Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Still cold. Ran anyway.

The swim lane Nazi was there today. I could feel the remnants of her presence. There were two girls in the fast lane, swimming fast. The other fast lane had two slow swimmers that were doing something resembling front crawl. The medium lanes had people pretending to breast stroke. The slow lanes had the senator's meeting. Organization. I love it. Keep in mind that when I say fast, I'm talking community pool standards. I know some of you probably couldn't swim that slow if you tried.

I joined the fast girls and settled in to a nice swim. I was afraid to do anything else but swim for fear of upsetting the precarious cosmic balance. We swam, round and round. It was great! Both of them swim smooth and almost exactly the same speed I was, so I hardly noticed them at all.

Swam 1000 m in 19:45 nice and easy. We'll call this warm up, but really, I felt like some big ole piece of waterlogged wood that's been stuck at the bottom of the river all winter. My arms felt like overdone pasta noodles. I've been working on roll, and trying to pull from my core and using my back muscles, and I think I've messed up my stroke.
Did some drill. Golf scores still suck. Did some intervals, but not many. It felt like I was wearing football shoulder pads in the pool today. Did some nice laps during cool down. .75 hours altogether.

Got home and ate. More. Did some yoga and stretching for about a half hour. Dressed for a cold run. Tights, heart rate monitor, what I call my man bra (tight short sleeveless vest that shows lots of tummy), a tech shirt, heavy hoodie, wind breaker, hat, gloves. I didn't look at the weather page for a screen shot, but I think it had warmed up to about -20 C, with a light wind. Turned out to be a nice morning for a run. Clear and sunny.

Went down through Fish Creek along the cleared path. There's even pavement showing in places. Was planning to run 8 x 12/1, so 104 minutes altogether. JN, you know when you run west in Fish Creek, and come to the place where you can keep going straight and go up to Woodlands, or turn left to go down a small hill and across a bridge? That's the bridge I turned around at. According to mapmyride those bridges are still under construction. I'd forgotten what a nice run this is, through the trees, with lots of little up and downs.

Ran nice and easy, trying to land softly and move forward from the core. And yes girls and you know who you are, that means what you think it means. But I didn't drool. The fourth interval was kind of clunky and I thought I was getting tired, but the next three were great! I found a nice gait, stretched out a bit, while keeping my turnover the same. I got back to within about 70 m of the house, so my pace out and back was pretty consistent. Keep in mind the out is almost entirely downhill, and mostly downwind today.

Stretched for about 15 min after, showered, and stretched some more. The foam roller is great on the calves. I think I'll go down later and roller some more.

I've been having some adventures with the stupid blogger word verification that some of you are using on your blog pages. That's your choice, but lately my browsers have been barfing on it. Which means you could be losing out on my witty, thoughtful, ever so trenchant comments. I'm just saying.

1 comment:

  1. Ha! I had no idea the word verification caused so many troubles, sorry! (I don't even know why I have it, actually).

    Okay, -30 degrees celcius definitely trumps any whining I do about a little wind or snow action down south. I mean, whaaa? I have no idea how you guys deal with that.

    Way to hang with the fast girls! LOL at the community pool standards comment.

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