swimming
this morning i found waking up easy enough and was able to get my food ready and packed quickly. so much so, that when alex was ready to leave at 5:45, i was ready with my shoes on as well. he had to go by work, but i went straight to the gym and was very early; the kind of early where you have to stand around with your teammates until they let you through the gates.
there is one girl in particular on the team that bugs me for some reason. i think it's because she doesn't take a shower before going in the pool. i'm sure that almost everyone else doesn't do it either, but this girl insists on being first through the gates, first to get her towel, first to rip off her clothes, and first to be running to the pool. now maybe it's that she's the slowest in her lane or takes longer than most to warm up, i don't know. something about her just bothers me for some reason. i will work on letting it go next week.
meanwhile, erika m. came to practice today. i thought it was just a fluke thing, but apparently she is able to be there every monday. she talked to me about my stroke, how i was crossing my arms in the front and how i should try to spread out my arms when i'm taking strokes. i thought i was supposed to be twisting in the water but she seemed to suggest that i should not be. it was confusing. in the end, i thought that i felt like a lizard crawling along the bottom of the pool. i also worked on not twisting so much to breathe.
at the end, alex was still going along and i figured he had a bunch more to do, even though i was done, so i decided to join him and finish up whatever he had left to do. at some point he said to me, "how much more do you have to do?" and i said, "i'm all done, i was just going until you were done." and he said, "i was going until you were done!" so i said, "OK let's do one more 50." so we did. it was cool having someone at my speed in the lane.
| 100 swim/25-12 kick x 3 pull BP | 125 |
| 100 swim/75 drill*) *4x4/fist/index | 175 |
| 100 swim/25-12 kick x 3 pull BP | 125 |
| 100 swim/25 drill*) *FTD | 125 |
| 8 X 50 | 400 |
| Odd CU | |
| Even Hesitation | |
| 1 X 150 | 150 |
| 2 x 50 fast | 100 |
| 2 x 100 | 200 |
| 2 x 50 fast | 100 |
| 2 x 75 | 150 |
| 2 x 50 fast | 100 |
| 2 x 75 | 150 |
| 2 x 50 fast | 100 |
| 150 EZ | 150 |
| 200 w/alex for technique | 200 |
| total | 2350 |
at work, i sit, waiting for the caffeine to kick in. i am very tired this morning and am seriously considering putting my head down on the desk and taking a little nap. thankfully, brandy comes in and we do some pseudothecia counts instead.
bodypump
laurie and i decide to do BODYPUMP for our noon workout today, though she is very late and i get set up and then 10 people sort of hem in around me so i have no space for laurie. she goes to the front of the room to set up, while we are warming up. bodypump is all done with the bar, with different amounts of weights put on for whatever we are doing. the workout currently features a LOT of squats and lunges, some bicep curls, overhead press, clean and press, and some tricep stuff. also a lot of pushups. there are 2 ladies who lead the class, and one of them i feel is a big show off. she always has these crazy heavy weights on her bar. more than impressed, i think she's the kind of person who is always trying to prove that they are better than everyone. i find it annoying.
maybe i'm just annoyed at a lot of things lately.
one thing i know i'm mad about is the fact that i feel like i'm working my tail off and not really seeing any body transformation. as in, i'm not losing any weight. people keep saying, "well you're building muscle and that weighs more than fat" but i think that's BS. muscle is more dense than fat, so if i were losing fat, my pants would be getting looser. they aren't. i get frustrated when obese people can just, say, take up walking a couple miles a day, and drop 3o lbs just like that. i thought for sure that by going from doing NOTHING to doing A LOT would certainly kick-start my metabolism and get me going on at least a little bit of weight loss. especially with all the cardio. i am doing some weights but nothing to match all the cardio - the 2 workouts-a-day twice a week seems like it should be working in my favor, somehow.
i tell myself that i don't have the kind of body where i can see muscles, which is true; i could work out all day every day and you'd never see any muscle definition. my body just doesn't seem to show it, even if i do work out. which frustrates me; i would like to appear like i am strong. unfortunately, i have to know it on the inside. and inside me is a lot of self doubt and questioning about everything. so, after 7+ weeks of this i am wondering what the point is. grr. then i remind myself that at least i'm probably healthier than i would be if i were doing nothing. and that gives me a little bit of encouragement, but not much.
dancing
went to eugene with marc and margaret to dance to perpetual e-motion.
tuesday 11/20/2012 - spinning and dancing
spinning
the spin class hasn't changed in the last few weeks, so it's basically the same as it has been. we do some sprints, some rolling hills, some jumps, some active recovery, some more sprints, more hills, triangles, then active recovery again. so all the settings and output are essentially the same.
bike settings:
seat height - I
handle height - 3.5 (i adjusted this but am not sure it was worth it)
seat depth - 5.5 (i also adjusted this but not sure if i liked it)
base gear - 8
hard gear - 12
climbing gear - 15
average rpm - 82
average wattage - 136
total kilocalories - 304
dancing - drove up to portland to dance to perpetual e-motion. en route i went to albany to pick up a weight bench for jon off craigslist, and south of nyberg rd i got caught in some nasty traffic. the drive home was a lot smoother.
wednesday 11/21/2012 - swimming and running
swimming
"waking up is hard to do."
this morning, waking up was incredibly hard. in fact, i didn't get up until almost 5:30. luckily most of my stuff was out / available, and i just had to throw on my clothes and grab my bag and go. but i was so tired from the night before, i felt a bit dopey and wondered how i would get through the day. (luckily i remembered to bring some yogurt and a banana so it wasn't like i didn't have any food at work to eat) the morning bike ride in was especially pleasant - cold, but NOT raining! i was thankful.
| 200 swim | 200 |
| 200 drill (CU/hesitation/fist/FTD) | 200 |
| 10x25 endless relay sprint | 250 |
| 2 X 150 | 300 |
| 2 X 50 (FR/DR) | 100 |
| 2 X 200 | 400 |
| 2 X 50 (FR/DR) | 100 |
| 200 EZ | 200 |
| total | 1750 |
the endless relay was actually kind of cool; taz tried to arrange us so that each lane had 1 really fast person, one medium fast person, one medium person, and one slow person. i got shuffled to the fast lane and i told them straight up that i was sorry but i wasn't very fast. of course i didn't know what we were doing either. turns out, we were doing 25 yard sprints, basically swimming as fast as we could. once i realized this, i turned up my jets as fast as i could go, but i was clearly not as fast as others. in my lane were 2 guys and another girl, named davanna. she was really nice and friendly to me, and we actually talked later in the locker room. meanwhile during the relay, i could feel that after 3-4 of the lengths that i was definitely losing steam. coach came over and told us to start leaving early so that we could 'even things out a bit' but even then i don't think it helped much.
today during regular swimming, i was again working on the wide reach, but also gliding more, and then trying to swim with my elbow up at all times. as in, not ever reaching for the bottom of the pool but keeping my arm in a bent fashion at all times. and also, "the catch", which is when you put your hand into the water, and imagine yourself pulling your body past your hand instead of pulling your arm through the water. these several new things proved to be very complicated for me to process all at once.
meanwhile, in my lane was the xc girl and the super skinny / fast runner will, who also swims like lighting, even with superiorly crappy form. i watched him, and he thrashes through the water but still kicks my butt and never seems tired. this feels completely unfair to me. i have to work SO HARD at doing things right to get fast, and some people are so naturally fast that it infuriates me. ok maybe not infuriate, but a singular feeling of unfairness in the world. i mean, he hasn't been there more than 1-2 times in the times i've been there, and his form is total garbage. and yet, he's catching up to me and lapping me while i'm working on my great form. oh the humanity!
anyway with all the new stuff to work on, i definitely did less yardage today than i should/could have. normally, taz gives us "slow lane" folks about 2200-2300 yards to swim a day. i have been aiming for 2000, but today was just not my day. mostly because i had to keep getting out of the others' way, and also because taz wanted to talk to me about some things and that took time.
after swimming i went over to the hot tub since alex didn't come and wasn't waiting for me, and i had a nice time sitting there for awhile. some other tri people came and sat at the other end and talked awhile and turned on the jets (so now i know where the jets are) and then these other 2 people came, clearly a young couple, and the girl was wearing a bikini and was super skinny and i could tell that the guy just liked looking at her and i thought to myself, "i wonder if i looked like that in high school." because i sure haven't looked like that since high school. and i thought, well, they'll find it harder to look like that as they get older. but maybe they won't. but my skinny person jealousy flared up and i had to get out of there.
running - http://goo.gl/maps/5I8Ep
today i took my running tights and my new asics sneakers out for a run. the tights seemed to be falling down in the back and also pulling my underwear down with them which was really irritating at first, until i pulled the underwear up higher and then it seemed to stay in place. i also think that the tights are not made for people who have any junk in their trunk. they must be made for flat butted people, of which i am not. i felt like i had to keep adjusting and stretching the tights out to fit around my behind. so overall i wasn't impressed with that.
the sneakers, which i thought would improve my comfort, still gave me ankle pain at first. i do think i'm going to have to wear ankle braces on both ankles and see if that alleviates my discomfort.
i had originally thought that i would run longer on this day, maybe 3-4 miles, but i realized that i needed to do a bunch of things and needed to get home since tomorrow is thanksgiving and places will be closed and jon is coming and i need to have something for him to eat. since i want to take a very hands off approach to food this weekend, i'm trying to get many things that he likes and/or that he knows how to cook so that i don't have to be cooking all the time. plus i had this dream of wings/ tater tots for thanksgiving and i don't have any wings.
so i decided to go shorter on the run. also, i thought of different routes but realized some places didn't have sidewalks (or, i didn't think they had sidewalks) so i settled on the bike path. which was fine. flat, no weird unevenness. i ran from work out to the fairgrounds in 15 minutes, and made it my goal to get back faster than that. of course on the way out my ankles were bothering me and i was warming up and adjusting my tights quite a bit, but i picked up the pace on the way back and was able to shave a few minutes off my time. of course, i couldn't keep up the fast pace the whole way back; i ran an accelerated pace from the fairgrounds to the covered bridge, with a sprint the distance of the curve of the bridge, then i had to slow way down to catch my breath, and then i picked it up again somewhere around the barns and was able to keep the increased pace all the way back to work with a little sprint at the end.
summary: 2.7 miles in 27 minutes. at this distance, it seems completely reasonable to do a 10 minute mile. this reminds me that i'm not as slow as i think!
however, after the run, i got a nasty side / intestinal cramp on my left side. it was a stabbing pain and very uncomfortable. i thought i could stretch it out but that did not help. i suspect the only thing that would have made it feel better was to lay down but i didn't have a place to do that.
i spent some time reflecting on it, thinking about how some people have lots of other aches and pains that plague them on a regular basis, so i should feel lucky that i don't have that kind of problem.
another thing that has plagued me all week has been this sensation of getting female cramps, even though it's not time for that (i went through it last week!) i don't know what is causing it but i have it during the day, whether i work out or not.
thursday 11/22/2012 - thanksgiving - day of rest
it was such a nice day today, and i really considered going for a run as it was sunny and not raining and not freezing. but i had many other things to do and wasn't feeling particularly well so i decided to just rest.
friday 11/23/2012 - house chores, watched a movie
saturday 11/24/2012 - house chores, watched a movie
sunday 11/25/2012 - swimming with jon and alex
saw taz in the pool, good to know he's able to do a little bit even with his injured / recovering shoulder.
jon did a few lengths, hit the hot tub, repeated that process a few times. swimming is harder than you think if you haven't done it in awhile. also there was an asian boy - i would say man but he looked so young - trying to figure out how to swim in the lane next to me. i wished i could have helped him more.
2x (50 kickboard / 50 w/leg float / 50 EZ) 300
13 x 100 1300
50 w/leg float 50
50 EZ 50
total 1700
not bad for a sunday afternoon.
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