Tirrrrrrredzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Up 5:15.
Pool 5:30.
Swim. 1 hr . Ugg. Slowest I've swum a timed K in a long time. Water was thick. I felt slow and heavy. Other stuff involving fins and paddles. Still slow. Tried drafting off the other swimmer in the lane, and I couldn't keep up to her for more than a length.

After the swim I found out why I was feeling so heavy. Wish I could have done that before the swim; it would have probably gone better.

Work. Lots of coffee.

A bit of Thursday's core, which all too littered with the words plank and pushups for my liking. It had me spooked yesterday. It had me spooked today. 3 pushups is failure. A minute of plank hurt.

Run. 50 minutes. Ugg. Easy start then harder. Hills. Wind. Heavy feet. Stretch after.

Now 8:12. Finish wine, go to bed.

The sweet spot

We didn't get that much snow delivered to hour home, maybe a few cm at most, but some parts of town got much more. My co-worker measured more than a foot in her driveway. A heavy, wet foot. She stayed home. It wasn't that cold, but there was a lot of snow coming down. It was slowly melting. Running would have been an exercise in wet and heavy, and hoping you wouldn't get hit by a car.

Instead of running outside, I did a hard deep water run for an hour. Nothing more to say about that. Oh, warmed up by swimming 10 minutes. Not fast, but working on really powering through the flip turns.

The bike this evening was weirdly good. Or goodly weird. Warmup was going a bit slow. I could smell the Indian take out we'd brought home. My legs flat out didn't want to go above 110. Standing was better than the other day, but it would have been a struggle to stay with it. My legs didn't want to do any big gear work at all either.

So what did they want to do? Spin at 90 in time trial gear. Part of the first set was to do just that for 5 minutes, then do something else. When I looked at my watch 8 minutes had passed. My breathing was easy, and my heart rate was astonishing. I even sat up to adjust the band. I tried a bit more spin and big gear stuff, and it was no better. So back to TT gear at 90. My legs were happy there. I didn't have to force anything or particularly work at it to stay between 89 and 91. My heart rate settled in at 128 to 130 bpm which is excellent for me doing this. Normally it's 132 to 133 bpm by the time I finish such a set. Did that for 10 minutes and took a break that included a bit of spin up. That went a bit better not worth talking about. Then another 10 minutes of TT, feeling just as good. Sweating a bucket, but breathing easy, and a nice steady heart rate. Nice cool down, with some spin ups to 110. Anything over that was work and getting into jiggly muscles that didn't feel good. 1.25 hours of good solid strong bike, even if I couldn't spin, or push big gears. I'll take it.

Yet more snow

A jerk nearly spoiled my swim today, but I looked over it. He wasn't worth getting upset about. Just because he's an idiot that doesn't want anyone to pass him, and will speed up to prevent it from happening, even after you've nearly done it. Then he squeezed me into the lane ropes to get out of the way of the third swimmer coming towards him. I thought, briefly, about grabbing him by the foot and punching his lights out, then thought better of it. That particular set was very fast.

Otherwise the swim went really well. Just under an hour. Not quite a half hour of core that I didn't do last night. Yoga as usual.

The snow is falling hard here. There wasn't time for a run, so I'll probably have to make it up with a water run tomorrow. They're saying there might be several inches of snow. But why am I telling you this? If you're interested you can read it yourself. 10 cm is 4 inches, pretty close.

There was a firm brains/legs talk

It's no secret that I've been disappointed in my biking for most of the last several months. Still not sure why, but I'm getting pissed about it. So tonight I got on the bike, and while doing a good warmup had a firm talk with my legs. I told them I wasn't getting off till the planned ride was done, or they actually failed. I told them I was done getting off because there was a bit of pain. I told them they were going to push through, they had to suck it up, and all that other stuff. I told them that if they could run, they could bike.

1:50 later I got off and stretched. Happy. Sweaty. Legs tired, but feeling pretty good. Took the warm up slow and gentle. One leg drill was good, and I could have gone longer. Then some 20/20's. Main set involved 3x5 min on starting at TT gear or less one. I did the first one in TT -1 just to see how it felt, and then went to TT. The 3x4 min in TT+1 at 85rpm. Then 3x3 minTT+2 at 80, except the last one that I did at 85. Just because.

I won't say my legs felt great throughout. No, there were times they complained and grumbled, but I was in no mood for it. I found I had to concentrate on spinning, and my upper body wasn't as steady as I'd like for most of the ride. Standing sucked big time. My right knee didn't like that at all, right at the top of the pedal stroke. Good thing the plan didn't call for any standing.

The good thing about the ride was looking at my heart rate. It's getting back to where I think it ought to be, and the one minute recovery was consistently about 30 bpm.

There was an audience for my swim today

The swim plan said "go hard." I looked at the lanes. The pool big dog, the one I've nicknamed Mr. Outboard was in the fast lane, and very rightfully so. Another guy was trying hard to keep up and not doing a good job of it. Two slow women were sharing the other fast lane. I thought about "go hard", and got in the lane with the guys.

A brisk warmup showed I could pass the other guy, and he soon retreated to the next faster lane. Just me and Mr. Outboard. Holy crap can this guy swim! My warm up was a bit brisk, and he blew by me. Into the first main set, (4x100 on 2 min desc) and he's still passing me. My fastest 100m was 100 seconds on the nose, and he passed me in one length. I couldn't even stay in his draft. By the time I got to my 50 m intervals I think he was doing cool down because I could keep up and he was doing other strokes. I even passed him while he was doing a kick drill. (woohoo!)He left and Mr. Elegant joined me. He's a tall skinny guy, swims about the same speed as me or a hair faster, and uses fewer strokes doing it. Have I ever said how nice it is to be sharing the lane with people that know what they're doing in a pool?

All the time, I had an audience. Or at least, I could see them, even if nobody else could see them and their stop watches. JA, JS, KB, TW, and KF. You know who you are. All of them watching me swim, making notes, consulting their stopwatches, frowning occasionally, grinning every now and then, and periodically yelling at me to get the lead out of my ass, or get my elbows up, or TUCK AND FLIP dammit!!!!! I'm not sure how they convinced the lifeguards to let them bring in the deck chairs and a big frosty jug of some fruity drink. Yes, with the little umbrellas. I'd suspect there was booze in it from the good time they seemed to be having but some of them are teatotal. They laughed really hard during one length with fins (going hard) where I was trying for a better body position and ended up submerging myself just as I was going to breathe.

I wasn't sure what to think of going for a run. My knee is feeling better, but I was feeling sort of blah. Still, I decided to get'er done, and I'm glad I did. My left calf was a bit tight at first, but I stopped and stretched it a bit, and it was fine after. My knees were fine, as were quads and hams. Everything was fine. It was a fine night for a run, nice and cool, with a bit of a breeze. By Calgary standards of course. The 'Toontown girls would be in booty shorts and jog bra, I was slightly overdressed in tights and long sleeve tech shirt, and my California readers would be in multiple layers. I mean, what's wrong with 8 C (46 F) and a light breeze that has the flags nearly straight out? Walked to warm up, ran easy 10 minutes, and settled into a nice stride for another 35 minutes, then walked some more home. Stretched. Feels pretty good. Now lets see how the Tuesday bike goes. It will almost certainly be indoors since the rest of the week looks like rain. I should have known it was too soon to take the trainer tire off, but it's done.

The annual mint plant trimming

No GQH, "mint plant" is not a euphemism. This is how I know it's spring here. We have a mint plant out front. When it starts sending out new branches it's time to trim off the old ones. And get after the dandylions, and start thinking about mowing the lawn. I'm not sure how wild mint plants cope. We didn't get any tulips at all this year. We have hungry bunnies coming by pretty regular. Or deer, they like tulips too.

I wouldn't call the bike today a failure, but neither was it a good ride. As long as I concentrated on my pedal stroke, and stayed in easy gears it wasn't painful. But if I started pushing instead of spinning, or tried harder gears I started getting right knee pain. Not as bad as the other day, but still enough to dissuade me from doing the pyramid of power my coached scheduled. And no T run either. The plan was to hit the pool for a deep water run instead, but that didn't work out. Stupid pool schedules.

It seems my afternoon workouts are the tough ones. I can get my run or swim done in the morning and that feels pretty good. Getting on the bike in the afternoon is hard, partly because I'm tired from work, and partly because I don't know what to expect. It's easier to get going on a workout if you have every reason to expect it to be a pretty good one, or at least a normal one. But I've had so many bike workouts go bad it's like I'm expecting them to go bad on me now. Which makes me less eager to get at them. It's odd that the run is going well again, and the spin isn't. I'd have though the various leg pains would be more punishing during the run. I'm going to have to think about this.

Weekly Summary
Swim 3.0 hours
Bike 2.5 hrs
Run 1.5 hrs
Walk 1.0 hrs
Cardio total 8.0
Core/stretching 2.5 hrs
Total 10.5 hrs

Views

Friday swim was early. The pool opens at 5:30 and I was in the water at 5:35 for an hour and 5 minutes, plus some stretching at the end. The first main set was 800 m alternating easy and hard, 25, 50, 75, 100, 75, 50, 25. Then the whole thing over again, this time with fins. That turned out to be 2 minutes faster. It was fun watching the girl in the next lane trying to keep up. She normally swims a bit quicker than me, even if I'm pushing it. During the easy fin sets she wasn't dropping behind very fast. At the end she said she loved chasing faster people, even if they are wearing fins, as it makes her think about her stroke and try a little harder. I was sharing the lane with a guy I met at swim camp last year. Then another guy joined us. As long as it was the two of us I could pass whenever I liked, but it got a bit tricky with 3.

My knee is still giving me what for on Friday evening, and I was beat, so I went to bed early. Like 8am.

I'm counting today's half hour brisk walk through Costco dodging cart wielding geezers as a workout. Picked up a big box of Clif's bars at $3 off, which works out to $11.99 for 18 bars, or 66 cents per bar. Way cheaper than MEC at $1.40 last time I looked. MEC has wider flavour choice, though.

Here's what I spent most of the time looking at this winter, sitting on Estela.

Here's the next most popular view of the basement.

Lastly, here's the view outside at 5pm today.

My knee is gradually feeling better. I'd been hoping for a ride outside tomorrow, but what with the snow, and this forecast, I think I'll be on the trainer again. 8 C is 46.4 F.