Healthy again at least.

Haven't been doing much special training lately. Weather this year has been very strange. At least now it is a bit warmer and the trails dry out faster after a rain.

Might buy a wetsuit this week. If nothing looks good in the local stores (and it seems really odd that the SF area doesn't seem to have at least one good we-have-everything store for Tri gear) I may just order one of the $99 Xterra ones as I'll get at least 3 uses out of it this year and that beats renting 3 times easily.

Never too experienced to make a rookie mistake

Upped my running to 4 consecutive weekdays per week, from 2 (Tu Th) to try and get my dog some more intensity in his excercise, and my left hip has some kind of spasm that has lingered even though I've now taken 3 days off.

Might have to take the old "mountain bike" out on some days to get the dog his higher tempo workout while taking it easy on me.

Too bad he can't lane swim with me.

Awfully quiet around here lately.

Just reread my race report from the first tri. Full of typos. Usually I catch that stuff, but I must have been too excited to take the time before posting. Good stuff.

One of the followups identified in the post-race analysis was a need to do more brick workouts. It's been a good year for that so far. Lots of swim-run at the gym.

"Swimming downhill"

Have been scouring the interwebs and this seems to be the most common bit of jargon describing what I need to work on. Press your sternum down they say. Press it with what I ask.

In principle it makes lots of sense and I'm sure I'll get there eventually. For now I am just trying to reinforce the improvement in breathing. It is making it possible for me to swim 2x as far in each workout and come out feeling much fresher than I used to. Good things are already happening to my rotation and my pull. Woo.

What does it mean if?

So, what does it tell me if I can swim twice as fast with a pull buoy than without, and with less effort to boot?

Today's workout was a revelation even before experiencing the above. I finally was able to exhale a steady constant flow of air between breaths without any hitches or tenseness. It felt so much better. The sensation of holding my breath or being short of air was completely gone. Even without the pull buoy I was able to swim much better and didn't feel like I was burning energy too fast to keep up.

Off to the interwebs now to figure out how to get my lower body up with better technique.

Oh, the combination of the better breathing and the buoy also allowed me to finally be able to focus on better rotation, which is probably where a lot of the "free" speed came from. Glide per stroke was so much better it was ridiculous.

The best laid plan

Hanging on the wall next to my desk is an 8.5x11 scrap of paper with a rough plan that should put me in place to have some success in the Tri for Fun in June. The main focus is on two things. One, ramping up swimming volume a lot with a goal of increasing competence there, and making it so I can come out of the water without having taxed myself too bad just to complete the swim. Two, bringing up the overall volume so that a ~70 minute high intensity effort is routine.

Overall volume will not grow too much week over week, but in the next 5 months it will be up noticeably overall, hopefully without taking too much of a bite out of the rest of my life. Past experience says that if I can fit it in without stressing about scheduling, I'll feel a lot better day to day.

Longer days can't be back too soon.

Got home early enough to run before dark. Very convenient, that.

The Garmin's battery was dead because it is my only PC dependent device anymore. Gonna have to get some kind of Mac sync capability.

Bah.

Just drove all the way across town to go for a swim and the gym was closing as I got there. 7 hours earlier than normal closing.

Thanks for posting the change to your hours on your website.

Went for a hike with the dogs instead. That doesn't get to go in the workout log though.

The sweet spot

It used to be that the difference between running too slow and too fast was pretty obvious, and the spread was about a minute per mile. Lately the sweet spot is really tightly confined. It's between about 9:20 and 9:40. What's up with that?

COLD

OK, cold for the Bay Area. Still. Muddy trail was frozen in places. Barely cracked the zipper on the windbreaker.

Not one other person on the trail tonight. Just the dog, the snow, an LED headlamp and This American Life on the iPod.

Beer o'clock soon.