May 2009 Archives

After a few weeks of no swimming, it felt like visiting an old friend to bolt out of bed early and rush to the pool. Granted, no master's swim, but I decided to try a public swim at the pool on the way to work.

Like all public swims, the lane usage is horribly inefficient. A competent master's swim club could have fit close to 50 people in the pool, but at around 20 the pool felt very crowded. No point in complaining, it's just the nature of the beast.

I did a 5x100m warmup, trying to stay more or less out of other people's way, then did ~1000m continuous swim. This may have arguably been a mistake. As much as I really needed a longish continuous swim to stretch out and get used to swimming again, the lanes that I was in felt very crowded. I was one of the fastest swimmers there (which is a huge change for me), and I occasionally needed to shift gears for a 25 and blow by a few people so that I could get some clear water in front of me to return to a comfortable pace.

Technically, I was really feeling the loss of a few weeks worth of form. My body roll wasn't as good, my catch needed work, I needed to focus more than usual on my hand position, etc. Still, nothing in the swim told me that I won't be able to do ~1900m open water in a few weeks.

Still need to go wetsuit shopping, though.

Who knew a tailwind could be a bad thing?

I've been battling tension headaches and general malaise for a while now, but it couldn't stop me from getting a sweet ride and a solid run in on the weekend.

Sunday I opted to run around the block. I started out into a stiff breeze, and was looking forward to having a tailwind coming home. Alas, when I finally turned to the east, I found out that the wind had been keeping the bugs out of my face. Suddenly, running about the same speed as the wind, the bugs had free reign around my head and face.

I tried picking up my pace, but I really only shook them when the wind gusted. On the other hand, the quickened pace felt good. Granted, I could tell that I wasn't quite in the right shape to maintain that pace just yet, but it was like running into an old friend.

It's taken a couple of days for me to recover from the run, and I'm sure that the added pace contributed to that. Still, whatever I lost on the physical side, I gained on the mental side. Running, at best, is pure joy.