend as a marriage strategy for all my single female friends.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Shoveling the garage once again
One of the unintended consequences of Calgary not ploughing many of the roads is that a lot of crud builds up on the bottom of your car and in the wheel wells. There are people that have frozen their cars to the driveway. They go out for some reason in the morning, park in the driveway, the afternoon warmth softens things up so that it slides down a bit. It ends up wedged against the tires and the wheel well, and the driveway, and that's the way it freezes overnight. The driver is SOL in the morning.
Similar things happen in the garage, even if it's unheated. Glop falls off and builds up. And up, and up. The first time it happened I had some naive belief that it would melt and I wouldn't have to do anything. This is exactly Calgary's attitude about ploughing roads. I've learned when this happens that you have to stop the car on the drive way, shovel out the garage, shovel off the car tires and wheel wells, then park in the garage, then shovel the driveway again. This is much worse than shoveling snow. Most of the time snow is easy to shovel. This is a messy dark brown slurry.
The swim today was not messy for me. The pool was no worse than usual, but things would be much better if the other swimmers understood what fast, medium, and slow meant, and where they were on the scale. Or had some consideration for other swimmers. Or understood that you can put 8 or 10 really slow swimmers into one lane no problem, but once you get past 4 fast swimmers in a lane there needs to be some pretty careful organization, and perhaps, actual conversation about what's happening. And realized that one slow swimmer with a bunch of fast ones just makes for a lot of unhappiness as everybody has to start keeping track of the other swimmers rather than concentrating on their stroke. An actual Masters swim session is a different game, they are all doing the same thing, swim like sharks, and like swimming nose to toes. I'm talking about random people (and some are pretty darn random!) showing up at the pool.
I was fortunate enough to be sharing the lane with some pretty good swimmers. The workout was really good, lots of drills, lots of intervals, lots of metres. It was just over an hour, I'm pretty sure. Toward the end I was getting tired enough that I was barely getting 26 second 50's starting on 30. I'm glad there weren't any more in the plan. There were some interesting body balance drills. I did these barefoot, but as suggested I'll try with fins next time. I only figured out where the pool keeps fins after my swim.
Lunch was a good time for a run. Sunny and cool, about -11 C (12 F). Started easy, and ran easy, concentrating mainly on keeping my arms moving. I tend to let them hang, which doesn't help my stride. 5 K, 34 minutes. My feet felt light and happy, with a nice smooth stride. No heart rate monitor, but it would have been low 130's the entire way.
Similar things happen in the garage, even if it's unheated. Glop falls off and builds up. And up, and up. The first time it happened I had some naive belief that it would melt and I wouldn't have to do anything. This is exactly Calgary's attitude about ploughing roads. I've learned when this happens that you have to stop the car on the drive way, shovel out the garage, shovel off the car tires and wheel wells, then park in the garage, then shovel the driveway again. This is much worse than shoveling snow. Most of the time snow is easy to shovel. This is a messy dark brown slurry.
The swim today was not messy for me. The pool was no worse than usual, but things would be much better if the other swimmers understood what fast, medium, and slow meant, and where they were on the scale. Or had some consideration for other swimmers. Or understood that you can put 8 or 10 really slow swimmers into one lane no problem, but once you get past 4 fast swimmers in a lane there needs to be some pretty careful organization, and perhaps, actual conversation about what's happening. And realized that one slow swimmer with a bunch of fast ones just makes for a lot of unhappiness as everybody has to start keeping track of the other swimmers rather than concentrating on their stroke. An actual Masters swim session is a different game, they are all doing the same thing, swim like sharks, and like swimming nose to toes. I'm talking about random people (and some are pretty darn random!) showing up at the pool.
I was fortunate enough to be sharing the lane with some pretty good swimmers. The workout was really good, lots of drills, lots of intervals, lots of metres. It was just over an hour, I'm pretty sure. Toward the end I was getting tired enough that I was barely getting 26 second 50's starting on 30. I'm glad there weren't any more in the plan. There were some interesting body balance drills. I did these barefoot, but as suggested I'll try with fins next time. I only figured out where the pool keeps fins after my swim.
Lunch was a good time for a run. Sunny and cool, about -11 C (12 F). Started easy, and ran easy, concentrating mainly on keeping my arms moving. I tend to let them hang, which doesn't help my stride. 5 K, 34 minutes. My feet felt light and happy, with a nice smooth stride. No heart rate monitor, but it would have been low 130's the entire way.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Sunday brick
We were watching the series finale of Battlestar Galactica last night. Overall we really enjoyed the series, seeing how people dealt with a near impossible situation with no right answers. Lots of action, and no shortage of character driven story leading to watching the people change and grow. What I really liked is seeing a gender neutral society, where the shape and location of your reproductive organs doesn't limit your role in society. I thought it a bit odd that the "rag-tag fleet" could produce amazing quantities of booze and cigarettes, but have trouble producing toothpaste. I admit to being a bit disappointed in the choices they made during the final episode; I think they could have been smarter. Very well worth watching, if you haven't because you remember the dreck version from the 70's.
Onto the important stuff, my Sunday morning brick.
On the bike for 1.5 hrs of fun goodness and sweating a bucket. I ended up backing off the one leg drill a bit, doing it in 30 second chunks instead of minute chunks. Then a 20 minute run. It took a little while to find a good stride as my legs felt a bit slow and heavy. It used to be that getting around the block in 20 minutes after a bike was a major effort, now I can keep my heart rate at the bottom of zone 2 doing it. I call that progress. Still frigging cold here, -23 windchill, so the transition from bike to run has to be done carefully.
Then 3 sets of core. First was all good. Second was a just barely state of affairs. Third was a shambles, essentially going to failure rather than the time suggested on the plan. But it's all good.
Weekly Summary (rest and semi-sickish)
Swim 2.5 hrs
Bike 2.25 hrs
Run 1.5 hrs
Walk .5 hrs
Core 2.25 hrs
Total 9.0 hrs
Onto the important stuff, my Sunday morning brick.
On the bike for 1.5 hrs of fun goodness and sweating a bucket. I ended up backing off the one leg drill a bit, doing it in 30 second chunks instead of minute chunks. Then a 20 minute run. It took a little while to find a good stride as my legs felt a bit slow and heavy. It used to be that getting around the block in 20 minutes after a bike was a major effort, now I can keep my heart rate at the bottom of zone 2 doing it. I call that progress. Still frigging cold here, -23 windchill, so the transition from bike to run has to be done carefully.
Then 3 sets of core. First was all good. Second was a just barely state of affairs. Third was a shambles, essentially going to failure rather than the time suggested on the plan. But it's all good.
Weekly Summary (rest and semi-sickish)
Swim 2.5 hrs
Bike 2.25 hrs
Run 1.5 hrs
Walk .5 hrs
Core 2.25 hrs
Total 9.0 hrs
Saturday, January 2, 2010
The gong show started early
The gong show on Saturdays at Canyon Meadows pool reliably starts about 8am. The serious swimmers know this and are waiting for the doors to open at 7. Today there were 5 of us, plus some other floaties. I see the two guys often. They take over a lane and do some pretty tough sets. I know better than to try to share a lane with them, but I think today was a rest day for them. The two girls are rockets, both swimming much faster than me. For a few minutes I thought one of them was Julie. We all got in and started with no nonsense.
I had a lane to myself till the end of warm up and a guy joined me. We split the lane and carried on. I had two sets of 4 x 150 m as a main set. Midway through the second set, as I'm pushing off the wall, a girl with fins on tried to cut me off. No idea where she came from. I swam over her and finished that 150 as she floundered back and forth. Then I gave her a lecture about telling the people in the lane about joining in, and making sure everybody knows we're swimming in a circle now. She was brutally slow, even with the fins. I think she's the first of the resolutionistas for this year. I wasn't expecting them until Monday.
The first one in each set was 2:40, the rest were 2:45 or maybe a couple seconds quicker at most. The plan was to start on 2:45, but I revised that to starting on 3:00. That worked pretty well. Swam a few additional laps thinking about form and working on my turn to bring it up to an hour. Overall the swim is pretty good again, though I still need to work on surfacing after flip turns. That is sooo not graceful, or smooth. At this point my open turns are still faster than my flip turns. No surprise, I've only done a few hundred flip turns, and I've done a bazillion open turns.
As I was getting out of the pool the gong show was well under way. The fast girl was still doing her thing and somehow had convinced everybody to stay out of her half lane. I suspect my inner shark was hanging out with her, and maybe that was why. Other than her, the pool was filled with people that swim so badly it hurt my eyes to watch. I went upstairs for the machine of truth and found more gong show in the weight and cardio room. Two people were arguing in Cantonese over one of the machines; it sounded like murder was only a few seconds away. My number is 231, which considering it's Christmas and a rest week, isn't as bad as I thought it would be.
At 11am the weather page said -17 C (2 F) with a wind chill of -23. I ended up over dressing a bit since the sun had come out and there was no wind till near the half way point. Walked briskly then jogged very slowly for 10 minutes to the start of the path to Glenmore Reservoir, then ran an hour, trying to stay at the bottom end of zone 3. It drifted up a bit while going up some hills on the way back. I got as far as the Outfall Duct 21, not quite 100 m from where the path splits near the kids playground area. At the end I had to do a really slow jog for 2 minutes to get back to the starting point. Walked 15 minutes home, stretched 15 minutes.
I'm quite pleased by this. My run felt good and smooth. It's only during the walk at the very end that my left calf started complaining a bit. So it seems (cautiously) that T Rex has moved on. Let's hope he finds someone else he likes better than me, and preferably not anybody I know.
I had a lane to myself till the end of warm up and a guy joined me. We split the lane and carried on. I had two sets of 4 x 150 m as a main set. Midway through the second set, as I'm pushing off the wall, a girl with fins on tried to cut me off. No idea where she came from. I swam over her and finished that 150 as she floundered back and forth. Then I gave her a lecture about telling the people in the lane about joining in, and making sure everybody knows we're swimming in a circle now. She was brutally slow, even with the fins. I think she's the first of the resolutionistas for this year. I wasn't expecting them until Monday.
The first one in each set was 2:40, the rest were 2:45 or maybe a couple seconds quicker at most. The plan was to start on 2:45, but I revised that to starting on 3:00. That worked pretty well. Swam a few additional laps thinking about form and working on my turn to bring it up to an hour. Overall the swim is pretty good again, though I still need to work on surfacing after flip turns. That is sooo not graceful, or smooth. At this point my open turns are still faster than my flip turns. No surprise, I've only done a few hundred flip turns, and I've done a bazillion open turns.
As I was getting out of the pool the gong show was well under way. The fast girl was still doing her thing and somehow had convinced everybody to stay out of her half lane. I suspect my inner shark was hanging out with her, and maybe that was why. Other than her, the pool was filled with people that swim so badly it hurt my eyes to watch. I went upstairs for the machine of truth and found more gong show in the weight and cardio room. Two people were arguing in Cantonese over one of the machines; it sounded like murder was only a few seconds away. My number is 231, which considering it's Christmas and a rest week, isn't as bad as I thought it would be.
At 11am the weather page said -17 C (2 F) with a wind chill of -23. I ended up over dressing a bit since the sun had come out and there was no wind till near the half way point. Walked briskly then jogged very slowly for 10 minutes to the start of the path to Glenmore Reservoir, then ran an hour, trying to stay at the bottom end of zone 3. It drifted up a bit while going up some hills on the way back. I got as far as the Outfall Duct 21, not quite 100 m from where the path splits near the kids playground area. At the end I had to do a really slow jog for 2 minutes to get back to the starting point. Walked 15 minutes home, stretched 15 minutes.
I'm quite pleased by this. My run felt good and smooth. It's only during the walk at the very end that my left calf started complaining a bit. So it seems (cautiously) that T Rex has moved on. Let's hope he finds someone else he likes better than me, and preferably not anybody I know.
Friday, January 1, 2010
I had a witty title but lost it. Sigh.
Thursday was a rest day. Literally. After dropping Linda off at work I went back to bed and stayed there till she called about 11 saying she was getting off work early, and come get her please. I must have needed the rest because I feel much better. We did some shopping on the way home, puttered about the house, and settled in for the beginning of Battlestar Galactica, season 4. We're loving it. We didn't make it till midnight though. Call us old fogies if you must.
Friday is still cold, and the pools are closed, so I moved my run and swim to Saturday, and took today as a rest day. Except that I bleached 3 doz wine bottles to get the remnants of label goo, or water spots, or wine film off. That's fun. Started a new wine kit, a German Ehrenfelser, which is a nice dry white.
Then I was good and did a half hour of core and stretching. My hip feels fine, but I'll be sure to warm up well before the run tomorrow.
Sometimes I get all sentimental and maudlin talking about the year just past, or the year coming up, but none of that this time! It was a good year overall, but there was some shite too. It's done. Gone. Looking forward to 2010.
About the only thing left to do is to thank my readers for showing up and commenting, and hope to see you here regularly.
Friday is still cold, and the pools are closed, so I moved my run and swim to Saturday, and took today as a rest day. Except that I bleached 3 doz wine bottles to get the remnants of label goo, or water spots, or wine film off. That's fun. Started a new wine kit, a German Ehrenfelser, which is a nice dry white.
Then I was good and did a half hour of core and stretching. My hip feels fine, but I'll be sure to warm up well before the run tomorrow.
Sometimes I get all sentimental and maudlin talking about the year just past, or the year coming up, but none of that this time! It was a good year overall, but there was some shite too. It's done. Gone. Looking forward to 2010.
About the only thing left to do is to thank my readers for showing up and commenting, and hope to see you here regularly.
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